John MacGilchrist

Scottish-born John MacGilchrist studied architectural drawing and painted initially mainly Scottish castles. In 1913, he traveled to the United States to complete his degree in architecture at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. MacGilchrist was a prominent American aviation artist who fought in World War I as a Balloon Observer for the British Royal Air Corp. Despite having been shot down four times, he survived over 200 hours of combat and chronicled images of war.

After the war, MacGilchrist returned to the United States to pursue his chosen profession as an architect in Philadelphia and New York. In 1926, however, he left architecture, to follow his yearnings, and returned to his romance with airplanes. His techniques ranged from etchings and lithographs to watercolors and oil paintings. After falling into obscurity during the Great Depression his career ended and his work was only re-discovered after his death.

In 1932, MacGilchrist entered three works in the graphics section of the Art Competitions. Apparently, he produced two works entitled The Race. One of them is an etching measuring 13 x 18 cm (sheet 31 x 24 cm). Zooming Laird Solution, sized 25 x 23 cm (sheet 38 x 32 cm), from 1930 was probably identical to the submitted etching Zooming. The Laird Speedwing Solution was a biplane built for flying competitions. Here it is shown above the rooftops of Chicago. The third etching (14 x 22.7 cm, sheet 24.1 x 32.1 cm) depicted the Yankee Doodle, a single-engine Lockheed Vega built since 1927. A plane of this type, nicknamed “Yankee Doodle”, was used by Captain Charles Collyer (1896-1928) and Harry Tucker (1891–1928) to fly non-stop from New York to Los Angeles in October 1928 in 24 hours and 55 minutes. A few days later, both crashed fatally with the plane in Arizona.