Fonds consists of correspondence including letters from other artists, 1924-1982; painting and teaching material, 1918-1982; financial records, 1930-1982; Frederick Broughton Housser series, 1932-1936; journals, 1921-1982; autobiography, incomplete manuscript reminiscences; miscellaneous personal material, [ca. 1929-1939]; printed material including a copy of Northward Journal containing a section devoted to Housser and clippings of reviews and articles about her, [ca. 1920-1984].
Fonds also consists of 91 photographs, 1914-1981, which are snapshots, publicity photos and studio portraits relating to the personal and professional life of artist Yvonne McKague Housser.
Fonds also consists of 226 artworks, [ca. 1921-1950], the majority of which were done by Yvonne McKague Housser during her days as a student.
Housser, Yvonne McKague, 1898-1996 : Yvonne McKague Housser (b. 1898, Ontario), artist, studied at the Ontario College of Art, 1915-1920, stayed on to teach for a year, and then studied in Paris, 1921-1922. On her return to Canada, Housser resumed teaching at the Ontario College of Art under Arthur Lismer and first exhibited her work with the Royal Canadian Academy in 1923 and the Ontario Society of Artists in 1924, later becoming a member of both these organizations.
Housser rejoined the staff of the Ontario College of Art in 1925 after a year in Europe. She was associated, along with Lismer, with the dissident Art Students' League formed in 1926, but stayed on at the College. She exhibited in three Group of Seven Shows, 1928-1931. She studied child art with the celebrated teacher Franz Cizek in Vienna, 1930. She made sketching trips to Northern Ontario in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. In 1939, Housser went to Taos, New Mexico, with Isabel McLaughlin to study dynamic symmetry under Emil Bisttram.
She retired from the Ontario College of Art in 1946 but continued to teach at the Doon School of Fine Arts. She studied under abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann in Massachusetts during two summers in the 1950s and made several trips to Mexico and the West Indies during the 1950s and 1960s. Housser was founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters, 1933, and married the Group's secretary, Frederick Broughton Housser, art critic and financial editor of the Toronto Daily Star. Both Houssers were members of the Toronto Theosophical Society.
