Jupyter notebook matplotlib figures show up small until cell is completed

Question

I'm trying to make a notebook where the data produced by a long for loop is put in a graph point by point. However, when using %matplotlib notebook and fig.canvas.draw() the graph is tiny up until the cell finishes running. (In fact, I've got many of those graphs and they are even tinyer when using more subplots.)

Here my code reproducing the behaviour in a jupyter notebook, at least on OS X with (latest) jupyter-core 4.3.0 and (latest) matplotlib 2.0.2.

%matplotlib notebook
import time
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)
for _ in range(5):
    ax.plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3])
    fig.canvas.draw()
    time.sleep(1)

During the cell execution I get this plot

And when the cell finishes execution (after 5 seconds) I get this

I would like to get the larger image even during cell execution. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

As proposed by ImportanceOfBeingErnest, one solution is to put the figure creation in its own cell.

[1] %matplotlib notebook
    import time
    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

[2] fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)

[3] for _ in range(5):
        ax.plot([1,2,3], [1,2,3])
        fig.canvas.draw()
        time.sleep(1)

Edit: This solutions does not work if you run all cells at once.