Meet the artists who changed the way Canadians saw their country and sparked a national art movement.
It’s no surprise that Canadian artists in the early 20th century faced an inferiority complex. At the time, the country continued to suffer from a colonial mentality, assuming anything that came out of Europe was superior to what they could find at home. According to a story on The Artchive website, “In 1924, only two percent of the paintings sold in Canada were by Canadian artists, and the patrons of Montreal bragged that more Dutch paintings were sold there than in any other city in North America.”
In response, a collection of painters, draftsmen, printmakers, illustrators, and teachers who would become the Group of Seven set out to celebrate the country’s unique scenery and bring glory to artists at home. They believed that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature.
In The Story of the Group of Seven (Toronto: Rous & Mann Press Limited, 1964), Lawren Harris (1885–1970) wrote, “A group of artists working in a commercial art firm devoted their weekends and holidays to sketching in the country near Toronto.” Among the artists were Tom Thomson (1877–1917), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Frederick Varley (1881–1969), and Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945). They were joined in 1913 by Harris and A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974).
When not out painting, the informal collective often met at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto to discuss their opinions about art and goals for the new movement. In fact, it was there that Harris first met MacDonald, whose sketches were on exhibition. Painted where the artist lived on the outskirts of the city, the work, Harris wrote, “contained intimations of something new in painting in Canada, an indefinable spirit which seemed to express the country more clearly than any painting I had yet seen. I was deeply moved. Here, it seemed to me, was the beginning of what I myself vaguely felt; what I was groping toward — Canada painted in her own spirit. These sketches of MacDonald’s affected me more than any painting I had ever seen in Europe.”
It was at an exhibit of Scandinavian paintings at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo that their ideas gelled and their purpose clarified. “Here were paintings of northern lands created in the spirit of those lands. Here was a landscape as seen through the eyes, felt in the hearts, and understood by the minds of the people who knew and loved it. Here was an art, bold, vigorous, and uncompromising, embodying direct experience of the great North,” wrote Harris. “From that time on we knew that we were at the beginning of an all-engrossing adventure. That adventure, as it turned out, was to include the exploration of the whole country for its expressive and creative possibilities in painting.”
Official Debut
A.Y. Jackson has been said to have credited Harris with providing the stimulus for the Group of Seven. An heir to the Massey-Harris farm machinery fortune, he and his friend James MacCallum financed the construction of a studio building in Toronto, which provided the artists cheap or free space to work. He also paid for boxcar trips along the Algoma Central Railway so they could paint the Agawa Canyon and Montreal River.
The group split up temporarily amid World War I, during which Jackson and Varley served as official war artists — Jackson in France before being injured in 1917, and Varley on the front lines with Canadian troops in the Hundred Days offensive from Amiens, France, to Mons, Belgium. Harris enlisted in 1916 but was discharged a couple of years later after suffering a nervous breakdown. Carmichael, MacDonald, Thomson, and Johnston remained in Toronto and struggled in the depressed wartime economy. In 1917, the artists suffered a further blow when Thomson died mysteriously while canoeing in Algonquin Park. Although his death occurred before the official formation of the Group of Seven, he had a significant influence on its members. “He was part of the movement before we pinned a label on it,” wrote Harris.
After the war, the artists reunited, continuing to travel throughout Ontario, sketching the landscape and honing the techniques they used to represent it in their work. In 1919, they began to call themselves the Group of Seven. And by the next year they were ready for their first exhibition thanks to the support and encouragement of Eric Brown, then director of the National Gallery. Reviews for the 1920 exhibition were mixed, but as the decade progressed the Group came to be recognized as pioneers of a new Canadian school of art.
The Players
Collectively, the Group of Seven endeavored to represent their vast country in a new, vibrant visual language. Taking inspiration from Post-Impressionist European art — perhaps particularly from Vincent Van Gogh — the group invented a distinct Canadian voice.
During its existence, the membership of the Group was in constant flux. Johnston left after the first exhibit, and new members including Percy James Robinson (1873–1953) and A.J. Casson (1898–1992) joined. At various times, they were, in effect, the Group of Seven, the Group of Six, and the Group of Eight. Emily Carr was also closely associated with the Group, though never an official member.
Eventually, the Group’s influence grew so large that after J.E.H. MacDonald’s death in 1932, they no longer found it necessary to continue as a group of painters. They announced that the Group had been disbanded and that a new association of painters would be formed, known as the Canadian Group of Painters. The larger Canadian Group — which eventually consisted of the majority of the country’s leading artists — held its first exhibition in 1933, and continued to hold exhibitions almost every year as a successful society until 1967. Still, across much of English-speaking Canada, people still consider the Group of Seven to be their national school.
For a look at the original members of The Group of Seven plein air artists and their contributions to the first major Canadian art movement, download PleinAir® Magazine (February/March 2023 issue) here.
