Say ‘Group of Seven’ and most folks will assume you’re referring to a congregation of the world’s seven largest industrialised nations, whose annual summit provides the mother of all photo opportunities for their leaders. As it happens, the leader of one of those countries, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, could probably tell you plenty about another Group of Seven, one his homeland produced: the coterie of artists who created the national style of expressionist landscape painting in the 1910s and ’20s that injected the modern into Canadian art and captured the spiritual essence of the Canadian wilderness. Nearly a century on, the Group of Seven remains a touchstone for Canada’s artistic identity.
Although not formally constituted until 1920, the Group of Seven traces it’s roots to a design firm called Grip Ltd. in Toronto, whose senior artist, J E H MacDonald, encouraged his staff to hone their talents by practicing outdoor landscape painting in their spare time. Like much of the staff, MacDonald had received extensive formal training as an artist. The other Grip employees who would become members of the Group of Seven were Franz Johnston, Franklin Carmichael, and a pair of English immigrants, Arthur Lismer and F H Varley. The diamond in the rough at Grip was Tom Thonson, who had scant formal training but learned from his coworkers and eventually surpassed them all in his mastery of technique and as an innovator. They met the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto with another pair of painters who completed the original group: A Y Jackson, a Montreal native, and Lawren Harris, the scion of the Massey-Harris farm machinery fortune who would become the group’s putative leader, also providing moneytary support.
Members of the group were well aware of recent trends in European art, and as they developed their uniquely Canadian movement they drew from influences such as the Post-impressionist landscapes of Van Gogh, Gaugin, and Seurat; ideas of seeking to evoke emotions from the Expressionist movement, and the Fauvism of Henri Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck (depicted by the use of strong colours and diverging away from America’s realism brewing around the same time). The group shifted emphasis away from similitude (the imitation of natural effects) toward the expression of their feelings for their subjects.
Usually their work began as on-the-scene “sketches” (in Thomson’s case, on fiberboard commonly used in construction) that were refined, transferred, and transformed on canvas back in the studio. They largely forsook verisimilitude to instead convey expressionistically their emotional response to their subjects. The group’s paintings were frequently characterised by the use of bold, bright colours, deployed early on with heavy impasto and broad brushstrokes and later in more stylised patterns with thinner pigments.
Rise to prominence
Around 1919, they started to officially call themselves the Group of Seven, and in 1920, they held their first exhibition as a collective. Reviews of the exhibition were mixed, and the Group faced resistance and criticism towards their attempts of depicting the Canadian wilderness. Although it’s hard to believe now, as the country’s diverse landscapes are today celebrated, there was a time when these terrains were not considered worthy of being painted. Through the 1920s, however, as these artists developed new ways of depicting the beauty of the wilderness. Toronto art critics were much less than kind in their assessment, one prominent magazine used adjectives like garish, affected, and freakish. However, two essential patrons emerged. Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Canada, bought paintings by the group for his institution. James MacCallum, a Toronto ophthalmologist and collector, funded the efforts of Thomson and Jackson for a time and then, along with Harris, financed construction of the Studio Building in the Rosedale neighborhood of Toronto, where members of the group lived and painted in six studios (now a National Historic Site). Thomson, who began spending more and more of the year in the wild, lived in the Studio Building briefly and then occupied a specially outfitted shack behind it for several years (paying $1 per month in rent).
In 1917 — while several members of the still not yet formally constituted group were serving in the army during World War I — Thomson perished mysteriously in Algonquin Park, having drowned after seemingly having fallen from his canoe, though more recent theories conclude that he was the victim of foul play. He died before the formation of the Group of Seven, but he was its guiding light and most accomplished member, even if Harris (whose subjects later included the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic) would go farther in embracing abstraction. Two of Thomson’s paintings, The West Wind (1916–17) and The Jack Pine (1916–17), remain arguably the most iconic works in the history of Canadian art.
Their legacy continued till the 1950s
The Group’s depictions of the rugged wind-swept forest panoramas of northern and eastern Canada were eventually equated with a romanticized notion of Canadian strength and independence. By the peak of their fame in the mid-1950s, reproductions of their paintings hung on classroom walls in every school in the country. Their works held pride of place in Canadian museums. Every discussion of Canadian art inevitably acknowledged their importance to the evolution of a national vision.
Nationalism created the Group of Seven, but in the end, it limited their accomplishment. In time, their influence waned. The Group was so successful in presenting their art as the visual expression of nationalism that the quality of their art is often overlooked. Taken as a whole, the members of the Group varied in achievement, just as individual works varied in quality. Often the most celebrated paintings, the ones most commonly reproduced, seem overblown and stale when seen in person. Their small oil sketches, however, especially those by MacDonald, Jackson, as well as those by Thomson, include some of their most inspired paintings, full of life, feeling and adventure.
Nevertheless, the Group introduced the idea that Canadian art could be important, that it could make a noise, and that it could earn a place on the international stage. It galvanized the national art community and ultimately stimulated the development of the museums and government bodies that would pave the road for artists who followed. Harris and Jackson, in particular, influenced and encouraged the next generation of Canadian artists. Lismer, MacDonald and Varley all became distinguished and influential teachers.
Some of the Group’s prominent works
The Group and their succesors created several works over three decades. Some of the mot celebrated ones are here.
