May 1995 marked the 75th anniversary of the Group’s first public exhibition. In the time that has elapsed since that eventful spring day in 1920, at the Art Gallery of Toronto, the Group of Seven have become an integral part of Canada’s national fabric. In fact, their images instantly define and represent a significant part of the Canadian identity.
 

Between 1910 and 1922, Lawren Harris painted Toronto house portraits such as Houses and Women, circa 1920. Toronto’s Ward District probably provided the inspiration for this oil on panel. Aggressively charged with dashing, bold impressionistic strokes, the scene is enhanced by the warmth of a late afternoon sun and flush fall colours. [Courtesy The Weir Foundation, Queenston, Ontario]

Their creative spirit took them across a vast nation: from the slums of Halifax to the Rocky Mountains; from the Arctic to the heart of Toronto. Seven gifted individuals from diverse backgrounds came together with a unified vision: to celebrate and capture the Canadian landscape with fresh, bold interpretations fuelled by nationalism. Their mission was grand, but their premise was simple: to have a purely Canadian identity, Canadians needed a purely Canadian art. While the landscape did indeed provide the dominant subject, the rural villages of Ontario and Quebec, the urban scene, and even portraits inspired some of their most memorable paintings.
 

Lawren Harris in the Studio Building, Toronto, Ontario, 1920. One of several artists in the Group influenced by theosophy, Lawren Harris explored transcendentalism, studied the writings of Walt Whitman, and investigated mysticism in general. [Photo, courtesy NAC/C-085902]

The founding members of the group included Toronto-born Lawren Harris (1885-1970), heir to the successful Massey-Harris Company; Montreal-born A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974); Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945), son of an Orillia, Ontario, carriagemaker; Torontonian Francis Hans Johnston (1888-1949); and English-born members, J.E.H. MacDonald (1873-1932), Fred Varley (1881-1969), and Arthur Lismer (1885-1969). Later members included A.J. Casson (1898-1992), Edwin Holgate (1892-1977), and LeMoine FitzGerald (1890-1956).
 

A.Y. Jackson in A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson (1958) commented that he never made any serious effort to paint Alberta but nevertheless found that the foothills afforded him “endless material,” saying that the “foregrounds [were] a problem, because so often there is nothing but a few weeds, scrub, or stubble to get hold of.” This oil on panel, rendered in 1944 and named Old Man River, Alberta, captures the “continuous blaze of enthusiasm” Jackson had for Canadian landscape. [Courtesy, The Weir Foundation, Queenston, Ontario]

Edwardian Toronto, the bustling, rapidly expanding capital of Ontario, was fertile ground for the planting of the Group seed. Tom Thomson (1887-1917), a farm boy from Leith, Ontario, provided the crucial and passionate impetus. Thomson was employed by Grip Limited, a Toronto commercial design firm, from 1908 until 1912. During his four-year stint at Grip, his fellow employees included MacDonald, Johnston, Carmichael, Lismer, and, for a short time, Varley. By 1912, the latter three had shifted to the firm of Rous and Mann where they were briefly joined by Thomson.
 

Last of the original Group to die (1974), Alexander Young Jackson is arguably the best-known member of the Group. At the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, England, the only Canadian painting purchased by London’s famous Tate Gallery was A.Y. Jackson’s Entrance to Halifax Harbour (1919). This photo of Jackson was taken in his Toronto studio, 1944. [Photo, courtesy NAC/PA 128906]

In the spring and summer of 1912, Thomson made his first sojourns into northern Ontario, paddling in Algonquin Park and through the Mississauga Forest Reserve, west of Sudbury, Ontario. An unfaltering passion for the north resulted, and the early oil sketches produced by Thomson fired the creative spirits of his colleagues. Several other circumstances of equal importance assured the historic convergence of these artists and their common ideals.

The return of Lawren Harris from four years of study in Germany in 1908 was one of these fortuitous events. By 1910-11, his painting was exploring the housefronts and buildings of Toronto’s Ward District. His earliest Canadian landscapes followed. In 1911, viewing an exhibition at Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club, Harris was so inspired by the paintings of J.E.H. MacDonald that he sought out this kindred spirit. Their first meeting set in motion a dynamic series of events and interaction.

Harris and MacDonald visited the 1911 Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists and were completely captivated by A.Y. Jackson’s Edge of the Maple Wood. Jackson had spent a brief period in Europe in 1905 and had encountered works of the Impressionists. Jackson’s painting, an on-site interpretation of nature’s light and colour, achieved through loose strokes of pure, juxtaposed pigment reflects the style of this groundbreaking French school, but what most impressed Harris and MacDonald was the fact that this rural Quebec rendering was specifically Canadian. Two years later, this painting inspired a letter from MacDonald to Jackson inviting him to Toronto. Jackson accepted the invitation and, in May 1913, he met MacDonald, Lismer, Varley and, later, Harris.

The meeting with Jackson was preceded in January 1913 by another pivotal experience for Harris and MacDonald. The two travelled to Buffalo, New York, to view an exhibition of Scandinavian paintings, bold canvasses exploring and capturing the rugged, timeless power inherent in the Scandinavian landscape. The flame was further kindled to attempt something similar in Canada.

By 1913, Toronto eye specialist, Dr. James MacCallum, had come to know Harris, MacDonald, and Thomson. Indeed, MacCallum, by becoming Thomson’s patron, afforded Thomson the opportunity to paint full time. Earlier, Harris and the doctor had been instrumental in coaxing MacDonald toward the same decision. MacCallum’s financial support also enabled Jackson to remain in Toronto. The doctor was an ardent lover of the north.
 

The Group of Seven seated around a table at the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, 1920: left to right – F.H. Varley, A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Prof. Barker Fairley (non member), Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and J.E.H. MacDonald. Absent: Frank Carmichael. [Photo, courtesy Art Gallery of Ontario/Ph-13#2]

Through the vision and financial backing of both Harris and MacCallum, this fledgling band of Canadian painters soon had a home. In the summer and fall of 1913, work was under way on the Studio Building located on Severn Street in the heart of Toronto.

The artists now had a permanent home at which to gather, exchange ideas, and work. With the opening of the building in January 1914, Jackson and Thomson shared studio space. For that winter and the two that followed, Thomson lived and painted in the building or behind it in a renovated shack, working on canvasses from the wood panel oil sketches made during the preceding summer and autumn.

In May 1914, Lismer, with Thomson, made his first trek to Algonquin Park. In October, both were joined by Jackson and Varley. With Thomson as early inspirational source and guide, these early treks became defining moments in the Group’s mission to document the unspoiled Canadian wilderness.
 

This J.E.H. MacDonald oil on cardboard, 1915, entitled Thornhill Garden, was painted about the same time as his more famous The Tangled Garden. This lesser-known work exhibits the daring dashes of pure pigment that characterize many of MacDonald’s landscape paintings. [Courtesy The Weir Foundation, Queenston, Ontario]

Two dramatic events halted this thrilling interaction: the outbreak of the Great War and the death of Thomson. While Jackson and Harris enlisted, Lismer, Varley, and Johnston each painted for the Canadian war memorials. Only Jackson saw action, but all were changed by their experiences. Varley was particularly moved as a war artist at the front. His paintings such as For What? (National Gallery of Canada) are powerful records of the horrors of war. Thomson continued his seasonal escapes to his northern refuge. Then, in July of 1917, he drowned in Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake. In the succeeding decades, the men who founded the Group of Seven never forgot Thomson’s visionary influence.
 

Frank Johnston's connection with the Group was never strong even though he painted with the Group in the Algoma District. He exhibited only in the first Group show in 1920. He resigned from the Group in 1924 and gave his work a more decorative character that found a ready public. Although this 1927 Johnston oil on canvas, The Belle River, Rouyn, Quebec, may not be as characteristically impressionistic as the works of other Group members, it nevertheless is interpretive and demonstrates individuality and keen artistic expression. [Courtesy, The Weir Foundation, Queenston, Ontario]

The group spirit that had been coalescing for a decade re-emerged at the end of the war, perhaps with an even greater intensity and passion. Harris was discharged from the army in May 1918. He and MacCallum quickly set off on an exploratory trek into the Algoma region of northern Ontario. In September of that year, the two were joined by MacDonald and Johnston for the first “box car” painting excursions. With paint boxes and bed rolls at the ready, the artists rode the Algoma Central Railway from siding to siding, exploring the dramatic northern landscape that surrounded them. The following year, Jackson joined their ranks, replacing MacCallum. Johnston’s 1920 Fire Swept Algoma (National Gallery of Canada) and MacDonald’s 1921 oil, The Solemn Land, (National Gallery of Canada) today provide powerful examples of the effect this dramatic terrain had on the painters.
 

Fred Varley originally did not embrace Canadian landscape painting with the same enthusiasm as other Group members. Once he moved to Vancouver, however, and was isolated geographically from his colleagues, he became an eager exponent of the Group “method.” This oil on wood panel was painted during an Arctic trip in the summer of 1938. Although his World War I paintings and his portraits tend to separate Varley in subject matter from other Group members, nevertheless, as this oil entitled Arctic Landscape demonstrates, he vigorously dramatized Canada’s rugged beauty with the same bold eagerness that energizes all of the Group’s landscape paintings. [Courtesy, The Weir Foundation, Queenston, Ontario]

In early 1920, the official formation of the Group of Seven took place. This may have occurred on a March evening during a meeting of several of the artists at the Toronto home of Lawren Harris. A sketch by Lismer, evidently from that night, documents the evening and may reveal him as the source for the “Group of Seven” title. Johnston, Varley, and Carmichael appear in the loose caricature, and among the pencil notations we see “Group of Seven.” Members repeatedly insisted that this was not a formal fraternity: there were no bylaws, no appointed officers, and certainly no fees. Their first exhibition took place at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario) that May. Reaction was mixed. They had already experienced severe critical condemnation from the Royal Canadian Academy and from established periodicals of the day during their formative years. But their critics now had a specific title on which to focus their attacks. For their third Art Gallery of Toronto Exhibition in 1922, the group included a foreword explaining their new vision and methods and proclaiming the need for a new art form.

Around this time, the ever-expanding call of the Canadian wilderness urged group members to seek out dramatically new vistas. Over the next several years, the most memorable and powerful images in Canadian art history emerged.

Harris and Jackson travelled to Lake Superior in 1921. Harris returned for three consecutive autumns. Some of the resulting canvasses have become Canadian icons. His Above Lake Superior (Art Gallery of Ontario) 1922 and Pic Island (McMichael Canadian Collection) circa 1924 are often viewed as pivotal works for both Harris and the Group. The paintings have a haunting quality. They encapsulate some of the philosophical ideals often associated with the Group’s work. These quiet, timeless expanses of nature reveal a Canadian north in which the individual is overwhelmed, gasping in awe within a vast, natural cathedral.

This grand and sublime interpretation of nature also pervades the Group’s work in the Canadian Rockies and the Arctic. Harris and Jackson spent two months in Alberta’s Jasper Park in 1924. Macdonald also ventured west that year. He returned for the next six summers, making his last trip in August 1930. He produced numerous superb oil on panel sketches of mountain lakes, including MacArthur Lake, Lake O’Hara, and Lake Oesa. Lismer explored Moraine Lake and Lake O’Hara in 1928. His Cathedral Mountain (Montreal Museum of Fine Art) of that year is a powerful visual record of the one trip west that he made. British Columbia became Varley’s home in 1926 with his move to Vancouver to assume a teaching position. He continued to paint passionately, and works such as Vera (National Gallery of Canada) 1930 solidify his status as the most gifted portrait painter of the group.

Jackson answered the call of the very far north in 1927 when he set sail from Nova Scotia on the Beothic, a government supply ship for posts in the distant north. He was accompanied by Sir Frederick Banting. Jackson visited the Arctic again in 1930, this time with Harris. Numerous important canvasses resulted, including Harris’s North Shore Baffin Island I (National Gallery of Canada). Varley also made an Arctic sojourn in 1938.
 
 

Frank Carmichael, a founding member of the Group of Seven, was an industrial designer as well as a first-rate teacher. This 1911 photograph illustrates Carmichael at Grip Limited, a Toronto-based commercial design company. Other Grip employees at about this time were Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, Tom Thomson, and Fred Varley. [Photo, courtesy McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives.]

The stamina of the group members was astounding: many of them completed yearly interprovincial journeys to explore and develop a singular theme. From 1921 on, Jackson made regular painting treks to his native Quebec, many along the south shore of the St. Lawrence. His oil, A Quebec Village (National Gallery of Canada) 1921, is a wonderful example of these works. He returned to Quebec for the next 30 years, missing only one season, 1925, because of Toronto teaching duties.

The final exhibition of the Group of Seven was held in Toronto in December 1931. For nearly 12 years, these adventurous, dynamic individuals had provided a stimulating new interpretation of a country emerging with self-esteem. Their painting technique and their philosophy brought them substantial critical and public scorn, yet they forged on with consistent vision. The tide turned during their final few years as they became accepted and recognized as authors of a new standard for Canadian landscape painting. Interestingly, some members drifted away to seek personal paths some time before this final show. Johnston left the ranks after the very first exhibition, and Varley departed for the west five years before the group finale.

Just four years after they had assumed their title, a defining moment occurred for the Group. In 1924, their works were included in The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, England. Typically, controversy at home preceded this international showcase: conservative Royal Canadian Academy members and critics opposed the National Gallery’s involvement in the selection process of works, fearing a dominant presence of the Group of Seven paintings. Once overseas, their canvasses garnered exciting and positive reactions from the English critics and public. Indeed, London’s Tate Gallery purchased A.Y. Jackson’s Entrance to Halifax Harbour.
 

In 1919, the year before the Group of Seven was founded, Arthur Lismer was vice-president of the Ontario College of Art. Throughout the 1920s, Lismer developed an expressionistic style highlighted by raw colour, rugged and coarse brush strokes and heavy impasto. Lismer’s impressionism not only challenged Group members but also influenced Tom Thompson and inspired Emily Carr. This photograph of Lismer was taken at Grip Limited, circa 1911, almost a decade prior to the 1920 formation of the Group of Seven. [Photo, courtesy McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives/Gift of Mrs. Marjorie Lismer Bridges]

Whether their work has since matched that level of international recognition is open to debate. What cannot be argued is the monumental contribution they made as a “group” not only to Canadian culture but also to Canada as a nation.

James Campbell