Canadian Geographic - The Group of Seven Special Edition
INTRODUCTION
By Ian Dejardin, executive director, Mcmichael Canadian Art Collection
IIn May 2020, we celebrated the centenary of the opening of the first exhibition of the Group of Seven, in a world disturbingly similar to theirs. Between 1918 and 1920, 55,000 Canadians died from the Spanish Flu pandemic that swept the world after the First World War. As we emerge, blinking, from COVID-19 lockdown, we are well placed to understand why this group of painters turned so decisively to the vast landscape of Canada for inspiration: the great outdoors represented health and renewal after a truly awful decade.
A Canadian archetype was born: the “pioneer” artist, no longer tied to the Victorian studio, obliged to wear velvet and a beret, but clad in hiking boots and toque, paddling canoes. Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley — Yorkshiremen from the industrial city of Sheffield — only arrived in Canada in 1911 and 1912, respectively. Tom Thomson, who worked at the same commercial art firm, took them in hand, taking them camping in Ontario’s Algonquin Park, where he found his inspiration. There are photos of them looking awkward in Tom’s canoe and roughing it in the great outdoors.
The war, Thomson’s tragic drowning, and the flu interrupted the idyll. But the desire to forge a homegrown art with a truly Canadian accent was strengthened by delayed gratification. The techniques were not actually purely Canadian. All of the Group had experience working in Europe or the U.S. Only Thomson had never set foot out of North America. But even his style was loosely based on French Post-impressionism, that liberating force that freed artists to experiment with colour and expressive brushwork. But by 1920, the members of the Group were in agreement that Canada itself was to be the subject matter. They needed to be as much explorers as artists, to reject the genteel Victorian landscapes of the previous generation and
replace it with something more visceral — to breathe some fresh air into painting.
These seven painters became intrepid travellers. Even J.E.H. Macdonald, the oldest of the Group and never very strong, “discovered” the Rockies in 1924 and went back there every summer to paint. Wherever he was, he adapted his style to suit the terrain. Varley moved to British Columbia in 1926 to take up a teaching post and found a whole new landscape. Frank Johnston moved to Winnipeg in 1921 as principal of the School of Art, finding a worthy subject in Lake of the Woods on the way. Lismer taught in Halifax during the war, and, as the Group’s most articulate spokesman and a revered art educator, covered as much ground from sea to sea to sea as any of them. Jackson became the most indefatigable representative of the archetype, seemingly covering the whole country at one point or another. He was the first to visit the Arctic, hitching a ride on the RCMP supply ship Beothic, to be joined a couple of years later by the irrepressible Lawren Harris.
Geographically speaking, Harris had more of an agenda. Rather than adapting to the landscape like Macdonald, he chose landscapes and molded them to suit his style. For a few summers from 1918, he, Jackson, Johnston and Macdonald shared a painting trip by train to Algoma, Ont. But Harris hankered for something more austere. He found it on the North Shore of Lake Superior — where wildfires had swept aside all extraneous detail — in the bleak mountains of the Rockies and icebergs of the Arctic. Jackson, meanwhile, found a more benign form of snowy landscape as he stomped around in his snowshoes during winter breaks in Quebec.
Franklin Carmichael’s family and work ties kept him home where his work championed the rural farms of southern Ontario — but he also made it north to Lake Superior, where he developed a taste for beautiful panoramic views over glittering water and islands.
One characteristic Canadian landscape might have been missed altogether. There were few incursions into the Prairies. Maybe the Group felt guilty about that — when a final member was invited to join the group in 1932, the chosen artist was Winnipeg-born Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald, known as the “Painter of the Prairies,” who loved that landscape and its towering skies.
However, the end of this particular artistic experiment was in sight. That November, J.E.H. Macdonald died from a stroke; and it was decided to call a halt to the Group of Seven. Critics quipped that hardly a pine tree across the whole of Canada had escaped their attention. But their legacy is as vital today as ever; and how many of us continue to see the geography of Canada through their eyes?