Six of the Group of Seven, plus their friend Barker Fairley in 1920. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
Arthur Lismer was born in Sheffield, England, in 1885 and his childhood friend Frederick Varley was born in the same city in 1881, the Canadian Encyclopedia notes. MacDonald was born in Durham, England, in 1873 and moved to Canada with his family in 1887, at the age of 14, according to the Art Gallery of Ontario and Google Arts and Culture. The Canadian Encyclopedia says Arthur Lismer immigrated to Toronto in 1911, where he worked at Grip Engraving Company. Frederick Horsman Varley followed him to Toronto in 1912. He passed away in 1917, after drowning in Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. The Group of Seven held its first exhibition in 1920 The group first used the name Group of Seven at its first exhibition held on May 7, 1920, at the Art Gallery of Toronto, currently known as the Art Gallery of Ontario. This is why Parks Canada honoured it as a national historical event in 1974. He also became a leading art educator, serving as principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax from 1916 to 1919, The Canadian Encyclopedia notes. Tom Thomson’s The West Wind (1917), painted shortly before his death. The Group of Seven’s influence continued beyond its exhibition The original group dissolved itself in 1933.
Thus, Arthur Lismer gained fame due to his landscapes of Georgian Bay as well as other Ontario landscapes. MacDonald and Frederick Varley introduced their knowledge gained in England to the emerging Canadian art movement.
MacDonald and Frederick Varley according to the Art Gallery of Ontario and Parks Canada. A country’s identity can take shape through the images people associate with it. The paintings of huge forest areas, rugged coastlines, lakes and mountains played an important role in forming the image of Canada. It was a number of artists who made Canada’s landscape the main subject of their paintings. Three of the group’s seven founders were born in England before moving to Canada. Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and Frederick Varley were among the seven painters who created the Group of Seven. They were the artists who sought to form a distinct image of Canadian art, which would be independent of European traditions of painting. Three English-born artists became founding members of the Group of Seven The original Group of Seven comprised Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. Of all these, three were Englishmen. J.E.H. Their ways somehow crossed with the artistic circles of Toronto. All these artists who later formed the Group of Seven had been employed at Grip Limited, a commercial design firm in Toronto, where their professional bond began and they shared a passion for the art of Canada. The Art Gallery of Ontario’s history of the Group of Seven documents the artists’ backgrounds and their contributions to the movement. Tom Thomson influenced the group’s approach to Canadian landscapes Tom Thomson had close associations with the artists, even though he was never part of the Group of Seven. His paintings of Algonquin Park were instrumental in defining the style the group adopted when painting landscapes. He employed expressive colours and loose brushwork when painting the mood of the natural environment. His paintings inspired the artists to paint scenes other than traditional landscapes of Europe. His paintings depicted the Canadian wild through an expressive style of painting. The West Wind is one of his best-known paintings. Their paintings revolve around the forest, lakes, rocky landscapes and changing seasons of Canada. They chose not to adopt the conventional way of painting landscapes and chose simplified shapes, bold colours and expressive strokes instead. Their early artwork was based mostly on the landscape of northern Ontario, but gradually spread all over Canada. Lismer, MacDonald and Varley developed different artistic styles Despite the common interest in the natural surroundings in Canada, each of the three artists had a distinctive approach to the group. His works had characteristic features of rhythmic shapes and vivid colours. J.E.H. MacDonald devoted his landscape paintings to experiments with colour, composition and atmosphere. The landscape included those of Algoma and the Rocky Mountains. J.E.H. MacDonald also worked as a designer, poet and educator, thus encouraging people’s interest in Canadian landscape paintings. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons Frederick Varley gained recognition for both his landscape paintings and portraits. His paintings were notable for expressive use of colours and peculiar composition. Varley was an official artist of World War I. The group’s portrayal of Canada left out indigenous histories The work of the Group of Seven contributed to making forests, lakes and mountains recognisable icons of Canada. Nevertheless, the paintings of the group depicted these lands as pristine and devoid of human life, featuring only a few figures. Such depictions fail to portray the real history of the areas that were being painted, since most of the lands depicted in the works belonged to the territories of indigenous people and had their inhabitants. For example, Algonquin Park belongs to the traditional lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. Thus, the work raised the issue of the way of depicting Canadian landscapes as well as the representation of the nation in general. However, its legacy lived on through the Canadian painters and cultural institutions. The members of this group had formulated a style for landscape paintings that future painters would have to learn from, adopt or refute. In collaboration with four other painters, they developed the language that helped Canada identify itself with its natural environment. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
