Vancouver Collects. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2001.

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THE GROUP OF SEVEN: CANADA'S NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PAINTERS


New material demands new methods and new methods fling a challenge to old conventions. It is as impossible to depict the autumn pageantry of our northern woods with a lead pencil as it is to bind our young art with the conventions and methods of other climates and other ages.


(Foreword to the catalogue of the 1922 Group of Seven exhibition, written by the artists)




Established in 1920, the Group of Seven emerged from Toronto as a collective of self-proclaimed modern artists. The Group was initially drawn together by a common frustration with the conservative nature of most Canadian art of the time. The work in contention held up antiquated colonial traditions and a constraining imitative style that the Group chose to reject for new visual material, subject and methods. That new material and subject matter was found primarily in the Canadian wilderness: the Group sought to depict a raw Canada with a modern method and style that reflected the country's adolescent potential in the face of past tradition.

The work of the Group of Seven has become for many Canadians synonymous with Canadian art, even for those who cannot identify all of the members of the Group. Although the Group of Seven was initially a movement concentrated in central Canada, their influence and importance was felt across the country. Indeed, of the ten members of the Group, seven visited or lived in British Columbia at one time or another to make their art.


The first Group of Seven exhibition seen in BC was in 1922 and their work was also included in exhibitions in 1924, long before an art gallery was a permanent presence in the community. However, it was not until Varley arrived in Vancouver in 1926 that the influence of the Group was directly felt in the work of this region. Varley's approach to landscape painting, going out into the landscape to paint directly from his subject matter, encouraged others to follow his example.

The other member of the Group of Seven who had a major influence on the art and artists of this region was Lawren Harris. His influence can be seen first through his friendship with and support of Emily Carr, by which he directly altered the course of landscape painting. Secondly, when he lived in Vancouver and his own work had become abstract, he encouraged artists to approach abstraction.

The artists in the Group were held together by their stylistic and nationalistic ideology, presenting themselves as Canada's national school of painters. As a collective, they sought to affirm a contemporary nationalism through their depiction of a vast and rugged country. Stylistically, the artists in the Group were indebted to Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, recognizing their antecedents while they sought to modify their notions of "significant form" and colour analysis toward a bold method of pictorial expression. These formal modernist elements included a thick paint surface, pure and brilliant colour and an incorporation of design into a raw treatment of an unidealized landscape—especially when compared to nineteenth-century English and French landscape painting that carried over into the early cultural identity of Canada.

Compared to modernist painting elsewhere at the time, the Group's work can appear conservative. However, within a Canadian context the artists forged a new visual language that attempted to break free of traditional cultural ties. The Group's manner of painting was seen by many of their contemporaries as crude or rough, mimicking the raw form and palette of the wilderness. Using the untamed Canadian landscape as fuel for their artistic and nationalistic goals, the Group put forth a new perception of beauty, one that spoke of a new world, its possibility and its freedom.

The seven founding members of the Group included Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and F.H. Varley. This initial artistic coalition was formed in Toronto between 1911 and 1913. All, including the independently wealthy Harris, worked as commercial artists at some point in their careers. Tom Thomson, another commercial artist, was included in the pre-Group circle, but his premature death in 1917 precluded his official membership in the Group. An avid outdoorsman, Thomson was significant to the Group in that he sparked an interest in painting the northern Ontario landscape, particularly in and around Algonquin Park.

The rough wilderness of the landscape, its raw, dramatic austerity, coupled with breathtaking colour and light, spoke far more directly of Canada for these artists than anything to be found in the cities or settled areas. For them, the north, a constant motif in earlier discussions of Canadian identity, found its first expression in the rocks, burnt land, trees, colour and light of Algonquin Park.

The fresh, "uncivilized" landscape of northern Canada became, for the Group and their proponents, synonymous with the promise of a young country.

In order to increase awareness of the importance of art for the development of Canada as a nation, the Group circulated their paintings across Canada during the 1920s (showing especially in western Canada, such as at the Vancouver Exhibition in 1927 followed by exhibitions at the New Westminster Provincial Exhibition, in Edmonton and Calgary). The populist intent of their project is reflected in the words of Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Canada at the time, who said, "a great country needs a great art." During this time the Group also wrote numerous nationalistic articles about art and their country, illustrated Canadian books, decorated public buildings, wrote poetry and designed stage sets.

In the mid-1920s the Group underwent a change in members. In 1926 Johnston left the Group and A.J. Casson filled his spot until the Group disbanded in 1933. Four years later, in 1930, the Group widened its scope by including Edwin

Holgate from Montreal, and in 1932 L.L. FitzGerald from Winnipeg joined the Group to further the representation of other provinces.

The mythology built up around the Canadian wilderness by the members of the Group ran parallel with developments in literature, poetry and politics that sought to identify Canada with the North and a nationalism based on the land. The identification with the land has been one reason, amongst others, for their continued popularity and success.

The first Canadian work of art purchased by the Vancouver Art Gallery was a landscape by A.Y. Jackson in 1932, and later Harris gave several works by himself and other members to the Gallery. The Group of Seven has an important, if modest, presence in the Vancouver Art Gallery's permanent collection and is significantly present in several private collections in the community. This selection of work supplements the holdings of the Gallery with a group of excellent canvases drawn from Vancouver collections and gives an opportunity for the public to see works that were predominantly collected in the east.

Melanie O'Brian and Ian Thom