The Group of Seven was a group of Canadian landscape painters in the 1920s, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. Macdonald , and Frederick Varley. Tom Thomson was also associated with the Group, but was never an official member, since he died before the Group was officially formed. Emily Carr was inspired and admired by the Group, and was invited to take part in art shows — a radical invitation for a woman at that time — but Carr was also never an official member. Other artists eventually joined the Group, which was then renamed the Canadian Group .

Red Maple by A.Y. Jackson

Thomson, MacDonald, Lismer, Varley, Johnston and Carmichael met as employees of the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. In 1913, they were joined by A. Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris, with monetary support from Dr. James MacCallum. MacCallum owned land on Georgian Bay, and Thomson worked as a guide in nearby Algonquin Park, where he and the other artists often travelled for inspiration.

This informal group was temporarily split up during World War I, during which Jackson and Varley became official war artists. A further blow to the group came in 1917 when Thomson died while canoeing in Algonquin Park. He appeared to have suffered a blow to the head, and showed no signs of drowning; the circumstances of his death are still mysterious.

However, the seven who formed the original group reunited after the war. They continued to travel throughout northern Ontario, especially the Muskoka and Algoma regions, sketching the landscape and developing techniques to represent it in art. In 1919 they began to call themselves the Group of Seven, and by 1920 they were ready for their first exhibition. Prior to this, many artists believed the Canadian landscape was either unpaintable or not worthy of being painted. Reviews for the 1920 exhibition were still mixed, but as the decade progressed the Group came to be recognized as pioneers of a new, Canadian, school of art.

The Group's champions during its early years included Barker Fairley, a co-founder of Canadian Forum magazine, and the warden of Hart House at the University of Toronto, J. Burgon Bickersteth .

The members of the Group began to travel elsewhere in Canada for inspiration, including British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the Arctic. In 1926 the Group expanded with the addition of A. J. Casson , and soon numbered ten members with the additions of Edwin Holgate and LeMoine Fitzgerald .

The Group's influence was so widespread by the end of 1931 that they no longer felt it was necessary to continue as a separate group of painters. At their eighth exhibition in December of that year they announced they had disbanded, but also that a new association of painters would be formed, known as the Canadian Group. The Canadian Group held its first exhibition in 1933.

The Group of Seven was largely influenced by the European Impressionism taking place in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris.

External links

• Group of Seven from Artcyclopedia