Little stamp about A September Gale
Série de timbres du Canada sur le Groupe des 7 en français

Page created on : October 13, 1998
Last updated : August 5, 2004

A turning point in the development of Canadian art and in Canada's national identity began in a small Toronto advertising agency. Grip, Ltd. employed graphic artists to draw soap and patent medicine ads. Among the employees were a designer named J.E.H. MacDonald and a young artist named Tom Thomson who had bigger ideas than filling space in newspapers. They wanted to paint Canada as no one had before.

Soon MacDonald and Thomson joined with other commercial artists who shared their enthusiasm: Frank Johnston and two English immigrants, Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley, then Franklin Carmichael from Orillia, Ontario. Lawren Harris struck up with the group on his return from art studies in Europe, and an eighth member, A.Y. Jackson from Montreal, came along soon afterward.

The eight artists were searching for a Canadian style of painting, "stirred by big emotions, born of our own landscape." It was a romantic quest, fuelled by the restless spirit of Tom Thomson, who led them to the wastes of the Laurentian Shield to sketch and paint in the wild. The eight artists inspired and criticized each other. "We were in a continuous blaze of enthusiasm," Lawren Harris remembered. "We were at times very serious and concerned, at other times hilarious and carefree. Above all we loved this country and loved exploring and painting it."

The First World War interrupted their work. Varley, in particular, painted stark scenes of war in the trenches. Then, in 1917, Tom Thomson died in a mysterious canoe accident in Algonquin Park. Thomson had been the inspiration, even the idol, of the other painters. "He was the guide, the interpreter," A.Y. Jackson said. To Canadian art lovers, Thomson's premature death made him an almost mythical figure of the searching young artist swallowed by the wilderness he loved.

The others carried on, travelling to the north of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior in 1919. This group, who had worked together for years, finally organized an exhibit in 1920, identifying themselves for the first time as the Group of Seven.

Negative reaction was immediate. Their paintings were called crude and barbaric; they were denounced as drunken and deranged. To a Toronto audience accustomed to polite imitations of fashionable European painting, their landscapes looked like "hot mush." Yet when British critics praised the Group's distinctly Canadian vision, the public at home began to take more favourable notice.

Canada had come out of the First World War with a new sense of national pride and self-awareness. The Group's paintings fed that pride. It was not long before they were the most influential painters in the country.

The Group did not have a single philosophy or style of painting, however. When Frank (later Franz) Johnston resigned in 1924, the remaining six invited A.J. Casson to join them. Then, when J.E.H. MacDonald, the "father" of the Group, died in 1931, Montreal artist Edwin Holgate and Winnipeg's LeMoine Fitzgerald joined, bringing different styles and subject matter.

But the early days of restless experimentation were over. After their 1931 exhibition, the Group of Seven disbanded to become part of the Canadian Group of Painters, a more inclusive society that included important women artists.

The Group of Seven inspired a national art. A number of their paintings have become icons of Canada. In retrospect, some of their early painting is not as revolutionary as it seemed at the time, yet, as Lawren Harris said, "The effect of our work was to free artists all over Canada, to make it possible for them to see and paint the Canadian scene in their own way."

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