The group's members included Alexander Bercovitch, Goodridge Roberts, Eric Goldberg, Jack Weldon Humphrey, John Goodwin Lyman, and Jori Smith.
The Eastern Group of Painters was formed, as member John Lyman wrote, "to restore the "feel" of life, the savour of things" to Canadian art.
[9] The group had a serious concern with the art of painting and took pleasure in familiar life as a jumping-off place, wrote the same critic.
[3][1] But by 1950 in a show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the group, now considered a school, was seen to be "conservative with regard for tradition".
[6] John Lyman's Contemporary Arts Society (1939–48) (in French, Société d'art contemporain) evolved from the Eastern Group of Painters.