Group of Seven (artists)
[1] It originally consisted of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969).
[10] Tom Thomson, J. E. H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael met as employees of the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto.
Harris and MacCallum jointly built the Studio Building in 1914 in the Rosedale ravine to serve as a meeting and working place for the new Canadian art movement.
MacCallum owned an island on Georgian Bay and Thomson worked as a guide in nearby Algonquin Park, both places where he and the other artists often travelled for inspiration.
The Group's champions during its early years included Barker Fairley, a co-founder of Canadian Forum magazine,[20] 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.
On September 18, 1970, Canada Post issued 'The Group of Seven', designed by Allan Robb Fleming and based on a painting, Isles of Spruce (1922), by Arthur Lismer and held in the Hart House Permanent Collection, University of Toronto.
First day ceremonies were cancelled, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so designs were unveiled online on May 6, via the social media accounts of the postal service and several galleries across the country which own the works featured on the stamps: In 2012–2013, the Royal Canadian Mint issued seven pure silver one-ounce coins, collectively reproducing one painting by each original member:[33] In 1966, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario incorporated the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, an art gallery with an institutional focus on the Group of Seven, along with "their contemporaries and on the aboriginal peoples of Canada".
The McMichael cemetery is situated in a small patch of consecrated land bordered by trees, with graves marked by large chunks of the Canadian Shield.
[46] In 1995, the National Gallery of Canada compiled a Group of Seven retrospective show, for which they commissioned the Canadian rock band Rheostatics to write a musical score.
Shows of Group of Seven members or single paintings in some combination are a perennial favorite of the Canadian exhibition world, particularly of the National Gallery of Canada.
[48][49] The Group of Seven has received criticism for reinforcing the concept of terra nullius by presenting the Canadian wilderness as pristine and untouched by humans, despite the fact that these areas had been lived in for centuries.
