What is the significance of the Group of Seven?

The Group of Seven was the first Canadian art movement to deliberately reject European traditions and paint the country's landscape on its own terms. Founded in Toronto in March 1920, the original members were Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley. Tom Thomson, who drowned in Algonquin Park on July 8, 1917, was an inseparable colleague whose work prefigured the group's style.

The group held its first exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto from May 7 to 27, 1920, billed as a self-conscious break with the muted tones and academic compositions favoured by Canadian art institutions of the day. Their canvases used thick, expressive brushwork, saturated colour, and bold compositions to capture the rugged geography of the Canadian Shield, the Algoma Highlands, the Rocky Mountains, Algonquin Park, and the Arctic. The painters travelled together by canoe and rail on extended sketching trips supported by patrons like Dr. James MacCallum.

Membership shifted over time. A. J. Casson joined in 1926, Edwin Holgate in 1930, and L. L. FitzGerald in 1932. Franklin Johnston had already left in 1924. The group formally disbanded in 1933 to form the larger Canadian Group of Painters, which extended their nationalist project to a broader membership including women such as Emily Carr, Yvonne McKague Housser, and Anne Savage.

Their canvases hang in the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, and museums worldwide. Lawren Harris's 'North Shore, Lake Superior' (1926), Tom Thomson's 'The Jack Pine' (1916-17), and A. Y. Jackson's 'Red Maple' (1914) appear in Canadian school textbooks and on currency, postage, and tourism material as foundational images of the country.