Sublimity and Sterility- The Group of Seven at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

By: Fiona McAllister

Lawren S. Harris. South Shore, Bylot Island, c. 1931. Oil on canvas. The Thompson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Image courtesy of the AGO.

Ironically, it is once you are far from home that you grow to appreciate the peculiarities and wondrous characteristics of where you are from. I have been in Scotland for a couple of months, but I miss the starkness and sublimity of Canada’s wilderness. From towering boreal forests to snow-capped mountainous ranges to wind-swept autumnal lakes, I miss the ever-changing but often capricious landscape I call home.

It is rare to find a collection so emblematic of a nation. Even rarer is a simultaneous shift from a focus on the similitude of the natural world to capturing the raw essence of the Canadian wilderness. Whether capturing deafening silence or cacophonous sounds, a transient feeling permeates through the works of The Group of Seven, a collection of primarily landscape painters formed in 1920 and dissolved just thirteen years later. [1] There is an effervescent energy in the roaring rivers and towering trees that these artists captured, with many works available for viewing at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto as part of their permanent collection. I’ll be taking you through a few of my favourites.

Tom Thomson, The West Wind, c. 1916–1917. Oil on canvas. The Thompson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Image courtesy of the AGO.

Tom Thomson’s The West Wind depicts jack pines in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, blustering in the wind as a storm brews on the horizon. Based on small oil sketches completed in the open air, The West Wind evokes an ephemeral moment in the temporal and often cruel wilderness. Thompson captured the ‘grandeur and beauty of a uniquely Canadian environment: vast, elementally sublime, dazzling, isolated.’ [2] It was in this isolated environment that Thompson lost his life, drowning in Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in 1917. The West Wind was painted during his last winter, along with The Jack Pine, which is now located in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Although Thompson died before the group was formed, he is regarded as an honorary member and a significant influence on their artistic trajectory. Arthur Lismer, member of the Group of Seven and contemporary of Thompson, dubbed this steadfast and sturdy tree symbolic of ‘the spirit of Canada made manifest in a picture’ (qtd. in Machardy). [3] Dynamic and magnificent, The West Wind encapsulates the subjectivity of the natural world, accessed from the urbanized shores of Lake Ontario.

Lake O’Hara, Rockies (1926)- J.E.H. MacDonald

J.E.H. MacDonald stated of Lake O’Hara that: ‘If it is possible to make reservations in Heaven, I am going to have an upper berth somewhere in the O'Hara ranges of Paradise.’ [4] Although many tourists flock to Banff for a snap of Lake Louise, Lake O’Hara in nearby Yoho National Park is a recurring subject for this member of the Group of Seven. MacDonald captures the serene azure waters gulfed by the verdant pines and snow-capped mountain peaks, recreating a true paradise. The bluish melting snow sliding from the rocky cliffs exemplifies the enduring cycles of nature that the Canadian wilderness is best known for.

Franklin Carmichael. Cranberry Lake, c. 1931. Oil on canvas. The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Image courtesy of the AGO.

Here, Franklin (Frank) Carmichael painted the brilliant midday sun dancing across the waters of Cranberry Lake, located southeast of Sudbury, Ontario. With bare craggily trees dominating the foreground, the mist-shrouded landscape mirrors the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands. Carmichael is known for capturing grandiose scenes that dwarf the viewer, evoking a moment of awe at the beauty of the natural world, as seen in his work Autumn (1940). I am drawn to Carmichael’s work for its serenity yet starkness, as it places you directly in a locus that's simultaneously familiar and otherworldly.

Lawren S. Harris. Figure with Rays of Light (Arctic Group III), c. 1927. Oil on canvas. The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Image courtesy of the AGO

Although picking a favourite member of the Group of Seven is like picking a favourite child, Lawren Harris’s work holds a special place in my heart. He imbues his paintings with an elusive, magical quality, exemplified in his Figure with Rays of Light. This towering pillar of ice, enveloped by clouds with beaming light streaming down towards the earth, evokes a hauntingly beautiful angel of the north. Harris portrays Canada’s north as an almost ethereal landscape, like the stuff of dreams, such as in South Shore, Bylot Island. Religion greatly informed Harris’s representation of the north, such as in arguably his most famous work, North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), which ‘evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.’ [5]

Emily Carr. Church in Yuquot Village, c. 1929. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Charles S. Band, Toronto 1970, Art Gallery of Ontario. Image courtesy of the AGO.

While Emily Carr is not an official member of the Group of Seven, Lawren famously said to her, ‘you are one of us.’ Church in Yuquot Village [formerly known as The Indian Church] depicts the dichotomy between the temporal monuments from the Western world and the indomitable grandeur of nature. As Georgiana Uhlyarik, Frederik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, states, Emily Carr successfully ‘captured the tremendous beauty and natural force of the forest as it engulfs and overpowers this man-made structure.’ [6] The verdant evergreens are a frequent subject for Carr, who painted the swirling, abstract pines of Canada’s west coast and snapshots of daily life in Indigenous communities. She painted Indigenous villages and totem poles, which she believed were emblematic of a disappearing way of life; therefore, Carr’s works carry an internalized colonialism that’s difficult to disregard. Carr may have approached her subjects with empathy and curiosity, but they remain a testament to colonial insertion and aestheticization. It is important to note that Carr, arguably, gave much more consideration to Indigenous subjects and influence in the landscapes she painted than her contemporaries, who were perhaps engrossed in the ideals of a beautiful but barren and desolate landscape devoid of life or ravaged by human influence. Here, Carr imagines a tenuous coexistence marred by colonial influence in a way she knew how to.

Just like the subjects they portray, works from the Group of Seven are dispersed across Canada. From Ottawa, to Vancouver, to Alberta, or Northern Ontario, works from artists like

Tom Thompson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Frank Carmichael, Lawren Harris, or Emily Carr are to be discovered to those with a keen eye in many Canadian art galleries. To those with a keener eye, their landscapes and subjects become manifest in the windswept pines, shining lakes, snow-capped mountains, and dense coniferous forests unique to Canada.

I highly recommend that any visitors to Toronto check out their collections, as I will be paying another visit to the AGO when I come home.

[1] Varley, Christopher, and Russell Bingham. "Group of Seven." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published July 11, 2013; Last edited November 14, 2019. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/group-of-seven

[2] National Gallery of Canada. “Tom Thompson: The Jack Pine and The West Wind Masterpieces in Focus.” https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/exhibitions-and-galleries/tom-thomson-the-jack-pine-and-the-west-wind-masterpiece-in-focus

[3] Machardy, Carolyn. "An Inquiry into the Success of Tom Thomson's The West Wind." University of Toronto Quarterly 68, no. 3 (1999): 768-789. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/517012.

[4] The Globe and Mail. “The Globe’s annual Christmas painting: Lake O’Hara by J.E.H. MacDonald.” December 24, 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/article-the-globes-annual-christmas-painting-lake-ohara-by-jeh-macdonald/

[5] National Gallery of Canada. “Lawren S. Harris.” https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/lawren-s-harris

[6] AGO. “What’s in a Name?” AGOinsider, May 23, 2018. https://thegroupofseven.ca/emily-carr/