On The Shoulders of Giants

Training, Travel and Hardwork

Like Jim and Sue Waddington, the Group of Seven artists were passionate enthusiasts, knowledgeable, dedicated, and highly skilled.

Some have seen the Group in mythical terms as untutored geniuses. In fact, they succeeded thanks to their formal training and hard work. They also inherited a wealth of knowledge and technique from the creative giants of the nineteenth century.

Group members travelled in Europe, seeing with their own eyes the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles. They studied with artists including J.W. Morrice, a Canadian friend and colleague of Henri Matisse and J.M. Whistler. Eighteenth-century artists had already established landscape as a legitimate subject for artists, “en plein air” (outdoor) painting had become common, and manufactured oil paints were easy to obtain.

All of these factors contributed to the ability of the Group of Seven painters to capture rich colours and textures and luminous experience in their bold, new, expressive, yet representational, styles.

Classical Drawing

Franklin Carmichael moved to Toronto in 1911 to study at Central Technical School and the Ontario College of Art, where his instructors included the influential artists William Cruikshank and George Reid. He received his European training at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, where he earned honours for life drawing.

Carmichael’s masterful charcoal drawing Untitled, (Pericles) demonstrates his talent as a draughtsman. Its sensitive and precise rendering, delicate handling of form, and studious detail are typical of his later artwork, including his commercial prints.

Modern Painting

Trained in a classical tradition, A.Y. Jackson returned from his European studies in 1913 energized and inspired by modernism.

The dynamic sketch The Red Maple, painted the next year, fuses Impressionist technique with Canadian subject matter. Powerfully immediate, it conveys an intimacy with iconic motifs: maple leaves and a clear rushing stream. In this landscape painting, Jackson connects viscerally with the land to celebrate its raw beauty.

Flouting his formal training, Jackson has not cleaned up the image. Instead, he presents the luscious, brilliant red of the leaves and the tumultuous froth of the river as nature revealed them in a few moments of experience.