Chapter 3 Flashcards
Background 19th century / Beginning of the 20th century
- By the end of the 19th century, Canada had become an industrialized nation
- three largest cities montreal, toronto, winnipeg
- 1880-1990 many immigrants European/Italian/Russian
- people also moved from the farms to cities to find jobs
Part 2
- resulted in a class divided society with immigrants and workers staying in the inner cities (slums) and the wealthy moved to the suburbs.
- a class divided society is created, a social & geographical divide
- there was little consensus among the population on what it meant to be a canadian
- no distinctive Canadian flag, no official national symbols, a growing cultural diversity.
Tom Thomson & The Group of 7.
- Tom Thomson and the group of seven established the leadership of canadian subject matter for Canadians.
- developed the Canadian visual language
- invented a distinctively canadian visual language that would enable them to find the essence of canada
- focused their art on Canadian subject matter.
- Tom Thomson & The Group of seven came at the right time searching for a national symbol
Tom Thomson
- 1904 he worked for a variety of photo engraving companies including Grip limited where he met the future members of the Group of Seven.
- not a member of the group of 7 but influenced by them.
- Thomson did not study in Europe
- liked sketching & painting outdoors - Algonquin park
Thomson 3
- Thomson began to paint in 1911
- a year later he visited Alongquin park for the first time and made his first long canoe trip in northwestern Ontario.
- inspired the group members during the formative years before the creation of the group in 1920
- he learned sketching in Alongquin park from March to December then painting his canvases in his toronto studio shack.
- passionate about his subjects he was the model artist of the new movement.
Tom Thomson 2
- worked in the graphic arts industry in Seattle and Toronto and was the only one who was largely self taught as a painter.
- the name of the group did not originate until after his death tom thomson was vital to the movement, and as much part of its formation and development as any other member.
TOM THOMSON, A NORTHERN LAKE, 1913
- more delicacy/ sense of composition
- shows the group influenced him
- given us a heightened sense of colour
-
Thomson 4
- Tom Thomson was rejected by the army because of a medical condition
- in 1915 he took up residence at canoe lake in algonquin park and alternated his time between algonquin and toronto
- died in 1917 paddled off canoe
- Attracted to Alongquin Park by thomson’s tales and paintings Jackson Macdonald Lismer and Varley all painted there in 1914.
TOM THOMSON, NORTHERN RIVER, 1914-15
result of Alongquin park trip
TOM THOMSON, CANOE AND LAKE, ALGONQUIN PARK, 1915
Tom Thomson - Autumn Foliage 1916
Gestural brushwork
Roughness in approach
Spontaneity
Thick stabs of brushwork
Short thick strokes of pure colour
Group of Seven Artists to 1917
•J.E.H. MACDONALD (1873-1932), LAWREN HARRIS (1885-1970), FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL (1890-1945), FREDERICK VARLEY (1881-1969), A.Y. JACKSON (1882-1972), FRANK JOHNSTON (1888-1949), ARTHUR LISMER (1885-1969)
- Janurary 1913 - Harris & Macdonald travel to Buffalo, BY to see an exhibition of contemporary scandinavian landscape painting and to see how these artists depicted their countries.
- Macdonald said “this is what we wanted to do with Canada”
Group of seven
- All had formal training and a good knowledge of Impressionism and certain manifestations of post impressionism as it was transmitted through french british and scandanavian and american painting.
- group established in the spring of 1920.
- remnants of art nouveau design and flat patterning characteristic of commercial arts are evident in a number of their early paintings, they were also inspired by the northern landscapes of the Scanadavian painters seen by Macdonald and Harris.
Group of 7
- The raw austerity of the landscape evoked an image of a Canadian “North” a repeated motif in earlier formulations of Canadian identity that now found its expression in the rocks and lakes burnt land and trees and colour and light of Algonquin park.
- The Artists’ painting practice was traditional,
- Despire its shared goals, the group consisted of artists of differing personalities, styles, and ideals and this was evident in each work produced.
Group of seven 2
- The artists set out to identify elements based in history, folk culture, or topography that were unique to their own country, and that could feed a developing sense of identity.
- The artists goals first articulated on the eve of WWI.
- The artists’ argued that the English-Canadian elite its politicians industrialists and intellectual leaders existed in a mid-Atlantic trough living physically in Canada but taking all their intellctual and cultural nourishment from Great Britain and Europe.
A.Y. Jackson
- 1913 - A.Y. Jackson is invited by Macdonald to come to toronto from montreal.
- he paints terre sauvage/savage land, it became the touchstone of the new movement.
- discovered by MacDonald who felt what Jackson did with his art was beneficial to what the other members wanted to do
- most experience of modern French painting, taking his inspiration from Tom Thomson.