Carr's most famous work

 

died before the Group of Seven's founding in 1920,.

"Take everything as it comes; the wave passes, deal with the next one."
- Tom Thompson [1877-1917]

Group of Seven documentaries

 Watch here, here and here.

wilderness

"No man ever did a real thing that was not in the beginning misunderstood. A new path is bound to be somewhat lonely."
- Lawren Harris, founder of the Group of Seven

departure from the old world

- Lawren Harris, Montreal River [c. 1920]

scene

A movement in art in Canada.

"Gazing man is keenest on sparing beauty. To most people [Tom] Thomson's country was a monstrous, dreary waste. Yet out of one little stretch he found riches undreamed of. Not knowing the conventional definition of beauty he found it all beautiful."
- A.Y. Jackson regarding Tom Tomson

Illustrator

The Deportation image source here.

The work of commercial artist C.W. Jefferys [1869-1951] reached more Canadians than the work of The Group of Seven, which is why some argue that his work has more visual relevance.

Group of Seven related links here.

An American appreciates Tom Thompson

Donald Pittenger's perspective here.

Group of Seven founder

Lawren Harris [1885-1970] Island, MacCullam Lake, 1921

"We were told, quite seriously, that there never would be a Canadian art because we had no art tradition." 

"Beauty is a living abiding presence completely untouchable by all the devices of man, such as moral codes, creeds, intellectual analysis, games and cliches, the acquisitive instinct, or lust for anything whatsoever."

"I myself incline to drift, to accept a lesser situation rather than strive for a greater, and yet, I know that character in life and art is only made by an effort that is quite beyond one's ordinary everyday acceptance of things as they are."

"Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is a high training of the soul, essential to the soul's growth, to its unfoldment. "

"The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature – a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions."

"I don't suppose you do know precisely what you are after. I don't think in the creative process anyone quite knows. They have a vague idea - a beckoning, an inkling of some truth - it is only in the process that it comes to any clarity."

An external link to more Harris quotations here. 

An earlier Tom Thompson entry on this blog here.

The West Wind

Tom Thompson [1877-1917] died under mysterious circumstances at Canoe Lake in Algonguin Park; he is usually considered to be a member of the Group of Seven even though he passed away before the Group formally formed in the 1920s.

An updated reference on this blog to the Group of Seven here.