Thomson, MacDonald, Lismer, Varley, Johnston and
Carmichael met as employees of the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. In
1913, they were joined by A. Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. They often
met at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto to discuss their opinions
and share their art. The group received monetary support from Dr. James
MacCallum. MacCallum owned land on Georgian Bay and Thomson worked as a
guide in nearby Algonquin Park, both places where he and the other
artists often travelled for inspiration.
This informal group
was temporarily split up during World War 1. A further blow to the group
came in 1917 when Thomson died while canoeing in Algonquin Park. The
seven who formed the original group reunited after the war. They
continued to travel throughout Ontario, especially the Muskoka and
Algoma regions, sketching the landscape and developing techniques to
represent it in art. In 1919 they began to call themselves the Group of
Seven, and by 1920 they were ready for their first exhibition. Prior to
this, many artists believed the Canadian landscape was either
unpaintable or not worthy of being painted. Reviews for the 1920
exhibition were mixed, but as the decade progressed the Group came to be
recognized as pioneers of a new, Canadian, school of art.
After Frank Johnston left the group in 1921, A. J. Casson seemed like an
appropriate replacement. Franklin Carmichael had taken a liking to him
and had encouraged Casson to sketch and paint for many years beforehand.
A. J. Casson was invited to join in 1926, and accepted.
The Group's champions during its early years included
Barker Fairley, a co-founder of Canadian Forum magazine, and the warden
of Hart House at the University of Toronto, J. Burgon Bickersteth.
The members of the Group began to travel elsewhere in
Canada for inspiration, including British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia,
and the Arctic. These painters were the first artists of European
descent who depicted the Arctic. In 1926 A. J. Casson joined the group
which soon numbered ten members with the additions of Edwin Holgate and
LeMoine Fitzgerald.
The Group's influence was so widespread by the end of 1931 that they no
longer found it necessary to continue as a group of painters. At their
eighth exhibition in December of that year they announced that they had
disbanded and that a new association of painters would be formed, known
as the Canadian Group of Painters. The Canadian Group held its first
exhibition in 1933.
