For over a century, the Group of 7 has had an almost mystical hold on the Canadian imagination. The idea of a cadre of painters heading out into the wilderness to capture the essence of the North Woods helped reify the very idea of Canada at a time when Canadians were struggling to define who they were. How fitting, then, that the Group of 7 should be born in Buffalo, a city with one foot firmly planted in the True North, Strong and Free.
It all started in 1913 at the forerunner of today’s AKG Art Museum, the Albright Art Gallery, founded 51 years earlier as the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and since 1910 directed by Cornelia Bentley Sage Quinton—the first woman to run a major municipal museum anywhere in America. Under her aegis, the Albright served as the second stop of a major traveling exhibit, “Scandinavian Art Exhibition”, which started in New York and would go on to Chicago, Toledo, and Boston. The pictures at the exhibition comprised painters of new nations like Norway and Finland finding an aesthetic to call their own, a distinctly rugged, Northern perspective of forests, snow, and nature—an especially appealing aesthetic to the two Canadian founders of the Group of 7, nearby in Toronto.
Lawren Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald took the train to Buffalo to see the exhibit, and were captivated, spurring them to recruit their fellow Canadian painters. Harris later wrote of what he saw in Buffalo:
Here was a large number of paintings which corroborated our ideas. Here were paintings of northern lands created in the spirit of those lands and through the hearts and minds of those who knew and loved them. Here was an art bold, vigorous, and uncompromising, embodying direct, first-hand experience of the great North. As a result of that experience, our enthusiasm increased, and our conviction was reinforced. (Lawren Harris (1948), Light for a Cold Land, Peter Larisey, 1993, 32.)
Soon, the Group of 7 consisted of Harris, MacDonald, Franklin Carmichael, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley. They took excursions to Algonquin Provincial Park and Georgian Bay to paint the landscape, with an interruption for World War I, and afterward going as far north as the Arctic.
Two of Canada’s most famous artists were associated with the Group of 7. The first was Tom Thomson, a close friend and colleague of the founders who worked as a guide in Algonquin. He died in a canoe accident in 1917 that remains mysterious to this day, but he left behind some magnificent paintings, like “The Jack Pine” and “The West Wind”. The second was Emily Carr, who lived and worked on remote Vancouver Island in British Columbia… too distant to be part of the Ontario-based Group of 7.
All those great Canadian painters, and the Nordic paintings that inspired them, are back in Buffalo through January 12, at the AKG Art Museum’s “Northern Lights” exhibition. Viewing it is a fascinating, moving experience—history comes to life in the most vivid way imaginable.
Thomson, Carr, and the Group of 7 painters continue to inspire and define Canadian art to this day. Still, we are left to question: Would there have been a Group of 7 if the Scandinavian Art Exhibition had never come to Buffalo?
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Cast (in order of appearance):
Lawren Harris: Derek Minkensky
J.E.H. MacDonald: Guy Valentin
Narrator: Susan Banks
Sound recording: Brandon Nightingale
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Webpage written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer
Council Member Mitchell P. Nowakowski and the City of Buffalo for their generous support.