A. Y. Jackson - 75 Years of Collecting - Vancouver Art Gallery

A. Y. Jackson 

The Road to St. Fidele, 1929-1930 

oil on canvas 

62.0 cm x 80.0 cm 

Vancouver Art Gallery, 

Founders' Fund 

VAG 32.5 

75 Years of Collecting 

Vancouver Art Gallery 

Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves 

Photo: Teresa Healy, Vancouver Art Gallery 

1 / 18



Image source: Vancouver Art Gallery Library: 

Canadian Artist Files 



Artist's Biography 

Nationality: Canadian 

Born: 1882-10-03, Montreal, Quebec 

Died: 1974-04-05 

A.Y. Jackson was born in Montreal. Early in life his father left home and the 

family of seven had to manage more or less on its own. He was a good student, 

but had to leave school at the early age of 12 to earn money to help support his 

family. He became a lithographer and after six years of work was making $6.00 

a week. During this time he became interested in art. 

In 1905 and 1907 he saved up enough money for two trips. First he went to 

London for a brief visit. Next he went to Paris where he lived and studied until 

1908. He then returned to Canada and began to paint in the area of 

Sweetsburg. His painting Edge of the Maple Wood brought him into contact 

with Lawren Harris. After another brief visit to France in 1911, he returned to 

Canada where he exhibited for the first time in Montreal. Shortly after the 

exhibition, Jackson received a letter from J.E.H. MacDonald asking on behalf of 

Harris for Edge of Maple Wood and urging him to come to Toronto. 

In 1912 Jackson met John Varley, MacDonald, and Arthur Lismer at the Arts 

and Letters Club in Toronto. During a trip to Georgian Bay in September of 

1912, Jackson met Dr. MacCallum who urged him to paint full-time in the 

Studio Building that Harris and he were financing. Dr. MacCallum also promised 

to assume Jackson's expenses for a year, an offer that he had also made to Tom 

Thomson. In 1913, Jackson's canvas Terre Sauvage became the prototype for 

large works by the Group of Seven. 

Jackson went to war in 1914. Soon after being wounded in 1916, he became a 

war artist. 

Jackson went with Harris, MacDonald and Franz Johnston to Algoma in 1919 

and 1920. The group lived in a box-car shunted to various places by CNR and 

CPR. Like MacDonald, Jackson found the country inspiring. 

In 1920 Jackson and his friends formed the Group of Seven and held their first 

exhibition as such. He believed his own work, Terre Sauvage, to be the most 

radical in the show. The paintings were badly received by critics who deemed 

them "products of a deranged mind," "art gone mad" and "the cult of ugliness." 

From 1921-1924 Jackson painted in Quebec. In 1927, 1928 and 1930 

Jackson went to the Arctic. He went twice with Dr. Banting and once with 

Harris. In 1933 the Group of Seven dissolved. Jackson felt that the move to 

disband the group was a wise one. He continued to paint until his death in 

1974. 

Source: Unattributed notes in Vancouver Art Gallery Library Permanent Collection 

Files: Jackson, A.Y. 

2 / 18





Artistic Context 

Nationality: Canadian 

Training: Académie Julian, Paris 

Group: Group of Seven; Canadian Group of Painters; Canadian War Memorials; 

19th century; 20th century 

Contemporaries: Frank Carmichael, Lawren Harris, Frank Johnston, Arthur 

Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, Frederick Varley, Tom Thomsom 

Provenance: purchased from the artist in 1932 

Subject: landscape; land based nationalism; winter 

Other works in the Vancouver Art Gallery Collection 

A.Y. Jackson 

Wild Woods, 1946 

oil on canvas 

T. Eaton Company Fund 

VAG 49.1 

Freddy Channel, Georgian Bay, 1920 

oil on panel 

Gift of Dr. & Mrs. Lawren S. Harris 

VAG 51.18 


Lake MacDonald, Algoma, 1920 

oil on wood panel 


VAG 51.19 

A.Y Jackson 

Making the Grade, Montreal, 1915 

oil on panel 


VAG 51.20 


Beaver Country, Algoma, 1920 



VAG 51.21 

A.Y Jackson. 

Wartz Lake, Algoma, 1920 



VAG 51.22 


Early Spring, Georgian Bay, 1920 

oil on board 


VAG 54.6 

3 / 18






Macintosh Bay, Lake Athabaska, Saskatchewan, 1957 

oil on canvas 

Gift of the Vancouver Art Gallery Women's Auxiliary 

VAG 68.21 


Ste. Louise, Quebec; Ste. Louis, Quebec (sic), 1940 


Anonymous Gift 

VAG 82.4 


Untitled date unknown 

oil on panel 

Anonymous Gift 

VAG 82.6 


Laurentian Village, 1930 


Gift of Garth Thurber 

VAG 86.60 


Skeena,1926 

pencil on wove paper 

Gift of Naomi Jackson Groves 

VAG 88.39.3 


Totem Poles and House at Kispiox, BC,1926 



VAG 88.39.4 


Indian House, Port Simpson,1926 



VAG 88.39.5 


Crossing Great Slave Lake by NightOw, 1928 

pencil, whiting on wove paper 


VAG 88.39.6 


Williams Lake, 1949 



VAG 88.39.11 


Hemlock, Prince Rupert, 1926 



VAG 88.39.12 

4 / 18






Grand River, Early Spring, 1952 

oil on canvas 

Gift of Jack Smith 

VAG 88.41.1 


Barkerville, B. C.,1949 

oil on panel 

Gift of Jack Smith 

VAG 89.41.2 


Mission Road, 1949 


Bequest of Ms. Evelyn Cornwall 

VAG 93.33 


St. Tites des Caps, 1923 

graphite on paper 

Gift of Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves 

VAG 98.44.1 


Des Renards, 1930 



VAG 98.44.2 


The Red Cedar, c. 1936 



VAG 98.44.3 


The Red Cedar, c.1936 



VAG 98.44.4 


Landscape(recto); Dead Tree (verso), c.1938 



VAG 98.44.5a-b 


Alaska Highway (recto), 1943 



VAG 98.45 a-b 


Landscape, c.1920 

oil on panel 

The Parnell Bequest 

VAG 2000.39.3 

5 / 18






Beaver Swamp Near Perth, Ontario c. 1940 

oil on panel 

Gift of Robert George Curtis in memory of his mother Doris G. Curtis 

VAG 2001.34.1 

Bibliography 

As We See It: An Exhibition of Canadian Art 

Publication 

[transcription] 

ANDREW YOUNG JACKSON 

A.Y. Jackson was born in Montreal in 1882. He was gifted with a down to earth 

sense of humour that was reflected in his art and provided friends and fellow 

artists with many hours of enjoyment. Often 

it lead him to make wry statements on the state of the Canadian art world. In 

1925, recalling those years of discouragement with the public's lack of 

enthusiasm for a style of art that he felt reflected the feeling of his country 

Jackson wrote, "It was boasted in Montreal that more Dutch art was sold there 

than in any other city on this continent. Dutch pictures became a symbol of 

social position and wealth...they collected them like cigarette cards. You had to 

complete your set...the housed bulged with cows, old women peeling potatoes 

and windmills...they were grey, mild inoffensive things, and when surrounded by 

heavy gold frames, covered with plate glass and a spotlight over them, they 

looked expensive." 

Like so many artists of his time, Jackson had studied in Europe and had 

acquired a knowledge of historical and modern art. But he was determined to 

apply this knowledge to expressing Canadian moods and scenes. 

Jackson was eventually credited with developing new techniques that did indeed 

successfully present the atmosphere of winter days with the 

colours of shadow reflecting on the snow. 

One of Jackson's landmark compositions was created in 1910 while living in 

Emileville Quebec—EDGE OF THE MAPLE WOOD. At this time J.E.H. MacDonald 

wrote to Jackson concerning the painting and it was then Jackson stated, "I 

began my association with the artists responsible for changing the course of 

Canadian art for many years to come." 

Jackson, through MacDonald, eventually met other members of the yet to be 

Group of Seven and developed lasting friendships. During this time Tom 

Thompson and Jackson worked closely together and had an equal influence on 

each others work. 

A.Y. Jackson produced a great amount of work during his lifetime but his favorite 

canvas was FIRST SNOW, ALMA, a panel painted while on a 1919 box-car trip, 

his first glimpse of Alma. 

His strongest work was created during the 1920s and 1930s, and his later work 

is noted for its depiction of light and use of strong curved strokes in his 

landscapes. 

6 / 18






Publication 


VANCOUVER ART GALLERY COLLECTION 



oil on canvas 

63.8 x 81.6 cm 

Vancouver Art Gallery, Founders Fund 

VGA 32.5 

We had come together because we felt that art in Canada was mild and 

ineffective and obsessed with traditions which in Europe had long been 

discarded. 

The Group of Seven—A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Franklin Carmichael, Fred 

Varley, Frank Johnston, J.E.H. MacDonald and Arthur Lismer—have profoundly 

shaped the history of art in this country. When they began exhibiting together in 

1920, their mission was to express what they saw as the reality of the Canadian 

landscape. Their perceptions were based on aspects of the northern Ontario 

countryside still largely untouched by humankind, places that seemed to define 

a nationalistic notion of "wilderness." 

For A.Y. Jackson, the discovery of the Canadian landscape was a somewhat 

circuitous journey. Born in Montreal in 1882, to a working class family, 

Jackson's first exposure to art was through employment in a commercial 

lithography plant. There, he made his way from sweeping floors to designing 

labels for a variety of products. His interest in design and drawing sparked, he 

began to paint in the countryside and eventually decided that he needed to 

study abroad. Jackson worked his way to Paris in 1907, enrolled in the 

Academe DE la Grand-Chummier, traveled through France and Italy, and was 

exposed to the style of the Post-Impressionists. He was particularly influenced 

by their use of bright colour, and by the experience of plain-air or outdoor 

painting. Returning to Canada in 1909, he resumed commercial art work, but 

more importantly began to paint the landscape in the townships east of 

Montreal. 

The exhibition of one these paintings in Toronto simulated the interest of Lawren 

Harris and his colleagues, who invited Jackson to come to that city to work with 

them. He arrived in Toronto in 1913, and met most of the men who were to 

become his fellows in the Group of Seven. He also worked closely with Tom 

Thomson, sketching with him in Algonquin Park, sharing a studio with him in 

Toronto, and exhibiting with him. 

Following the war, during which he served as both soldier and Official War Artist, 

Jackson returned to Toronto. With Harris, he took a number of sketching trips to 

the Alma region of Ontario, camping out in an old box car. These trips enabled 

Jackson to come to terms with his war experience and to reaffirm his 

commitment to the Canadian landscape as subject matter. 

The Vancouver Art Gallery has a number of sketches which give a clear idea of 

Jackson’s working methods and his choice of subject matter. Early Spring, 

Georgian Bay and The Freddy Channel, Georgian Bay,both done in March 

1920, depict aspects of nature which are, at first glance, inhospitable. Warts 

7 / 18





Lake, Alma, probably also from early in 1920, is a desolate landscape with burnt 

trees and a brown, uninhabited landscape. There is little alluring about these 

prospects ”no anecdotal detail, no human presence“ but the forms have a 

compelling strength and conviction. By choosing non-human subjects, Jackson 

emphatically stated his case for the value of the landscape. And by choosing 

images of destruction and decay, he worked through his devastating experience 

of war. 

A more positive mood is seen in the extensive series of Quebec landscapes 

Jackson produced throughout his career. Starting in the early 1920s, Jackson 

regularly visited what he called "Christmas card country." He sketched there in 

the late winter and early spring, just as the snow was beginning to melt and the 

temperature allowed him to work outdoors. Jackson's use of colour, such as his 

pink and blue snow, is strongly reminiscent of the French modernists. But more 

than a little nostalgia prevails in his images of small settlements and rolling hills: 

none of the power poles carries wires, and automobiles are rarely seen. 

Of all the members of the Group of Seven, Jackson was the most widely 

traveled. The 1920s saw him painting in British Columbia and the Arctic, as well 

as Ontario and Quebec, and the following decades saw him visiting Alberta, the 

Yukon and Northwest Territories and, again, his beloved Quebec. There are no 

radical changes in Jackson's later work, but rather a refining of detail and a 

continued interest in depicting distant regions of Canada. 

Jackson was a tireless promoter of Canadian art and the Canadian landscape 

and, by the time of his death in 1974, he had completed his mission. He had, 

with his colleagues, transformed our perception of Canada. 

Ian M. Thom 

Suggestions for Further Reading 

Jackson, A.Y. A Painter’s Country. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Ltd., 

1958 (and subsequent editions). 

Groves, Naomi Jackson. A.Y.’s Canada. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and 

Company Ltd., 1968 

Reid, Dennis. Alberta Rhythm: The Later Work of A.Y. Jackson. Toronto: Art 

Gallery of Ontario, 1982 

8 / 18





Vancouver Art Gallery: All-Canadian Exhibition 

Publication 

1932 

[transcription of excerpt] 

VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 

ALL CANADIAN EXHIBITION 

MAY TO JULY, 1932 

Price 15 Cents 


All-Canadian Exhibition 

May to July 1932 

Judging Committee 

Willie Dalton (Chairman) 

H.A. Stone 

H. Mortimer Lamb 

J.W.G MacDonald 

G.L. Thornton Sharp 

J. Vanderpant 

W.P. Weston 

FOREWARD 

In arranging the All-Canadian Exhibition, the aim of the Exhibition committee has 

been to gather from all parts of Canada a collection of pictures and sculpture 

that shall be representative of all that is best in Canadian Art, both past and 

present. Artists resident in British Columbia have contributed their quota and 

the Judging committee has endeavored to ensure that the work submitted shall 

have every opportunity for display side by side with works of art drawn from all 

parts of the Dominion. The Committee desires to express its sincere thanks to 

the Directors of the National Gallery of Canada, to Mr. E. Wyley Grier, President 

of the Royal Canadian Academy and to the other friends of the Gallery for their 

work in selecting pictures from Eastern Canada, and for the co-operation and 

advice so generously afforded. 

Before the Exhibition closes, it is anticipated that the Founders will select certain 

pictures as a nucleus of a Permanent Collection of Canadian Art. 

Willie Dalton 

Chairman 

61. The Road to St. Fidele A.Y. Jackson R.C.A. 

[11 in red ink] 

9 / 18





Souvenir Catalogue: Opening the New Vancouver Art Gallery, 1951. 

Publication 

1951-09-26 


SOUTH GALLERY 

CANADIAN PICTURES FROM OUR PERMANENT COLLECTION 

Soon after its foundation, the Vancouver Art Gallery was presented by the 

Founders with three Canadian paintings, by James W. Morrice, A. Y. Jackson, 

and H. Mabel May respectively. These three pictures are hanging in this 

exhibition and, as one may see, constituted an auspicious beginning for the 

building of a Canadian collection. 

The Morrice, "On the Beach, Dinard", is a small but fine example of this most 

sensitive and lyrical of Canadian painters who died in 1924. The A. Y. Jackson, 

"Road to St. Fidele" is typical of the full rhythmic style which distinguishes his 

position in the Group of Seven, the first concerted movement in Canadian 

painting history. A dramatic Arthur Lismer, "Pine Trees, Georgian Bay", a soberly 

splendid J. E. H. MacDonald, "Church by the Sea", a discerning and painterly 

portrait of H. Mortimer Lamb by F. H. Varley (all three the gift of Mr. Lamb), and 

a brilliant later Jackson, further represent work by the original 'Seven'. Lawren 

Harris, also a member of the Group, is represented in this selection by a very 

recent work. 

The influence of the Group was evidenced in the broad landscape style which 

dominated Canadian painting for some years, a good example of which is here 

shown in Mabel May's "Autumn in the Laurentians". (This spring the Gallery will 

hold an exhibition of the work of Miss May who now lives in Vancouver). The 

tradition of landscape, of course, has continued right up to the present in 

varying personal interpretations: David Milne, best known for his delicate 

imaginative watercolors, here shows a brilliantly executed oil; Edward Hughes, a 

Victoria painter, hangs a landscape of arresting intentness; James MacDonald, a 

young Vancouver painter, brings the landscape to the city in a richly painted 

canvas. 

Since the time of the Group of Seven, new elements, new trends, already 

manifest elsewhere, have been finding their expression in our painting. Some of 

them are reflected in this exhibition. There is the showy realism of W. A. Winter's 

"Midnight at Charlie's"; the melancholy of Jack Nichols' turpentine wash painting 

of children, the loneliness of Don Jarvis' "Old Man"; the element of expressionism 

present in Fritz Brandtner's semi-abstract landscape. There is too, the concern 

with form, to a greater or lesser degree stripped of its representational 

references: as in Molly Bobak, for its sensuous life; as in B.C. Binning for its own 

structural life; as in the Lawren Harris as a means to a metaphysical meaning. 

This selection of painting well demonstrates that this Gallery may be proud of its 

Canadian collection, and Canada of her painters. 

DORIS SHADBOLT 

Vancouver Art Gallery Docent 

10 / 18





Canadian Pictures, 1951 

Publication 

1982 


The Vancouver Art Gallery 

CANADIAN PICTURES, 1951 

December 4, 1982 - March 20, 1983 

This exhibition was first hung in September, 1951, for the opening of the 

expanded and renovated Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibition was meant to 

show the gallery's Canadian holdings. Needless to say, 31 years later, our 

Canadian collection is much richer than this small but strong beginning. In 

rehanging this exhibition as we prepare to leave this building—cramped and out 

of date now, but Canada's most modern gallery then—we have an opportunity to 

see what Canadian painting meant over thirty years ago. 

The works demonstrate currents in Canadian art history which were prevalent at 

the time. The Group of Seven are represented with their spiritual topographies of 

Canada's North. Social Realism, a movement in Canadian painting of the 30's 

and 40's which reacted to the lack of a human element in the Group of Seven's 

work, is represented by Bill Winter and Orville Fisher; the existential city by Don 

Jarvis, Jim MacDonald and Ghitta Caiserman, and the move to abstraction in the 

work of Lawren Harris, Fritz Brandtner and B.C. Binning. 

Painted before the influx of American ideas about painting, these works are all 

fairly small in scale. They are easel paintings, meant for private homes in an era, 

before Art Bank, The Canada Council and the growth of corporate collecting, 

when the sale of pictures to a private patron was still the major source of 

income (other than teaching) for artists in Canada. 

These works also deal with images and subject-matter and have a great deal of 

interest as documents. That is, they record personal views of the world the 

artists lived in and are kind of a window to the past. Although the styles 

exhibited here might seem rigid or stiff today, we should remember that many of 

these artists were emerging from training that was grounded in nineteenth 

century techniques that emphasized drawing over "painting". And works like 

these, where line and colour are used for their emotional impact, are very much 

in a tradition which, far from being dead, we see revived in the "new" painting of 

the 1980's. 

Scott Watson 

Curator 

[Pine, Georgian Bay in blue ink] 

11 / 18





Canadian Traditions 

Publication 

1985 


CANADIAN TRADITIONS 

From the Vancouver Art Gallery Collection 

The Vancouver Art Gallery has extensive holdings of Canadian art in its 

collection. This exhibition features a selection of those holdings to represent 

certain aspects of the Canadian tradition. 

The earliest works are portraits and landscapes by eastern Canadian painters 

who worked in European traditions. Paul Peel was a student of the academic 

Parisian artist, Jean-Leon Gérome. His highly polished surface and interest in 

domestic allegory are seen in his Reading the Future, 1883. Twentieth century 

figurative and portrait works include Frederick Varley's (1881-1969) Untitled 

Figure Study, 1939 and Randolph Stanley Hewton's (1888-1960) art deco 

portrait of Mrs Thomas Caverhill nee Robertson, 1925. Early landscapes include 

Cornelius Krieghoff's (1815-1872) Indian Encampment which is typical of the 

nineteenth century European idealization of Indian life. Krieghoff immigrated to 

Canada as a relatively young man in his early thirties and lived here most of his 

life. The influence of French Impressionism is seen in Quebec artist Marc Auréle 

de Foy Suzor-Coté's (1869-1937) Winter Street Scene, 1918, while Homer 

Watson's (1855-1936) The Load of Grass, c. 1898, harks back to the romantic 

tradition with its noble treatment of the pastoral landscape. Earthy colours and 

thick paint are used to express a rapport with rural nature. 

But the strength of this gallery's Canadian collection is in the modern period. 

Tom Thomson's (1887-1917) Nocturne, 1915, is a brilliant oil sketch which 

creates a sensation of pure colour—an abstract sensation meant to correspond 

with a feeling for landscape. Thomson's achievement, which was cut short by his 

premature death in 1917 at the age of thirty, was a major inspiration for Lawren 

Harris (1885-1970) and the Group of Seven. 

Harris believed that the imagery of the north was a national spiritual heritage 

and he endeavoured, in the 1920s, to render the bleak but sublime northern 

terrain in terms of a metaphysical geometry. By 1940, he had moved on from 

representational art to paint visionary abstract works which allied him to the 

Transcendentalists of the United States. He was an influence on, and an early 

supporter of, Emily Carr and spent the last 33 years of his life in Vancouver 

where he made an enormous contribution to the introduction of modernist ideas 

in this city. Eleven very fine Harris drawings, recently donated to the gallery by 

his daughter, Mrs James H. Knox, will be exhibited for the first time. 

Works by other members of the Group, including two recently acquired paintings 

by A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974) are also included in the exhibition. 

The gallery also owns a fine selection of the work of David Milne (1882-1953). 

Milne pursued nature in a very Canadian way. Like Tom Thomson before him or 

the painters of the Group of Seven, he spent months in isolated wilderness in 

search of his motif. Milne disliked the idealism of the Group and forged a unique 

and individual vision of nature. His delicate and sensual watercolours are among 

the highlights of Canadian art history. 

Works of social commentary are also displayed. They include Maxwell Bates' 

(1906-1980) caustic canvas Beautiful B.C., 1966. Almost twenty years old this 

work still has the power to offend and amuse. 

12 / 18





The experience of the Second World War is reflected in watercolours by Jack 

Shadbolt, a painting by Mary Ritter Hamilton and prints by Frederick Taylor. Also 

included are post-war works which demonstrate the strength of an expressionist 

tradition based on nature in Canadian painting. Works by Alistair Bell (b. 1913) 

and Jack Shabolt (b. 1909) depict nature not as ideal form but as growing and 

decaying substance and as a metaphor of the human condition in the modern 

world. 

Scott Watson 

Vancouver Collects 

Publication 

2001 


THE GROUP OF SEVEN: CANADA'S NATIONAL SCHOOL OF PAINTERS 

New material demands new methods and new methods fling a challenge to 

old conventions. It is as impossible to depict the autumn pageantry of our 

northern woods with a lead pencil as it is to bind our young art with the 

conventions and methods of other climates and other ages. 

(Foreword to the catalogue of the 1922 Group of Seven exhibition, written by 

the artists) 

Established in 1920, the Group of Seven emerged from Toronto as a collective 

of self-proclaimed modern artists. The Group was initially drawn together by a 

common frustration with the conservative nature of most Canadian art of the 

time. The work in contention held up antiquated colonial traditions and a 

constraining imitative style that the Group chose to reject for new visual 

material, subject and methods. That new material and subject matter was found 

primarily in the Canadian wilderness: the Group sought to depict a raw Canada 

with a modern method and style that reflected the country's adolescent potential 

in the face of past tradition. 

The work of the Group of Seven has become for many Canadians synonymous 

with Canadian art, even for those who cannot identify all of the members of the 

Group. Although the Group of Seven was initially a movement concentrated in 

central Canada, their influence and importance was felt across the country. 

Indeed, of the ten members of the Group, seven visited or lived in British 

Columbia at one time or another to make their art. 

The first Group of Seven exhibition seen in BC was in 1922 and their work was 

also included in exhibitions in 1924, long before an art gallery was a permanent 

presence in the community. However, it was not until Varley arrived in Vancouver 

in 1926 that the influence of the Group was directly felt in the work of this 

region. Varley's approach to landscape painting, going out into the landscape to 

paint directly from his subject matter, encouraged others to follow his example. 

13 / 18





The other member of the Group of Seven who had a major influence on the art 

and artists of this region was Lawren Harris. His influence can be seen first 

through his friendship with and support of Emily Carr, by which he directly 

altered the course of landscape painting. Secondly, when he lived in Vancouver 

and his own work had become abstract, he encouraged artists to approach 

abstraction. 

The artists in the Group were held together by their stylistic and nationalistic 

ideology, presenting themselves as Canada's national school of painters. As a 

collective, they sought to affirm a contemporary nationalism through their 

depiction of a vast and rugged country. Stylistically, the artists in the Group were 

indebted to Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, recognizing their antecedents 

while they sought to modify their notions of "significant form" and colour analysis 

toward a bold method of pictorial expression. These formal modernist elements 

included a thick paint surface, pure and brilliant colour and an incorporation of 

design into a raw treatment of an unidealized landscape—especially when 

compared to nineteenth-century English and French landscape painting that 

carried over into the early cultural identity of Canada. 

Compared to modernist painting elsewhere at the time, the Group's work can 

appear conservative. However, within a Canadian context the artists forged a 

new visual language that attempted to break free of traditional cultural ties. The 

Group's manner of painting was seen by many of their contemporaries as crude 

or rough, mimicking the raw form and palette of the wilderness. Using the 

untamed Canadian landscape as fuel for their artistic and nationalistic goals, the 

Group put forth a new perception of beauty, one that spoke of a new world, its 

possibility and its freedom. 

The seven founding members of the Group included Franklin Carmichael, Lawren 

Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and F.H. 

Varley. This initial artistic coalition was formed in Toronto between 1911 and 

1913. All, including the independently wealthy Harris, worked as commercial 

artists at some point in their careers. Tom Thomson, another commercial artist, 

was included in the pre-Group circle, but his premature death in 1917 

precluded his official membership in the Group. An avid outdoorsman, Thomson 

was significant to the Group in that he sparked an interest in painting the 

northern Ontario landscape, particularly in and around Algonquin Park. 

The rough wilderness of the landscape, its raw, dramatic austerity, coupled with 

breathtaking colour and light, spoke far more directly of Canada for these artists 

than anything to be found in the cities or settled areas. For them, the north, a 

constant motif in earlier discussions of Canadian identity, found its first 

expression in the rocks, burnt land, trees, colour and light of Algonquin Park. 

The fresh, "uncivilized" landscape of northern Canada became, for the Group and 

their proponents, synonymous with the promise of a young country. 

In order to increase awareness of the importance of art for the development of 

Canada as a nation, the Group circulated their paintings across Canada during 

the 1920s (showing especially in western Canada, such as at the Vancouver 

Exhibition in 1927 followed by exhibitions at the New Westminster Provincial 

Exhibition, in Edmonton and Calgary). The populist intent of their project is 

reflected in the words of Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery of 

Canada at the time, who said, "a great country needs a great art." During this 

time the Group also wrote numerous nationalistic articles about art and their 

country, illustrated Canadian books, decorated public buildings, wrote poetry and 

designed stage sets. 

In the mid-1920s the Group underwent a change in members. In 1926 

Johnston left the Group and A.J. Casson filled his spot until the Group disbanded 

14 / 18





in 1933. Four years later, in 1930, the Group widened its scope by including 

Edwin Holgate from Montreal, and in 1932 L.L. FitzGerald from Winnipeg joined 

the Group to further the representation of other provinces. 

The mythology built up around the Canadian wilderness by the members of the 

Group ran parallel with developments in literature, poetry and politics that 

sought to identify Canada with the North and a nationalism based on the land. 

The identification with the land has been one reason, amongst others, for their 

continued popularity and success. 

The first Canadian work of art purchased by the Vancouver Art Gallery was a 

landscape by A.Y. Jackson in 1932, and later Harris gave several works by 

himself and other members to the Gallery. The Group of Seven has an 

important, if modest, presence in the Vancouver Art Gallery's permanent 

collection and is significantly present in several private collections in the 

community. This selection of work supplements the holdings of the Gallery with 

a group of excellent canvases drawn from Vancouver collections and gives an 

opportunity for the public to see works that were predominantly collected in the 

east. 

Melanie O'Brian and Ian Thom 

Further Reading 

A. Y. Jackson: Paintings, 1902-1953. Toronto, A.G. Ont., 1953. 

Firestone, O. J. The Other A. Y. Jackson. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 

1979. 

Groves, Naomi Jackson. One Summer in Quebec: A.Y. Jackson in 1925: A 

Family View. Ontario: Penumbra Press, 1988. 

Groves, Naomi. Jackson. A. Y.'s Canada. Toronto and Vancouver, 1968. 

Groves, Naomi Jackson. Works by A.Y. Jackson from the 1930s. Ottawa: 

Carleton University Press, 1990. 

Jackson, A.Y. A Painter's Country: The Autobiography of A. Y. Jackson. Toronto 

and Vancouver: Clarke Irwin, 1958. 

Larsen, Wayne. A.Y. Jackson: A Love for the Land. Montreal: XYZ Publishers, 

2003. 

Lismer, A. A. Y. Jackson: Thirty Years of Painting. Montreal: Dominion Gallery., 

1946. 

Reid, Dennis. Alberta Rhythm: The Later Work of A.Y. Jackson. Toronto: Art 

Gallery of Ontario, 1982. 

15 / 18





Exhibition History 

Exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery 

All Canadian Exhibition. May - July 1932. 

Opening the New Vancouver Art Gallery, 1951. September 26 - October 14, 

1951. 

Canadian Pictures, 1951. December 4, 1982 - March 20, 1983. 

Canadian Traditions. June 29, 1985 - October 6, 1985. 

Vancouver Collects: The Group of Seven. October 20, 2001 - January 20, 

2002. 

75 Years of Collecting: British Masters, Group of Seven and Pop Icons. 

February 4, 2006 - May 14, 2006. 

Selected Exhibitions outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery 

Victoria Art Gallery, Victoria. March 1953. 

University of British Columbia Fine Art Gallery, Vancouver. September 1953. 

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. 1959. 

Kelowna Centennial Museum, Kelowna. As We See It: An Exhibition of Canadian 

Art. 1981. 

Archival History 

Council Memo 

Acquisition Record 

1932-09-13 


September 16th, 1932. 

Memo to Council 

The following works of Art chosen by the Purchase and Acceptance Committee, 

from the All Canadian Exhibition have been purchased by the Founders' 

Committee and presented to the Art Gallery Association. 

Paintings: 

The Grey Veil, Archibald Barnes, R.I.R.P.R. 

The Road to St. Fidele, A.Y. Jackson, R.C.A. 

On the Beach, J.W. Morrice, R.C.A. 

Autumn in the Laurentians, Mabel May, A.R.C.A. 

Sculpture: 

The Queen of Sheba, Claud W. Gray, A.R.C.A. 

The Wounded Soldier, Charles Marega 

Man Tin (Pure) Elizabeth Wyn Wood 

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Artist Correspondence 

Correspondence 

1932-09-25 


August 25th 

Dear Mr. Grigsby 

I am in receipt of your cheque for $235.00 in payment for my canvas "The Road 

to St. Fidele." I appreciate the honor of being represented in the Vancouver Art 

Gallery. Will you please extend my thanks to your Founders Committee. 

Yours Sincerely, 


Council Minutes 

Acquisition Record 

1933-05-08 

[transcription of excerpt] 

Minutes from Acquisitions Committee Meetings: 

Report of Purchase and Acceptance committee 

Annual Meeting of the Vancouver Art Gallery Association 

Monday May 8 1933 

From the All-Canadian Exhibition held last Spring the Founders purchased 4 

pictures and 3 pieces of sculpture. 

Eight purchases have also been made by the Founders from the recent 

Exhibition of British prints—These purchases are not yet on view. 

On the recommendation of its representatives in Eastern Canada the Founders 

have also purchased one oil painting by Rober Gagen. 

Following is a full list of all works acquired by the Gallery during the year. 

Purchases 

Title: Road to St. Fidele 

Artist: A.Y. Jackson. R.C.A. 

PURCHASED BY FOUNDERS 

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Condition Report 

Conservation 

1997-02-03 


CONDITION REPORT 

ARTIST: A.Y. Jackson 

TITLE: The Road to St. Fidele 

ACC. NO.: VAG 32.5 

DIMENSIONS: 83.9 x 81.2 

DATE: 1931 

MARKS: Signed AY Jackson in red paint in BR corner 

AUXILIARY SUPPORT: Wooden stretcher. Mitered corners. 7 keys, 1 key 

missing. Face of stretcher is beveled. Good condition. On reverse of stretcher 

bar, written in pencil is the following: A.Y Jackson The Road to St. Fidele 

SUPPORT: Medium weight cotton canvas. Canvas is dry and brittle. Tear in 

canvas along reverse tacking margin T edge. Thread count 12 horizontal/cm x 

13 vertical/cm. Plain weave, 1 over, 1 under. Warp and weft threads are 

different color browns. Tension good. No out of plane deformations. 

Reverse: Canvas stamp. Ink blurred-letters, illegible. 

GROUND: Commercially applied. Overall white colored. Good condition. 

PAINT LAYERS: Oil. Paint thickly applied. Some slight impasto. Drying cracks 

visible throughout work, especially where paint is layered. Paint appears to be 

dry and lean. 

SURFACE: Unvarnished, clean. 

Report by: Monica Smith 

Date: February 3, 1997. 

Terms and Conditions 

The images, texts, documentation, illustrations, designs, icons and all other 

content are protected by Canadian and international copyright laws. The content 

may be covered by other restrictions as well, including copyright and other 

proprietary rights held by third parties. The Vancouver Art Gallery retains all 

rights, including copyright, in data, images, text and any other information. The 

Gallery expressly forbids the copying of any protected content, except for 

purposes of fair dealing, as defined by Canadian copyright law. 

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A. Y. Jackson - 75 Years of Collecting - Vancouver Art Gallery

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