Group of Seven-Moment in time

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Robert Richardson

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MOMENT IN TIME

NW-MIT-GROUP7-0503
Six of the Group of Seven artists, plus their friend Barker Fairley, sitting around table at the Arts and Letter Club in Toronto in 1920. From clockwise around the table, starting at the left: Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Barker Fairley, Frank Johnston [Francis Hans Johnston, known as Franz or Frank], Arthur Lismer, and J. E. H. MacDonald. Photo by Arthur Goss. Originally published August 27, 1960, Globe Magazine, page 42. 
For more than 100 years, photographers have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we are looking at the Group of Seven, whose inaugural exhibition was 100 years ago.
This 100-year-old photograph shows six members of the Group of Seven at the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto around the time the group formed in 1920. From left, they are: Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson (in the foreground with arms on the table), Lawren Harris, Barker Fairley (a painter who was not a member), Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald. Franklin Carmichael, the youngest of the original seven, is not present. The picture was taken by the city photographer Arthur Gross, better known for documenting poverty in Toronto.
The Arts & Letters Club, which still exists, was a gathering place for the artists where they could share their frustrations over the conservative environment of the day. Alone, the artists were often relegated to back corners in exhibitions of academic art and subject to reactionary reviews. Together, as a school dedicated to painting northern landscapes in styles inspired by Post-Impressionist European art, they proved successful at convincing Canadians their art was a dynamic national expression.
Johnston dropped out and was replaced by A.J. Casson in 1926, but the association lasted until MacDonald’s death in 1932, after which the artists formed the larger Canadian Group of Painters.

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