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The Canadian Group of Painters (CGP) was a collective of 28 painters from across Canada who came together as a group in 1933. Its Archives is in Queen's University, Kingston. [1]
The Canadian Group of Painters succeeded the disbanded Group of Seven, whose modernist paintings of the Canadian north land had been a strong influence on Canadian art. [2] In the early 1930s, the Group of Seven's prominence had caused controversy as many believed that the National Gallery of Canada exhibited favouritism for their work [3] and they were the only Canadian artists to receive global recognition. Concern over the Gallery's potential bias and exclusion of modern artists led to the formation of the Canadian Group of Painters in February 1933.
The group was made up of 28 different English-speaking painters from across Canada with Lawren Harris as their inaugural president. [4] Several of the other Group of Seven painters were also included in the new group including A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, F.H. Varley and Franklin Carmichael.
Although the group never created a manifesto, they lived and worked with two objectives: to foster closer cooperation between Canadian artists and to encourage and cultivate Canadian artistic expression. [4]
Their first exhibition of "nationalist art" was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey in November 1933. They showcased 57 works at the Heinz Art Salon, which proved to be a great international venue to showcase their brand. However, the pieces that gained the most recognition and press were still the Group of Seven works. The first CGP exhibition in Canada was held in November 1933. The exhibit was less restrictive in style and featured a wider range of works that fell outside of the Canadian landscape style.
Their next exhibition was not held until January 1936 at the Art Gallery of Toronto. The significant delay was caused by a variety of scandals between group members, including an affair between Lawren Harris and Bess Larkin Housser, fellow artist and the wife of CGP's secretary, Fred Housser. Harris stepped down as president and A. Y. Jackson took the lead with vice presidents Arthur Lismer and Prudence Heward in 1936. The group held a number of exhibitions under their new leadership and were making strides towards a unified style.
The Eastern Group of Painters was formed in Montreal, Quebec in 1938 to counteract the influence of the Canadian Group of Painters.
As active painters and as a group they continued to produce and influence Canadian art for many years. The Canadian Group of Painters organized exhibitions of the works of the Beaver Hall Group. Walter Yarwood, who was a member of the Canadian Group of Painters, was also a founding member of Painters Eleven.
A Vital Force: The Canadian Group of Painters (CGP) (2013), which was curated by Alicia Boutilier for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, was the first major touring exhibition to focus exclusively on the CGP in an exhibition of major paintings from public and private collections across Canada. [5] The Canadian Group of Painters Up Close is a film of a talk given during 2013 which focuses on four painters in the show. [6]
The Group of Seven, once known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, with "a like vision". It originally consisted of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.
Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as a leading member of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art and as a visionary in Canadian landscape art.
James Edward Hervey MacDonald (1873–1932) was an English-Canadian artist, best known as a member of the Group of Seven who asserted a distinct national identity combined with a common heritage stemming from early modernism in Europe in the early twentieth century. He was the father of the illustrator, graphic artist and designer Thoreau MacDonald.
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre is located in Kingston, Ontario, on the campus of Queen's University. The gallery has received a number of awards for its exhibitions from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and others.
Isabel McLaughlin, was a Modernist Canadian painter, patron and philanthropist. She specialized in landscapes and still life and had a strong interest in design.
Yvonne McKague Housser, (1897–1996) was a Modernist Canadian painter, and a teacher.
Bobs Cogill Haworth (1900–1988) was a South African-born Canadian painter and potter. She practiced mainly in Toronto, living and working with her husband, painter and teacher Peter Haworth. She was a member of the Canadian Group of Painters with Yvonne McKague Housser, Isabel McLaughlin and members of the Group of Seven.
Mary Augusta Hiester Reid was an American-born Canadian painter and teacher. She was best known as a painter of floral still lifes, some of them called "devastatingly expressive" by a contemporary author, and by 1890 she was thought to be the most important flower painter in Canada. She also painted domesticated landscapes, night scenes, and, less frequently, studio interiors and figure studies. Her work as a painter is related in a broad sense to Tonalism and Aestheticism or "art for art's sake".
Rody Kenny Courtice was a modernist Canadian painter. She was associated with the Group of Seven early in her career, but later developed a more individual style. She was active in associations of artists and worked for the professionalization of their occupation. She also was an educator.
André Charles Biéler was a Swiss-born Canadian painter and teacher. His work was modernist, at first with strong emphasis on line, later with more interest in light and colour. He is known for his genre pictures of life in rural Quebec. He was the first president of the Federation of Canadian Artists (1942–1944), and was instrumental in the foundation of the Canada Council and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario.
Milly Ristvedt, also known as Milly Ristvedt-Handerek, is a Canadian abstract painter. Ristvedt lives and paints in Ontario, where she is represented by the Oeno Gallery. A monograph covering a ten-year retrospective of her work, Milly Ristvedt-Handerek: Paintings of a Decade, was published by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 1979. In 2017, a second monograph was published by Oeno Gallery which included a survey of paintings from 1964 through to 2016, Milly Ristvedt, Colour and Meaning : an incomplete palette.
Gordon Rayner was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter. His way of creating art was idiosyncratic and characterized by constant innovation and often by transformation of his medium. Later, he integrated realism into his practice.
Richard Gorman was a Canadian painter and printmaker. He was known for his magnetic prints which he created using ink covered ball-bearings manipulated with a magnet held behind the drawing board and for his large abstract paintings in which he broadly handled paint.
Lowrie Warrener was a Canadian painter who was a pioneer of modernism, along with Kathleen Munn and Bertram Brooker.
Daniel Solomon is an abstract painter who uses intense, vibrant colour in his work, combined with complex, pictorial space, inspired by artists such as Jack Bush and is a painter and professor in Drawing and Painting at OCAD University.
Brent Roe is an artist who uses words and sentence fragments in his paintings to challenge aesthetic and philosophical ideas.
Lynn Donoghue was a painter, known for her portraits.
Gordon Webber was a multimedia pioneer of modernism in Canada. He was also an educator.
Ann Clarke is a Canadian artist, who creates vibrant gestural abstract paintings and drawings which reveal her formal interests as well as a fascination with twenty-first century technologies. She is also an educator.
Alicia Boutilier has been the Curator of Canadian Historical Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre since 2008 and in addition, was appointed Chief Curator in 2017. In 2020, she served as the Interim Director at the gallery and received a special recognition award from Queen's University at Kingston for her work as a team leader, adapting to the new realities caused by Covid. She is a Canadian art historian with wide-ranging concerns, among them women artists, the building of collections, and the combination of art with craft.
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