The Beaver Hall Group refers to a Montreal-based group of Canadian painters who met in the late 1910s while studying art at a school run by the Art Association of Montreal. The Group is notable for its equal inclusion of men and women artists, as well as for its embrace of Jazz Age modernism. They painted a variety of subjects, including portraits, landscapes, urban scenes and still lifes, in a mix of Modernist and traditional styles.
James Wilson Morrice was one of the first Canadian landscape painters to be known internationally. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, France, where he lived for most of his career. James Morrice Street in New Bordeaux, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Montreal is named in his memory.
Prudence Heward was a Canadian figure painter, known for using acidic colour, a sculptural treatment, and giving an intense brooding quality to her subjects. She was a charter member of the Canadian Group of Painters, the Contemporary Arts Society and the Federation of Canadian Artists. Although she did not show her work with the Beaver Hall Group, she was allied with many of its artists in her aesthetic aims and through friendships.
Edwin Headley Holgate, was a Canadian artist, painter, muralist, and wood-cut artist. Holgate played a major role in Montreal's art community, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where he both studied and taught. He was known primarily as a portraitist and for his treatment of the female nude in an outdoor setting in a series of paintings and prints during the 1930s.
The Canadian Group of Painters (CGP) was a collective of 28 painters from across Canada who came together as a group in 1933.
Painters Eleven was a group of abstract artists active in Canada between 1953 and 1960. They are associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Eric Goldberg (1890–1969) was a Jewish-Canadian painter, born in 1890 in Berlin, Germany. Goldberg was influenced by the art of Pierre-Auguste Renoir at an early age. He studied at Pari, France's École des Beaux-Arts (1906–10) and Académie Julian under Tony Robert-Fleury, Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Paul Laurens, and taught at the Prussian Academy of Arts and, later, the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, Jerusalem. He began working in Montreal in 1928, and soon after began favouring the landscapes of Quebec's Gaspésie region as subjects. In 1939, Goldberg became a founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society, a group of Canadian artists intent on sensitizing the public to modern art.
William Brymner, was a Canadian figure and landscape painter and educator. In addition to playing a key role in the development of Impressionism in Canada, Brymner taught numerous artists who became leading figures in Canadian modern art.
Clarence Alphonse Gagnon, LL. D. was a French Canadian painter, draughtsman, engraver and illustrator. He is known for his landscape paintings of the Laurentians and the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec.
Lilias Torrance Newton LL. D. was a Canadian painter and a member of the Beaver Hall Group. She was one of the more important portrait artists in Canada in the twentieth century.
Henrietta Mabel May was a Canadian artist in the early 20th century. She helped organize two significant groups of Canadian artists and extended collegiality to women within those groups.
Randolph Stanley Hewton was a Canadian artist, known for his figurative work and as a colorist.
Mabel Irene Lockerby was a Canadian artist.
Ethel Seath was a Canadian artist. Seath was a prominent figure on the Montreal art scene for sixty years and her artistic work included being a painter, printmaker (etching), commercial artist, and art instructor at the all-girls private school, The Study, in Montreal. Seath’s oil and watercolour paintings were primarily still life and landscape, exploring colour and adding abstract elements to everyday scenes.
Nora Frances Elizabeth Collyer was a Canadian modernist painter who was inspired by the Canadian landscape, nature, and urban communities. Both an artist and a teacher, she received her formal art training at the Art Association of Montreal (AAM), where she studied under Alberta Cleland, William Brymner, and Maurice Cullen. Nora Collyer was the youngest of the ten women artists who today are commonly referred to as the Beaver Hall Group. Aside from being an artist and a teacher, she was also a volunteer for the Children's Memorial Hospital of Montreal. Collyer's work was exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, England, in 1924 and 1925, as well as at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Emily Coonan was a Canadian impressionist and post-impressionist painter, born in the Pointe-Saint-Charles area of Montreal. As a member of the Beaver Hall Group, Coonan mostly did figure paintings. Influenced by William Brymner and James Wilson Morrice in early years and later on by work done in Europe, Coonan’s work has features that are related both to impressionism and modernism.
John Young Johnstone was a Canadian Impressionist painter, known for his paintings of life in city, town or countryside, as well as for scenes of Montreal's Chinatown.
J. Archibald Browne was known for the poetic evocation of nature in his paintings. Some called him the Poet Painter of Canada. He was a founding member of the Canadian Art Club (1907) and its secretary.
Adrien Hébert was a painter who has been called the first interpreter of Quebec modernity. He was inspired by the port of Montreal and the city itself.
