Formation | 1886 |
---|---|
Founder | J.D. Kelly, W.W. Alexander, Charles Macdonald Manly, and Alfred H. Howard |
Type | Arts association |
Legal status | Charity |
Purpose | mutual study from life, for picture composition classes and for outdoor sketching |
Headquarters | Toronto, Ont., Canada |
Region | Canada |
Official language | English, French |
The Toronto Art Students' League (TASL) or the Toronto Art League as it was called from 1899 on was an association of artists that existed from 1886 to 1904 and advocated drawing from the antique, and drawing and painting from life as a key to making art. [1] It was a way of circulating recent art developments such as the Arts & Crafts movement and Art Nouveau as well as serving as a training ground and as a way of providing encouragement and fellowship for younger artists. [2] It met about once a week to produce drawings from life and its operative mottos were the disciplinary "Nulla Dies Sine Linea" and "Non Clamor Sed Amor". [3] [4]
The League followed examples such as the New York Art Students’ League ([NYASL), founded in 1875, and the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia, which was established in 1886 (Toronto Leaguers followed its founding closely). [4] Its formation was largely as a consequence of the inactivity of the Toronto School of Art. The League founders were J.D. Kelly, W.W. Alexander, Charles Macdonald Manly and Alfred H. Howard. William Daniel Blatchly was elected the first president of the League, [5] and Howard the first secretary. [6] It included in its membership printmakers such as John Wesley Cotton and Blatchly, as well as artist/illustrators John D. Kelly, C. W. Jefferys and Fred Brigden among others. [4]
Women were admitted to membership in the League in 1890. [4] Members contributed to the League Calendars (1893-1904) [7] [8] which covered virtually all phases of Canadian life in its illustrations and are today considered a milestone in the history of graphic art in Canada. [9] The Toronto Art League Calendars were given their own show by the National Gallery of Canada in 2008 with sample pages from each calendar together with original drawings, curated by Charles C. Hill. [10]
Members of the League were also included in the League exhibitions, begun in 1899. [4] [11] Sketching trips were taken by League members as far away as the Niagara Peninsula, Muskoka, Quebec City, and the Richelieu River Valley. A feeling for Canadian art "was transmitted through the teaching of some of its members, such as Robert Holmes, Manly and J.E.H. MacDonald at the Central Ontario Art School (later the Ontario College of Art and Design), and in their work and that of others... as an influence on the students who succeeded us", said Jefferys who credits the League with being the origin of the Canadian Landscape School and thus, ultimately of the Group of Seven. [4]
By 1899 the active function of the League was largely absorbed by its offshoot, the Mahlstick Club, and the founding in 1903 of the Graphic Arts Club (GAC), with Jefferys acting as first president. The GAC became the Canadian Society of Graphic Art in 1924, and evolved into the establishment of the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1916. [4]
Work by many of the League members can be found in '"The Ontario Collection" in the catalogue of its collection by Fern Bayer (FitzHenry and Whiteside, 1984) [12] or online in the Ontario Government art collection. [13] An extensive group of C. M. Manley drawings is in the collection of the Ontario College of Art and Design. [14]
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.
Thomas John Thomson was a Canadian artist active in the early 20th century. During his short career, he produced roughly 400 oil sketches on small wood panels and approximately 50 larger works on canvas. His works consist almost entirely of landscapes, depicting trees, skies, lakes, and rivers. He used broad brush strokes and a liberal application of paint to capture the beauty and colour of the Ontario landscape. Thomson's accidental death by drowning at 39 shortly before the founding of the Group of Seven is seen as a tragedy for Canadian art.
Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD U, is a public art university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its main campus is located within Toronto's Grange Park and Entertainment District neighbourhoods.
Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as one of the founding members of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art, as a visionary in Canadian landscape art and in the development of modern art in Canada.
Sir Byron Edmund Walker, CVO was a Canadian banker. He was the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce from 1907 to 1924, and a generous patron of the arts, helping to found and nurture many of Canada's cultural and educational institutions, including the University of Toronto, National Gallery of Canada, the Champlain Society, Appleby College, Art Gallery of Ontario and Royal Ontario Museum.
George Agnew Reid who signed his name as G. A. Reid was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator. He is best known as a genre painter, but his work encompassed the mural, and genre, figure, historical, portrait and landscape subjects.
Charles William Jefferys who signed his name C. W. Jefferys was an English-born Canadian artist, author and teacher best known for his historical illustrations.
Elizabeth Winnifred Wood, known as Elizabeth Wyn Wood, was a Canadian sculptor and advocate of art education. A notable figure in Canadian sculpture, she is primarily known for her modernist interpretation of the Canadian landscape in her works.
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.
Kathleen Jean Munn is recognized today as a pioneer of modern art in Canada, though she remained on the periphery of the Canadian art scene during her lifetime. She imagined conventional subjects in a radically new visual vocabulary as she combined the traditions of European art with modern art studies in New York. She stopped painting about 1939 and when she died in 1974 at age 87, she was unaware that her long-held hope for "a possible future for my work" was about to become reality.
Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University, is a public research university located in Toronto, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, although it also operates facilities elsewhere in Toronto. The university includes seven academic divisions/faculties: the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Community Services, the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, the Faculty of Science, the Creative School, the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, and the Ted Rogers School of Management. Many of these are further organized into smaller departments and schools. The university also provides continuing education services through the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education.
Caroline Farncomb was a Canadian painter. She lived in London, Ontario where she was secretary of the Women's Art Association and donated work to start an art gallery, today the Museum London.
Spring Ice is a 1915–16 oil painting by Canadian painter Tom Thomson. The work was inspired by a sketch completed on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. The completed canvas is large, measuring 72.0 cm × 102.3 cm. Painted over the winter of 1915–16, it was completed in Thomson's shack behind the Studio Building in Toronto. The painting was produced as he was in the peak of his short art career and is considered one of his most notable works. While exhibited in a show put on by the Ontario Society of Artists, the work received mixed to positive reviews. In 1916 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and has remained in the collection ever since.
Georgiana Uhlyarik-Nicolae, also known as Georgiana Uhlyarik is a Romanian-born Canadian art curator, art historian, and teacher. She is currently the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). She has been part of the team or led teams that created numerous exhibitions, on subjects such as Betty Goodwin, Michael Snow, and Kathleen Munn among others and collaborated with art organizations such as the Tate Modern, and the Jewish Museum, New York.
Frederick Sproston Challener (1869–1959), who signed his name as F.S. Challener, was a Canadian painter of murals as well as an easel painter of oils and watercolours and a draftsman in black-and-white and pastel. He also did illustrations for books and commercial art. He "easily ranks with the first few mural decorators in Canada", wrote Newton MacTavish, author of The Fine Arts in Canada
Robert Burley is a Canadian photographer of architecture and the urban landscape. He is based in Toronto, Canada, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Robert Holmes, was a Canadian naturalist painter and artist-illustraor.
Walter R. Duff is a Canadian graphic artist and painter who worked in oil and watercolour. His subjects include portraits, buildings, still life and landscapes.
Charles Macdonald Manly who signed his name C. M. Manly was a lithographer, painter, sketcher and educator in the early days of Canadian art.
William Daniel Blatchly who signed his name as W. D. Blatchly (1835–1903) was a British lithographer, painter and illustrator.