Canadian Landscapes by the Group of Seven, Tom Thomson, and Emily Carr

Tom Thomson painted this pine from a sketch made in Algonquin Park. Look at the dark trunk beside the bands of light over the far shore. It gives you one line to follow through a scene that otherwise seems to spread sideways. The painting is in the National Gallery of Canada.

Look at the marks Jackson uses to separate the snowy surfaces from the darker shapes around them. This small 1914 oil from Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park asks for a closer view than Thomson’s large canvas. Find it in the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

This small 1918 panel gives you one of Johnston’s autumn views of Algoma. Look at the ridged yellow paint in the trees, then at the flatter dabs of blue on the water. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, bring your eyes close enough to see how much the change in brushwork does.

MacDonald painted this waterfall on the Montreal River in Ontario. Look for where the white water interrupts the darker shapes around it. The force of the falls comes through the change in direction and color as much as through the size of the canvas. It is at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

A dark wooded hill in Algoma fills most of Lismer’s canvas. Trace the quiet band of water across the bottom of the hill and then look up at the rough outlines of the trees and clouds. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, compare it with MacDonald’s Montreal River to see the two ways the artists handled water in the same region.

In Carmichael’s view of Grace Lake in Ontario’s La Cloche region, sheets of water break up the mass of rock. Pick a bright ridge and follow its edge until it disappears behind another one. The National Gallery of Canada painting gives you a series of slopes to read at several distances.

Start with the mass of the peak. Harris lets large light and shadow shapes do much of the work, so the rock feels steep without needing every crack drawn in. Mount Lefroy is in the Canadian Rockies. The McMichael Canadian Art Collection holds this large 1930 canvas.

In this view of Garibaldi Park in British Columbia, the dead trunk comes right up to the edge of the small panel. Look along its bare branches before shifting your attention back to the mountains. Varley paints the tree close enough to interrupt a view that otherwise reaches a long way. Look for it in the McMichael collection.

Holgate takes you into a snow-covered village in Quebec’s Laurentians. The white roofs and the snow on the ground can almost read as one shape. Follow the green house and bright red sleigh to find your bearings. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec holds the original.

FitzGerald chose a neighbor’s house and the snowy yard around it in Winnipeg. The dark trees cut across patches of white and across the straight edges of the buildings. Look at it after an Ontario lake view to see how a familiar residential scene can give a painter just as many ways to organize space. It is in the National Gallery of Canada.

Casson gives a single pine enough room to hold a broad view together. Look from the spreading branches out to the quieter shapes beyond them. This later painting shows how a Group member kept working with the tree as a starting point after the group disbanded. It is in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

At the Vancouver Art Gallery, find Carr’s painting of a carved Haida raven recalling the one she recorded at Cumshewa on Haida Gwaii. The carving now takes up much of the view. Look at its silhouette against the light sky and at the green shapes that curl around the foot of the pole.