Bohemia Village Voice

By Julian Beecroft, Aug 2011

Tom Thomson, The Jack Pine, 1916-1917, Oil on canvas, 127.9 x 139.8 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Photo © NGC

IF YOU’RE KEEN to discover new art, then you might be interested in an exhibition of virtually unknown Canadian painting that’s coming to Dulwich Picture Gallery in southeast London in the autumn. The Group of Seven, along with their friend and trailblazer Tom Thomson, were a bunch of Canadian landscape painters from the first half of the 20th century who made a massive impact on art in Canada but are still hardly known outside the country. Most people in the UK have never heard of them, including many among the art establishment. But that may be about to change, and I’ll be doing my bit by writing an ongoing blog for the exhibition while travelling across Canada in the late summer/early autumn.
My dad was Canadian, but although I had a vague awareness of the Group and Thomson, nothing had prepared me for the revelation of seeing their paintings and sketches at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection during a visit to extended family in Toronto a few years ago. I simply couldn’t believe that work this good was not ranked with the best art from that golden period of early modernism. On a personal level, for the first time I understood the rugged beauty of a country whose endless spaces I had previously been unable to comprehend.
Then about a year ago I hit upon the madcap idea of travelling across Canada, from east coast to west, in search of all the different places where the Group and Thomson did their work. By sheer coincidence, at about the same time I learned of the Dulwich exhibition, which incidentally is the first exclusively devoted to the Group and Thomson’s art that’s ever been seen in the UK. As the gallery’s curator says in the official press release, ‘Prepare to be dazzled.’
And the connection with Hastings? Well, in keeping with this town’s uncanny habit of taking a walk-on part in key historical episodes from this period, there are a couple. Like many Canadians, Group member A.Y. Jackson fought on the Western Front in the First World War. Badly wounded in June 1916, he came to England for convalescence, the last part of which, according to his autobiography, was to be attached for ‘three months’ light duty to the Army Post Office in Hastings’. He even describes his weekly visits to the ‘local cinema’ (perhaps the one in Silverhill?) and the ‘memorable occasion’ when a circus ‘mostly made up of little side shows’ arrived in the town. Local historians might even be able to identify the circus to which he’s referring.
The second connection concerns Tom Thomson, the painter of The Jack Pine. Probably the most iconic painting in all of Canadian art, it is one the Dulwich exhibition is privileged to be allowed to show.
Thomson died in 1917 at the age of only 39 in a canoeing accident that has never been properly explained. In the previous three years his powers of expression had grown by quantum leaps with every passing season and his best work has that combination of vigour and sensitivity given only to the greatest artists. In 1912, however, he had yet to do anything of note and was still a jobbing commercial designer with vague dreams of being a painter. That summer he took a long canoe trip with a friend through the impenetrable hinterland of Northern Ontario. At one point the pair ended up at a place called Biscotasing, which even today is only accessible by floatplane. Who should he meet there but Hastings’s own Archie Belaney, later to be known as Grey Owl, then working as a fishing guide. Unfortunately for the sake of posterity, neither man seems to have made much of an impression on the other. Oh well.

Julian Beecroft: art editor and writer; lives in Hastings with his wife and two daughters.

Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven will be on show at Dulwich Picture Gallery from 19th October to 8th January. You can read Julian’s blog every fortnight (from 2nd Sept.) at: www.dulwichonview.org.uk

COMMENTS:

By Colin Payne, Dec 2011

Dear Sir – I know about the Group of Seven artists because for the last 8 years I have been going out to Canada to go with my brother into the ‘wilderness’ camping and canoeing. The joke with my family is that I’m doing my Grey Owl bit. But in truth, once you get out onto the lakes and rivers it is marvellous. Algonquin National Park is the nearest to Toronto and very accessible. At the portage store you can hire all camping equipment, maps, etc – they even pack food for however many days you want! I will certainly go to the exhibition later this year.

Colin Payne, St Catherine’s Close, St Leonards.