By Katerina Atanassova

Do you recall your last meaningful engagement with art, or how often you have left an art gallery feeling motivated, moved and challenged? How many collections on public display have you found so uplifting, unique and inspiring that you could hardly wait to get home to a book or computer to search for more information to satisfy your sudden thirst for art?

This curiosity can also prompt you to delve into the motivations of the founders of an art collection, and this interest can become an integral part of your quest. Challenge arises when the founders are gone and their collection enters the public domain, in the care of individuals employed to do it justice, and to recreate or preserve the original owners’ vision.

Like many sister institutions across the country, the McMichael faces the challenging task of making its art collection relevant to our community and to our lives in the twenty-first century. The goal is to preserve the story of the collection and the art of the original and extended members of the Group of Seven, while weaving in the stories of the founders and the donors of the collection. The challenge is also to represent and interpret the next generation of Canadian artists, and to honour the work of First Nations and Inuit artists, both historical and contemporary.

With this in mind, the newly installed permanent collection is designed to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Group of Seven’s first exhibition in May 1920, while looking at their primal source of inspiration—the Canadian landscape. There is no theme more central to the Canadian identity than the land. Through the collective voice of several generations of Canadian artists, the newly designed installation of the permanent collection presents three distinct variations on the theme of the land as artistic muse: the pure solitary force of nature; the structured or inhabited place; and the imaginary landscape. Additionally, a selection of works by contemporary artists creates contrasts or dialogues with elements of our permanent collection to highlight issues ranging from climate change to humanitarian missions on our planet Earth.

When you enter the galleries you will see nineteenth-century European-inspired landscapes, portraits and figure studies arranged in a salon style hanging with paintings displayed in rows high up the gallery walls. Arranging paintings in this manner will serve as a powerful introduction to the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century development of Canadian art in Quebec and Ontario. Works drawn not only from our permanent collection, but also including rarely seen works from private collections, will help create a moving visual narrative of nineteenth-century Canadian art history.

The installation will also feature selected works from the period by Canadian women artists. Examples of paintings by Helen McNicoll, Florence Carlyle, Laura Muntz and others will affirm their strong and long-lasting presence in the Canadian art scene, as well as highlight their preferences in subject matter.

The salon hanging arrangement of the Canadian historical works will be contrasted by a single row of seven important and critically acclaimed paintings, one by each member of the original Group of Seven on the opposite wall, with an empty chair set up to symbolize the strong presence of Tom Thomson at the opening of the first Group exhibition in 1920.

Quotes from the popular newspapers and journals in the 1920s—Toronto Daily Star, Mail and Empire, Canadian Courier and Toronto Mail—will showcase the range of divergent opinions and reactions to the appearance of the new group of painters, while also offering an intriguing glimpse into the fledgling art scene in Toronto.

Undeniably, the members of the Group of Seven attempted to capture and convey what it felt like to hear the sound of the wind or the thunder of the approaching storm, to smell the scent of the forest or the freshness of the air, to sense the movement of water and clouds. In works depicting nature at its purest and most solitary, such as Aurora, Georgian Bay by J.E.H. MacDonald or Canadian Jungle by Arthur Lismer, the message is easily understood.

The essence of place is further explored through the work of David Milne, Emily Carr, and their Quebec counterparts such as John Lyman and Jean Paul Lemieux, to mention but a few.

The familiar scenes of lakes with canoes, cabins tucked away in the woods, picturesque small towns in Ontario or Quebec, hikers dotting mountain scenery are all easily associated with the work by the Group of Seven. The idea of the structured or inhabited landscape will focus on the issue of urban and rural life, and feature paintings such as In the Ward by Lawren Harris.

Some examples in this section will show the close proximity in which natural and artificial environments coexist, while others show how harmony is traded for urban chaos. Night Ferry, Vancouver by F.H. Varley is an example of an imaginary landscape. In it, the artist combines his memory of Vancouver with images of Toronto and New York. Varley has always been regarded as the odd yet more expressive member of the Group, who often received the harshest reviews from his fellow artists for this very expressive quality.

The inclusion of paintings by other artists more recently added to the collection, examine the ways in which other Canadian artists respond to the myth of the art and the legacy of the Group of Seven. For many artists of the following generations, the Group’s art provides a common ground for debate and exploration of topics ranging from national identity, regionalism, reaction to landscape, diversity and cultural differentiation. Inclusion of paintings, such as Marguerite Pilot of Deep River (Girl with Mulleins) by Yvonne McKague Housser, challenge the traditional barriers associated with the Group and will assert the role of women artists, First Nations and Inuit artists within our collection.

Our new installation of the permanent collection is a dynamic manifestation of who we are, our collective past, and our aspirations as a vibrant, diverse nation. By taking the pulse of the new while still attending to the legacy of our founders, we will ensure the continuing contributions of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection to the ongoing study and appreciation of Canadian art, both historical and contemporary.

 

 

 

A.Y. Jackson, (1882–1974)
Dahlias, c.1913
oil on wood panel
32.6 x 40.7 cm
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. S. Walter Stewart
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
1968.17.2


Lawren S. Harris, (1885–1970)
In the Ward, 1920
oil on ward
27 x 34 cm
Purchased with funds donated by Mr. R.A. Laidlaw
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
1970.12.1