B. Reflecting, Responding, and Analysing · Responding to Art: Critical Analysis, Context and Responsible Practice

Art in Canada: Land, Identity and Many Voices

B2.2 B1.3About 75 minutes

Learning goals

I can explain how the Group of Seven reflected a search for Canadian identity.
I can describe how First Nations, Métis, Inuit and Black Canadian artists have widened the story of Canadian art.
I can compare two visions of the land using the critical analysis process.
I can use respectful, accurate language about Indigenous art and artists.

Words to know

Group of Seven
A group of Canadian landscape painters who first exhibited together in 1920.

Woodland School
A style of art started by Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, with bold outlines and bright colours, based on Anishinaabe stories.

national identity
A shared sense of what makes a country and its people distinct.

traditional territory
Land that a First Nation, Métis or Inuit community has lived on and cared for since long before settlers came, and is still connected to.

printmaking
Making art by transferring an image from a carved or prepared surface (block, stone, plate or screen) onto paper, so it can be printed many times.

Hook: what does "Canadian art" look like?

Ask ten people to picture "Canadian art" and many will imagine a windswept pine on a rocky lake shore. That image is so familiar because of one group of painters about a hundred years ago. But Canadian art is much bigger than one picture, and who gets to define it is part of the story.

In this lesson you will look at how art in Canada has reflected land, identity and power, and at artists who widened the picture.

The Group of Seven and a "national" style

Tom Thomson painted in Algonquin Park until his death on Canoe Lake in 1917. His friends formed the Group of Seven, which held its first exhibition in 1920 at the Art Gallery of Toronto (today's Art Gallery of Ontario). The original members were Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald and Frederick Varley.

After the First World War, they wanted a distinctly Canadian style. They painted the Canadian Shield, Algoma, Lake Superior, the Rockies and later the Arctic with bold colours, thick paint and simplified shapes. Their work reflected a society searching for a national identity separate from Britain.

A critical look: the Group often showed the land as empty, untouched wilderness. But these lands are, and have long been, homelands of First Nations, including Anishinaabe peoples, with travel routes, camps, names and stories. Today, viewers and curators ask what this "empty land" idea left out, and who it served.

Two ways of picturing the same kind of northern landscape. The left matches the "empty wilderness" idea; the right shows the land as a lived-in homeland.

Widening the picture

Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828 to 1901), a Black artist born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, became a leading landscape painter in the United States. His painting Under the Oaks won a first-prize medal at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
Emily Carr (1871 to 1945), from Victoria, British Columbia, painted the villages and carved poles of Northwest Coast First Nations and, later, swirling forests; Big Raven (1931) is one example. In 1927 her work was shown at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and on that trip east she met members of the Group of Seven. Today, Northwest Coast Nations speak for the meaning of their own poles and stories, and Carr's images are seen as an outsider's view.
Inuit printmaking: artists in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, released their first annual print collection in 1959. The studio continues today, and Inuit artists tell their own stories in their own styles.
Norval Morrisseau (1932 to 2007), an Anishinaabe artist from Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek (Sand Point First Nation) near Lake Nipigon, Ontario, also known as Copper Thunderbird, brought Anishinaabe stories and teachings into paintings with bold black outlines, bright colours and lines that show connections between beings. His first show in Toronto in 1962 started what is now called the Woodland School.
In 1973, Daphne Odjig, Norval Morrisseau, Alex Janvier, Jackson Beardy, Eddy Cobiness, Carl Ray and Joseph Sanchez formed Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., often called the "Indian Group of Seven". They pushed galleries to show contemporary Indigenous art as fine art, not just as craft or anthropology.
Bill Reid (1920 to 1998), a Haida artist, created The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, a large bronze canoe crowded with beings from Haida stories. One cast (1991) stands at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C.; another is at Vancouver International Airport. It appeared on the back of Canada's $20 bill starting in 2004.
Christi Belcourt, a Métis artist, paints works such as The Wisdom of the Universe (2014, Art Gallery of Ontario), made of thousands of dots that recall Métis floral beadwork, showing plants and animals and their connections.

Some moments in art in Canada. Notice how more voices became visible in galleries over time.

Worked example

Let's compare two visions of the land

Compare Tom Thomson's The Jack Pine (1916 to 1917, National Gallery of Canada), a lone pine against a glowing lake and sky, with Christi Belcourt's The Wisdom of the Universe (2014, Art Gallery of Ontario), a dark field filled with dotted plants, flowers and creatures.

Description: Thomson: one tree, water, hills and sky, with bold, thick strokes. Belcourt: many plants and animals made of small dots, arranged over a dark background.
Analysis: Thomson uses one dominant shape as a focal point. Belcourt uses repetition and pattern, so the eye moves all over the surface.
Interpretation: Thomson's land feels dramatic and solitary; it was later taken up as a symbol of a national identity. Belcourt's land is full of relationships: everything is connected, and nothing is empty.
Context: Thomson painted in a time when many Canadians wanted a national style. Belcourt draws on Métis beadwork traditions and has spoken about our responsibility to the land and its plants and animals.
Reflection: together they show that "the Canadian landscape" can mean solitude and nationhood, or relationship and responsibility, depending on who is speaking.

Comparing works from different times and perspectives reveals how art both reflects and shapes ideas about Canada.

Respectful language

Name specific Nations (Anishinaabe, Haida, Métis, Inuit) instead of "Native art". Use the present tense for living cultures. Use names communities use, like Kinngait (Cape Dorset). Note that "Indian" appears in the 1973 group's name because that was its official name then; today we use First Nations, Indigenous, or specific Nation names.

Just for fun

Funny but true: over the years, ten different artists were members of the Group of Seven (Frank Johnston left, and A. J. Casson, Edwin Holgate and LeMoine FitzGerald joined). They kept the name anyway. "Group of Ten, but Never All at Once" doesn't fit on a poster.

Hands-on activity

Two visions of your place

You need: paper, pencils, coloured pencils or paint, and a window, a photo, or a walk outside with a grown-up.

Choose a place you know: a park, a lake, your street, a farm field in winter.
Make two small sketches of it (about 10 cm × 15 cm each). In the first, show it as empty and dramatic, Group of Seven style: bold shapes, no people.
In the second, show it as full of relationships: people who use it, animals, plants, paths, stories.
With a grown-up's help, find out whose traditional territory your place is on (many towns and school boards publish land acknowledgements).
Write a paragraph: Which sketch tells a truer story? What does each one leave out?

Your turn

When and where did the Group of Seven hold their first exhibition?

Name three original members of the Group of Seven.

What is a common criticism of the Group of Seven's view of the land?

Who started the Woodland School, and what Nation is he from?

What was Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (1973) and why did it matter?

Describe The Spirit of Haida Gwaii by Bill Reid.

Who was Edward Mitchell Bannister?

More practice: warm-up

In what year did Kinngait artists release their first annual print collection?

Name a painting by Emily Carr.

What Métis tradition do Christi Belcourt's dot paintings recall?

Where did Tom Thomson paint before his death in 1917?

What was Norval Morrisseau's Anishinaabe name in English?

More practice: on your own

How did the Group of Seven's work reflect Canadian society after the First World War?

Why is Emily Carr's work today seen as an outsider's view of Northwest Coast art?

Compare how Thomson and Belcourt use the principle of emphasis.

The 1973 group became widely known by the nickname "Indian Group of Seven". Why might that comparison have mattered?

Explain why using the present tense matters when talking about Inuit printmaking.

Challenge

Should a national art gallery hang Group of Seven paintings next to works by Indigenous artists that respond to the same land? Argue one side.

Who gets to decide what counts as "Canadian art"? Discuss using two examples.

Design a small exhibition (five works) called "Many Visions of the Land". List the works and explain your order.

Check your understanding

Quiz

The Group of Seven held its first exhibition in...

Norval Morrisseau is known for founding...

What did Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (1973) push galleries to do?

Bill Reid's The Spirit of Haida Gwaii is a...

A common criticism of the Group of Seven is that they...

Christi Belcourt is a...

Edward Mitchell Bannister was born in...

For parents and teachers

Big idea: B2.2 asks how art reflects its society. Canadian art shows a search for national identity and a long struggle over whose voices count. This lesson uses only well-documented facts about named artists and works.

How to help: Look up the works with your child on gallery websites (National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, McMichael Canadian Art Collection). Find out whose traditional territory you live on, together.

Sensitive note: keep discussions about colonial history respectful and factual; avoid generalizing about "Indigenous art" as one thing.

Common difficulties: confusing the Group of Seven with the 1973 Indigenous artists' group; using past tense for living cultures.