A beautiful introduction to Canada’s famous artists. In 1920, a group of Toronto artists exhibited their work together for the first time. They called themselves the Group of Seven. Their paintings were very different from the art of the time. Some people were excited by their unique styles, and some were horrified. It took years for their work to be fully appreciated. But today, the Group of Seven are some of Canada’s best-loved artists. Here’s a must-have reference to the artists who changed the landscape of Canadian art forever.

At a critical time in Canada's history, the Group of Seven revolutionized the country's appreciation of itself by celebrating Canada as a wild and beautiful land.

Includes reproductions of original paintings by the Group of Seven and contemporary photographs of the locations where the original works were created.

Beginning in 1912, Defiant Spirits traces the artistic development of Tom Thomson and the future members of the Group of Seven, Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley, over a dozen years in Canadian history. Working in an eclectic and sometimes controversial blend of modernist styles, they produced what an English critic celebrated in the 1920s as the “most vital group of paintings” of the 20th century. Inspired by Cézanne, Van Gogh and other modernist artists, they tried to interpret the Ontario landscape in light of the strategies of the international avant-garde. Based after 1914 in the purpose-built Studio Building for Canadian Art, the young artists embarked on what Lawren Harris called “an all-engrossing adventure”: travelling north into the anadian Shield and forging a style of painting appropriate to what they regarded as the unique features of Canada’s northern landscape. Rigorously researched and drawn from archival documents and letters, Defiant Spirits constitutes a “group biography,” reconstructing the men’s aspirations, frustrations and achievements. It details not only the lives of Tom Thomson and the members of the Group of Seven but also the political and social history of Canada

Published to accompany exhibition organized by Dulwich Picture Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, in collaboration with the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, and the Groninger Museum.

A stunning, full-colour collection of the brilliant paintings that revolutionized Canadian art. In the early twentieth century a group of young artists strived to create, in Lawren Harris’s words, paintings that would “embody the moods and character and spirit of the country.” The fifty-four breathtaking colour plates in this book confirm their success. Well-loved landscapes, like Tom Thomson’s Jack Pine, appear beside some unexpected treasures like Edwin Holgate’s Nude in a Landscape. The essays by Joan Murray and Harris give historical context to the Group of Seven, and fascinating captions provide biographical notes and insightful critiques of each member’s style. No Canadian library is complete without this beautiful volume.

"The great purpose of landscape art is to make us at home in our own country" was the nationalist maxim motivating the Group of Seven's artistic project. The empty landscape paintings of the Group played a significant role in the nationalization of nature in Canada, particularly in the development of ideas about northernness, wilderness, and identity. In this book, John O'Brian and Peter White pick up where the Group of Seven left off. They demonstrate that since the 1960s a growing body of both art and critical writing has looked "beyond wilderness" to re-imagine landscape in a world of vastly altered political, technological, and environmental circumstances. By emphasizing social relationships, changing identity politics, and issues of colonial power and dispossession contemporary artists have produced landscape art that explores what was absent in the work of their predecessors. Beyond Wilderness expands the public understanding of Canadian landscape representation, tracing debates about the place of landscape in Canadian art and the national imagination through the twentieth century to the present. Critical writings from both contemporary and historically significant curators, historians, feminists, media theorists, and cultural critics and exactingly reproduced artworks by contemporary and historical artists are brought together in productive dialogue. Beyond Wilderness explains why landscape art in Canada had to be reinvented, and what forms the reinvention took. Contributors include Benedict Anderson (Cornell), Grant Arnold (Vancouver Art Gallery). Rebecca Belmore, Jody Berland (York), Eleanor Bond (Concordia), Jonathan Bordo (Trent), Douglas Cole, Marlene Creates, Marcia Crosby (Malaspina), Greg Curnoe, Ann Davis (Nickle Arts Museum), Leslie Dawn (Lethbridge), Shawna Dempsey, Christos Dikeakos, Peter Doig, Rosemary Donegan (OCAD), Stan Douglas, Paterson Ewen, Robert Fones, Northrop Frye, Robert Fulford, General Idea, Rodney Graham, Reesa Greenberg, Gu Xiong (British Columbia), Cole Harris (British Columbia), Richard William Hill (Middlesex), Robert Houle, Andrew Hunter (Waterloo), Lynda Jessup (Queen's), Zacharias Kunuk (Igloolik Isuma Productions), Johanne Lamoureux (Montreal), Robert Linsley (Waterloo), Barry Lord (Lord Cultural Resources), Marshall McLuhan, Mike MacDonald, Liz Magor (ECIAD), Lorri Millan, Gerta Moray (Guelph), Roald Nasgaard (Florida State), N.E. Thing Company, Carol Payne (Carleton), Edward Poitras, Dennis Reid (Art Gallery of Ontario), Michel Saulnier, Nancy Shaw (Simon Fraser), Johanne Sloan (Concordia), Michael Snow, Robert Stacey, David Thauberger, Loretta Todd, Esther Trepanier (Quebec), Dot Tuer (OCAD), Christopher Varley, Jeff Wall, Paul H. Walton (McMaster), Mel Watkins (Toronto), Scott Watson (British Columbia), Anne Whitelaw (Alberta), Joyce Wieland, Jin-me Yoon (Simon Fraser), Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and Joyce Zemans (York).