Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven

by Ross King

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.
A Governor General's Award-winning author, Ross King, recounts the turbulent years during which a group of young Canadian painters went from obscurity to international renown. Sumptuously illustrated, 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 during a time when art exhibitions were venues for debates about Canadian national identity and cultural worth.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History, History, Biography, Canada

528 pages, Hardcover

First published August 10, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Ross King (born July 16, 1962) is a Canadian novelist and non-fiction writer. He began his career by writing two works of historical fiction in the 1990s, later turning to non-fiction, and has since written several critically acclaimed and best-selling historical works.

King was born in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada and was raised in the nearby village of North Portal. He received his undergraduate university education at the University of Regina, where in 1984 he completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in English Literature. Continuing his studies at the University of Regina, he received a Master of Arts degree in 1986 upon completing a thesis on the poet T.S. Eliot. Later he achieved a Ph.D. from York University in Toronto (1992), where he specialized eighteenth-century English literature.

King moved to England to take up a position as a post-doctoral research fellow at University College, London. It was at this time that he began writing his first novel.

For Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, King was nominated in 2003 for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Brunelleschi’s Dome was on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle, and was the recipient of several awards including the 2000 Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year.

He lectures frequently in both Europe and North America, and has given guided tours of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

King currently lives in Woodstock, England with his wife Melanie

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

For someone like myself who has been making an annual pilgrimage to the paintings of the Group of Seven at the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art in Kleinburg north of Toronto, Ross King's Defiant Spirits is an unadulterated joy bringing back great memories of the moments that I have passed before the works of these great artists. I am not sure if someone knowing nothing about painting or the history of Canadian art would experience the same pleasure reading King's book as I did which is clearly aimed at the general Canadian public.

King's descriptions of the trips of the Group members to Go Home Bay, Algonquin Park and the Algoma district are exquisite. He is similarly brilliant in recreating the cultural debates and atmosphere of Toronto during the first three decades of the 20th Century.

Possibly because of my ignorance I also found Ross King's basic thesis that the "Hot Mush" style of the Group of Seven was in fact a skillful synthesis of the dominant trends in European art that was created in order to represent the landscapes of the Canada's Precambrian shield and to found a Canadian school of art. Like most Canadians I had always considered the Group of Seven to be vaguely derivative of the French Impressionists. By documenting the travels of the various members of the Group, King shows that in addition to the Impressionists. that the Group was heavily influenced by Scandinavian (Fjaested, Much), the Post-Impressionists (Gaugin, Van Gogh), Art Nouveau (Emile Gallé, Victor Guimard), Cubism (Picasso), and Fauvism (Dérain, Matisse). What truly surprised me was that King was able to show that the Italian Futurists (Boccioni, Marinetti) and the Vorticists (Lewis, Nevinson) also influenced the group.

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

What gets this book its fifth star is that King consistently not only tells us what the Group of Seven thought of themselves and their work and what their critics and patrons thought of same, but he then goes to the historical record and other contextual accounts. So on the one hand we do get critics sniffing at work that now just seems lovely about it being so colourful it nauseated them, but on the other when one of the painters says something outright inaccurate about their own novelty or pre-eminence King isn't afraid to call them on it (actually others had painted that area before, and so on).

I mostly read this one sitting in a waiting room during a recent series of trips to the walk in clinic and it made very good company. The next time I went to the AGO, I felt for the first time like I had some sense of the Group of Seven and their work beyond just well, there's the Tom Thompson stuff and there's Lawren Harris and the rest kind of blended together. I came away liking A.Y. Jackson the most, even though (or maybe because) he probably says the most ridiculous things in the book. And I had a sense growing up that the Group of Seven were a big part of the (white, British) Canadian identity but until I read this book I didn't really get why. As with any sufficiently indepth artistic history, you get a good chunk of the social history as well; I definitely feel like I have a better sense of early to mid 20th Century Canada than I did before.

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading "The Judgement of Paris" by Ross King, I leapt to the bookstore when I found out he had published this book about the famous 'Group of Seven' painters. A bunch of artists who broke away from European convention and launched an uniquely Canadian voice into the art world. Ross King is himself Canadian so I was certain of top-notch research and care. I wasn't disappointed even though I still think "Judgement" was a more interesting read. Ross King has made a career of writing and 'novelizing' art History. In the "Judgement of Paris" he wisely created narrative tension bey placing Meissioner, the successful has-been, against Manet, the failed harbinger of everything new and exciting. The backdrop of revolutionary Paris, the Commune, the Paris siege and , especially, the Annual Salon at the Academie made for a gasp-inducing read.

In "Defiant Spirits', the pace is a bit more sedate. King manages to create new tensions: who will come up with the distinctly Canadian masterpiece? How will provincial Ontario break loose from European tastes? How will artists overcome the accusation of effeminacy and unpatriotism? How will they blend in or stick out from regionalism, jingoism, elitism or democratic impulses in society? These threads tie together a great narrative that propels this 420 page volume, even when some passages become a bit tiresome.

May be the more interesting bit of the book relates to the genesis of the actual Group which, in its inception was a Lawren Harris' brainchild. Harris, a very wealthy heir of the Masey-Harris fortune, set out to create art instead of collecting it -which is what most rich folk did back then. In the process, he conceived of a movement that would make artists feel at home in their own country through uniquely northern landscapes. He gathered a group of artists that he thought could help give shape to this project. For the name of the group, Harris took a cue from the numerous groups around the Western world who coalesced around associations defined by their number, the "Group o Eleven" in Germany or the "Group of Eight" in Norway. The number Seven might have also been inspired by his deep involvement in Theosophy. Regardless of the very fluctuating numbers, teh group had as many as ten members at one point, they all shared Harris vision of a rugged and spiritual Canadian art -to a certain extent. Paradoxically, the Group of Seven- in its core a deeply bourgeois group of urban dwellers with day jobs- portrayed themselves as men at home in the wild and aiming for a quasi-spiritual communion with the land. But I am getting a little ahead. The Group wasn't labeled until 1920.

Many events took place before the birth of the group as an entitity and Ross does a great job of showing all the currents and undercurrents that contributed to -and undermined- the appearance of the group and Modernism in general. The foes: The provincial backwater mindset; the dismissiveness towards Canada that both the U.S. and the U.K. showed in all matters artistic and cultural; the perceived and real elitism of art pursuits.... A lot of that would change after the First World War. In the meantime, some original artists showed the first signs of a fresh approach free from the Dutch mists , English cottages and French aspirations of the Barbizon school. Among them, Tom Thomson, a man that died young in circumstances surrounded by legend but that managed to pave the way with bold strides and some artwork that has become iconic. He would become the invisible patron saint of the Group of Seven. Harris and J. MacDonald found the road map to their efforts in Scandinavian art of all places - a large exhibition of Scandinavian art had taken place in Buffalo, NY and it really made an impact on both artists. Thompson plunged himself head first in the landscapes of Algonquin Park and Georgian Bay and exemplified the way Harris wanted to brand this movement. According to him, Canada required a group of macho outdoorsMEN able to explore the expansive wilderness of the country. The shadow of the artists-as-effete poseur loomed large and countering it required an exaggerated macho posturing and definitely no women. Fortunately, the male domination was more short lived than in other countries. The new artists also needed to proselytize the cause of financial support by collectors, galleries, critics and people of influence and walked a thin line between wanting praise and wanting outrage. Being Canada, they got none of those things in large doses. To further their aim, a Studio Building was constructed in Toronto at a huge price tag and financed by Harris himself and an early supporter: Dr. McCallum. At some point or another, most artists lived there. The details I leave to the book, as well as their distinct but sometimes eerily similar personalities.

Canada lost 60,000 men in a war that tore Europe and, to a certain extent, aggravated the inner bi-national turmoil within and its search for identity by further exposing the differing allegiance to the UK of the British Canadians and the Quebecois as conscription became a reality. Some of the artists Harris had enrolled in his vision witnessed war first hand, most notably A.Y. Jackson and Fred Varley. Lord Beaverbrook emerges in this pages as a colorful character and unwitting promoter of the arts . His interest in furthering Canadian protagonism seemed as insistent as it was casual. When picking artists to become war artists he really didn't give the matter much thought at all and thus enlisted quite a variety with fascinating results. If someone was expecting heroic pictures of Vimy Ridge, they would have to look elsewhere. Fred Varley arguably reached his pinnacle with his "For What?" painting.

The war is a central event and propelled artists further away from "pretty" pictures. Artists embraced new quests for meaning beyond the surface of technique and gloss and took to new explorations. Many in government feared the violent shapes and abstract daubs would detract from Canadas' immigration policy. Yes, at some point, Canada was trying to attract immigrants with pictures of bucolic farmsteads and brooks. One thing they all seem to have tacitly agreed at this point is that indigenous peoples had no place on the canvas or the exhibits themselves. The Group of Seven paintings are mostly unpopulated landscapes with few exceptions. Harris seems to have had a keen interest in portraying the poorest parts of Toronto's tenement houses inspired , may be, by a religious fervor towards human betterment. In many ways he wanted to be the 'Canadian van Gogh'. They finally put together their first show in 1920 to mixed reviews. A few other shows would follow. While busy trying to court the most entrenched critics at home, their art was now readily accepted in other countries that had already experienced their own art revolutions, most notably the UK during the Wembley Imperial exhibition.

With time, they went from outcasts to mainstream . The last chapter points out how they themselves became a symbol of the old as the country started to move away from being defined by its landscape and towards a more urban and inclusive experience, of women, immigrants and indigenous people. At some point, a certain exhaustion settled in. While the criticisms aimed at the group today reek of academic political correctness, once they make their valid points, they still can't tumble the enormous value of these pioneers of modern art to the art world in general and Canada, in particular.

Two notes: It needs more plates. I had to use my Ipad constantly to look at the painters and paintings so vividly mentioned.

The fact that every artist does not get a whole bio must be a deliberate decision. the book is long as it is already.

[Wendy Caron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read non-fiction and was a little intimidated at first by the heft and detail of the book but I was soon thoroughly engaged and absorbed. I loved learning about the Group of Seven and King artfully puts their work into a historical, chronological, and cultural perspective. I found I was limited in fully enjoying the book by my lack of knowledge of the art world and painters; I would have appreciated more plates of cited paintings in the book. Having my laptop handy was a great resource. The book inspired me to visit the Tom Thompson Gallery in Owen Sound and a (re) visit to McMichael is definitely in order. For me, the book concluded on a sad note with the observation that currently the Group of Seven is relatively unknown among our population. King observes that the Group is no longer iconic or representative of our Canadian identity to the masses. The works of Thompson, Harris, Jackson and Casson in particular will always and forever resonate in this Canadian girl's heart and bring me 'home'. As an aside, I'm currently drinking my morning coffee from a White Pine (Casson) coffee mug, drinking in a landscape worthy of a Tom Thompson wood panel.

[Anne White · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked: the parts about World War I were excellent and covered the often-confusing sequence of battles from the perspective of the Group of Seven members in different locations and with all their varying artistic impressions. The chapter about the super-sized 1924 Empire Exhibition at Wembley is also a fitting climactic moment: after a couple of nobody's-buying-our-pictures years in Canada-and-the-Americans-could-care-even-less, the Group finally got their it's-about-time applause in England.

I don't want to dump on the ending of the book, after that, but it did feel a bit rushed--I mean, we have a whole century since then, squeezed into just an epilogue, even though I know the focus was really on the active years of the Group. Is it petty to wish that this book was better than merely useful and interesting, when with, maybe, a little more attention to editing, it could have been awesome?

Well, skip the rabbit trails you don't like, and enjoy the rest.

[Kenneth Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

King delivers again! As someone who believed he knew most of the Groups history, King researched information I was pleasantly surprised with. Thompson's mysterious death is told in a matter of fact way that lays to rest the conspiracy theories. The members involment in the first world War was also enlightening. Be prepared to Google paintings he name drops as the colour plates that are included are not enough. Still Defiant Spirits is a perfect read to support our "Elbows Up" movement.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

. . . I don’t know when I first encountered the works of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. In my memory, Tom has always been floating face down in Canoe Lake surrounded by solitary windswept pines and interlaced forests against paint blob skies and the other seven or eight or nine actual members have been blended together, except for Lawren Harris, who’s throbbingly glowing smooth mountains and icebergs have always stood apart, somewhere on the West Coast, wondering where Emily Carr might be. And looking down on Carr and Harris have been the masks and poles of the Haida, and on the Seven and Thomson have gazed Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier and earliest of all, Inuit soapstone carvings. These, the artistic vocabulary of the Pacific Coast, of the Arctic, of the Woodlands, both First Nations and Thomson and the Seven are my mother tongue of design. Later I gained the school learning of European art (I love [and am sometimes embarrassed by] the Impressionists) and on my own I lovingly came to know a bit of Maya iconography. And Alex Janvier was always mumbling around, and Jane Ash Poitras kept shouting at me, and they spoke so well!

As a child I lived in the natural world Morriseau, Thomson and the Seven painted, and later, in the political world in which Tecumseh and Pontiac and Brock fought. Today I live in Janvier’s and Poitras’ and Dumont’s and Riel’s world. But the child is in me still: I am a child of the Shield. And so, at the end of the longest preamble to a book review in history, Ross King’s Defiant Spirits speaks to me very passionately (but with appropriate Georgian restraint). . .

Read the rest of my defiantly quirky thoughts on Defiant Spirits at: http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...

[Joanne-in-Canada · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a keen fan of the Group of Seven, I was looking forward to this group biography of the iconic and nationalistic Canadian painters. I have read biographies of a few of the individual members, and was looking forward to an integrated picture of their relationships and accomplishments. Some of the book dealt with these themes, but large sections were devoted to placing the Group in their social and artistic context: their influences, their mentors, their critics and their supporters. The names, places, dates and exhibits began to blur after a while.

I was hoping there would be more personal detail, more description of their quirks, their inclinations, their families. Individual members of the Group disappeared from the narrative for long periods of time.

With 44 pages of end notes, the author obviously did an astounding amount of research. Unfortunately, the resulting style is rather dry and academic and not accessible for the reader with a mild interest in Canadian art.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I liked the author's book about Monet better Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies. Too many rabbit holes that the author jumped into, some of it was interesting and some was a bit too detailed. I liked reading about the sociological history of Canada and the world at the time but then sometimes it wasn't organized for easier reading. I didn't realize how much the Group of Seven artists were not understood or appreciated by their countrymen. Their paintings were often ridiculed and it took many, many years to have people truly value their work.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal book about The Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian artists known for painting modern landscapes of the Canadian North. As a Canadian and art lover, Defiant Spirits was a must-read. It did not disappoint. King’s research is meticulous, he delves into the lives of the Group of Seven artists and others including Tom Thompson, who died in 1917 under mysterious circumstances before the group formed in the early 1920s. King also explores history of the arts in Ontario prior to the group’s formation, which was not robust in comparison to Montreal, the cultural hub of Canada at the time. Granted there was the Ontario Group of Artists, founded in 1872, which held an exhibition each year promoting paintings of local Ontario artists.

But there was an active bunch of painters in Toronto who would eventually transform Canadian art. They met at Toronto’s Arts and Letter Club to share their works, ideas and discuss painting techniques. The group included Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Tom Thomson, J. E. H. MacDonald and Arthur Lismer who were all in some way or another, experimenting with new techniques and ways of depicting Canadian scenes. They were a restless bunch—looking to develop a new form of painting, a new way of expressing their unique perspectives. They ambitiously experimented with colour, form and subject matter.

Much of the artistic output of young artists’, at least initially, was not well received. In one exhibition in 1913 featuring Jackson’s works, a journalist wrote a cutting review of the exhibition for the Toronto Star. He titled it ‘The Hot Mush School’. Most disconcerting is that the journalist wasn’t an arts writer, but a parliamentary reporter. Nevertheless he wrote how he couldn’t understand the paintings which consisted of bright, unrealistic colours, flat planes and unnatural-looking landscapes. He described the works as looking more like “a gob of porridge than a work of art” and wrote that “these “Hot Mushers” were under the influence of opiates” (p 107). This reminds me of how Henri Matisse and his colleagues were labeled the Wild Bests, or Fauves, by an art critic in a Paris exhibition in 1905 when the critic viewed the bright, abstract works for the first time. The fauves were painting around the same time as Jackson and his colleagues—the beginning of the era of modernism. The Canadians were right there on the cutting edge.

The visionary for the The Group of Seven was A.Y. Jackson; he established the cohesive collective that aimed to capture Canada’s identity. Interesting parallel to Canadian identity forming was how the group’s inception coincided with the era of post-WW I when Canada had made significant strides in establishing her own identity as a country—unique from Britain. There was a sense of nationalism and pride which likely contributed to painters seeking a unique expression for landscape painting distinctly Canadian.

Yet for all The Group of Seven notoriety, and their contributions to building a national identity for Canada with their landscapes of Canada’s North, it was Emily Carr who made CBC’s list of the 100 most influential Canadians, a list nominated by the public. She was the only artist in the category of painting who made the list. Not one from the The Group of Seven. Yet this doesn't take away from the spectacular works of the Group of Seven that are uniquely Canadian. Their paintings can be seen in the spectacular McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, The Art Gallery of Toronto, and the National Gallery of Canada.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. “Defiant Spirits” is an incredibly well written book about the political, geographical, artistic, emotional, and psychological influences on the individual members and ultimately the formation of Canadas foremost artistic Scool, the Group of Seven.

Without becoming bogged down with useless minutiae about the authors lives Ross King maintains a direct and focussed retelling of how the members of the group led varied lives and used their shared experiences to paint Canada in the first decades of the twentieth century. Rather than treating the Algonquin Park school of artists as a singular unit, King traces their development from the 19th century schools of landscape painting, through Impressionism, post Impressionism, into expressionism, vorticism, and modernism. Indeed the members created a new school of art in the form of the “Hot Mush” style which directly captured the uniqueness of the Canadian landscapes of Algonquin Park, and the Algoma region of Northern Ontario.

DefiantSpirits is a must read for anyone interested in a comprehensive understanding of the turbulent forces of art in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries which resulted in the formation of Canadas best know art movement.

[Diane Jeske · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5 rounded up)

My partner and I are planning a day trip this fall from Toronto to the McMichael Gallery of Canadian Art, which has a large collection of paintings by the Group of Seven (and also has Tom Thomson's shack in which he painted while in Toronto). So I decided to read this book to get some background on the group.

Well, this book provides plenty of information about the group, more than I really wanted as it turns out. Their story isn't exactly exciting, so unless you are deeply interested in the development of Canadian modernism this is probably not the book for you. And I found myself not liking some of the group members: they were quite taken with themselves, convinced that they were seeing the Canadian landscape in a way no one else ever had. If you didn't like their work, you must have been a thoroughly backwards dolt (at least according to them). They were all quite sexist as well, it seems, committed to a 'virile' art produced by real 'red-blooded' men.

There are, however, a good number of color plates, and seeing the plates has made me look forward to the museum visit.

[Kseniya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved "defiant spirits". Living in Canada and finding out so much art and general history and places right next door to me from this book was amazing. The book is very detailed and I found it organized well (at least for me). I was happy to find so many colour images of paintings in the book - wish there were more though :) but google helped with that :D overall, the author has created a wonderful history book on Group of Seven from beginning to the end. I would highly recommend it.

[Ross Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful look into the renowned Canadian painters. I was delightfully surprised by the meta narrative of establishing a national identity and the pains that the author took to document the global political and artistic climate during this period, instead of just focusing on the paintings. As someone who knows very little about art I found it effective and informative.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Oh, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me . . . Oh, these men, this Group of Seven, what have they created?—a world stripped of earthiness, shorn of fretting details, purged, purified; a naked soul, pure and unashamed; lovely spaces filled with wonderful serenity . . . Jackson, Johnson, Varley, Lismer, Harris—up-up-up-up-up!"

—Emily Carr, journal

[Linda Morrissett · Rating 3 out of 5]

King put admirable research into this book, but sadly it's not nearly engaging as his other works. Perhaps the subject was just too huge for one book. There was so much historical and biographical detail delivered that it seemed dry and tedious. There are several color plates and other photos which certainly enhanced the book.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding book on the history of the group of seven ; biographies, trials and tribulations, inspirations, and a conspiracy theory. Though much of their artwork doesn't appeal to me, I have a greater understanding of their motivation. And why art, at essence, is about creativity.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting
Learned so much about Tom Thompson, the group of 7 as well as history of Toronto and the university of Toronto. This was a library book I had to return. Will likely pick it up again in the future

[Donna Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another winner from Ross King. About the Canadian Group of painters called “The Group of Seven”.

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great deal about fishing. Well done.

[Claudia Kincaid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great readable scholarly research but my a..com addition was a barren landscape without any illustrations!



What's an art history book doing without illistrations? One star for the publisher and five for the author.

I feel disappointed.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Linking their development as artists to the historical context gives their more depth but maybe this doorstop of a book has just a bit too much heft

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book! This is about more than a biography of the Group of Seven, it's a book about Canada's emerging sense of itself as a cultural entity in the early 20th century.

[Kapil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for fans of Canadian art history. Full of fascinating details. It doesn't start off with a bang as his other books tend to, but really picks up in the body of the text.

[Carrie Marcotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given this book a 3.5 if I had an option to do so. I delayed reading this book because I have a Kobo, and given the referrals back to works of art throughout this work of non-fiction, I wanted to refer back to each painting/sketch the text talks about. You can't do that on a Kobo, and I guess this book doesn't actually provide the pictures required anyway. Hard to do when the read becomes so enriching when you can do so. So I chose to read this on my laptop with constant references to the works thanks to Google. This added greatly to my enjoyment of this book. The story is great - I learnt a lot about the backgrounds of the artists and the paintings. The author also adds to the whole story about 'painting in' the setting of this time in Canadian history. Very interesting read.

[Rick Pozeg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely wonderful history about the group of seven. They are a cultural milestone in Canadian history that is often forgotten. Each of these men have lived a league of lives and have compelling stories to tell. What speaks most to me is that in the turbulence of war and loss, trials and tribulations they never gave up on their passion of art and trying to represent Canada's national identity. In the face of adversity, much like the meaning of Thomson's "The Jack Pine", they weathered the storms. They continued to find solace in their compositions and in the great landscapes of our country. I hope that all Canadians living in this country never take for granted the beautiful land we we're given and the men who fought to keep it that way.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typically Canadian. Yawn, Reads like a Master's Thesis. I may not finish it if it doesn't pick up soon.

[Len · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an artist and Canadian myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this book for putting all of the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson within a historical and chronological perspective. Having only read and heard bits and pieces about each artist in the past, this was a refreshing read. I learned so much more about what influenced each of the artists, their origins, their influences and gave me a deeper appreciation for their creative energies. As an artist all of this is fascinating and inspiring. Well worth a read if you enjoy any of the Group of Seven or Tom Thompson. I plan re-read this book in the future.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

as with all other Ross King books, this was a very readable and quick read. this time King tackles the world of Canadian art in the early 20th century as seen through the palette of the Group of Seven. straight-forward (he leaves much of the "who killed Tom Thomson?" out of the text) examination of this most Canadian of cultural movements and the legacy (good and bad) that they've left on not only visual arts, but music, literature and drama.

[Marcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned alot about the Canadian 7 and their companions, but compared to the other books I have read by this author (Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo's Ceiling), this book was a disappointment. Too much detail and not enough of the connections between these individuals. i actually considered abandoning it, but I am glad I didn't.