Studio: international art (82.1921)

STUDIO-TALK

THE DEAD SWAN "
BY FRANS SNYDERS

(National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa)

TORONTO—The work of Mr. A. Y.
Jackson occupies a position of central
importance in Canadian art. He is a promi-
nent member of the Toronto group now
coming into wider recognition—in the
United States, if not yet in England—as
the " Group of Seven," whose chief aim is
to present the landscape of Canada, and
particularly the wilder landscape of North-
ern Ontario, in ways that are native and
untrammelled. His Edge of Maple Wood,
exhibited in Toronto in 1912, marked a
turning point in his career and in Canadian
art. Prior to that he had studied at the
Academy Julian and had sketched in
France and Italy. He now became imbued
with the potentialities of Canada, and by
1915 when he went overseas—first to fight,
and afterwards to paint for the War
Records—he had turned out Canadian
pictures of great worth. To this period
belong many fine sketches : Corn Shocks,
here reproduced, is an excellent example.
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His attitude to nature is essentially that of
the explorer. He has confessed his reluct-
ance to paint a hill-side before he has
climbed it and seen what lies beyond, and
in this spirit he has reached high altitudes
of the Rockies and remote wintry fastnesses
of the Georgian Bay. His skill as a sketcher
is quite consummate. Like some of his
fellow-artists he uses panels of birch board,
and achieves effects that could not be got
with cardboard or canvas. 0 a 0
Mr. Lawren Harris's pictures invariably
have " punch " and vivacity, and with
their clean blaze of colour and their in-
sistence on pattern they hold their place
confidently in the vanguard of the radicals.
In landscape he has seized on the decora-
tive elements which are present in so
striking a degree in rural Canada, and has
rendered the outstanding scenic effects of
fall and winter in many large canvases of
bold and spacious design. His outdoor
sketches, often brilliant in execution, give