ART

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27990, 9 June 1956, Page 5

ART

September Gale. A Study of Arthur Lismer of the Group of Seven. By John A. B. McLeish. Dent. 212 PP. The Group of Seven, which nourished in the early ’twenties, is ® e most significant and distinctive P°up of artists Canada, and perhaps J-® Commonwealth, has seen. In spite J uie frequently heard criticism that . eir work has an over-dramatic, not ? say poster-ish, quality about it. ’* ;ere is no doubt that they made a ?®arkable effort to make a fresh honest interpretation of their ."0 magnificent country in terms of F 1 that their pictures are original ? ®e best sense of the word. Arthur was not the best painter among ■J e Group—he had not the originality /Tom Thomson or Lawren Harris. Jr the talent of A. Y Jackson and —but he has the extra disof having become in later one of the most notable art .peters in Canada, whose work was tejjmsible for transforming the of art throughout the schools art-classes of the Dominion. He 3 s the most articulate of the Group ©even. Mr McLeish’s biography . Usmer. a work which is uncertain i *ts artistic criticism but otherwise thorough and interesting, is useful on two counts. It X.3 5 an absorbing account of the best of the Group of Seven: of how met in the Grip Engraving Comand how they lived and worked, „ rneir sorties into the wilderness of tfi-Ganadian North, and their struggle in the press and among Platers. And it provides a full °f artistic activity in Toronto Sz Montreal, and of the gradual nJHpPh of Lismer’s progressive CtoaH art education throughout d Uc sr a - The book js very well proan d it has admirable reproducsome in colour, of Lismer’s as well as of the children's