February 15, 2015

Robert Genn

February 15, 2015/ Michael Warren

Born in Victoria, BC, Robert Genn was formally trained at the University of Victoria, the University of BC and the Art Centre School in Los Angeles, California. Throughout his career Genn garnered an international reputation for his ability to capture the colour and form of the Canadian landscape with strong brush strokes. He is most well known for painting west coast and rocky mountain scenes.

February 01, 2015

Lawren Harris

February 01, 2015/ Michael Warren

1885 - 1970

Lawren Harris was a leading figure in Canadian Art. His paintings are some of the most iconic symbols of Canadian art from the 20th century. Through a lifetime of leadership in the arts; from financing the famous Algoma box car trips to building the Studio Building in Toronto which helped provide space to artists, his impact on the arts in Canada is profound. He is one of the Founding Members of the Group of Seven, Canadian Group of Painters and the Transcendental Painting Group.

Featured

Athabasca at Jasper
10.75 x 14
Oil on Board
1924
SOLD

Algonquin Birches
14 x 10.75
Oil on Board
C. 1914
SOLD

Black Birch and Maple - Algoma
10.5 x 13.5
Oil on Board
C. 1920
SOLD

January 24, 2015

E. J. Hughes

January 24, 2015/ Michael Warren

1913 - 2007

E.J. Hughes’s paintings are best known for their strong and appealing images of the landscape and seascape of British Columbia. His distinctive style is marked by the use of flattened space, skewed perspective and simplified shapes. He is a regional painter, whose art relates directly to the unique and powerful geography of the Canadian west coast.

June 11, 2014

J.E.H. MacDonald

June 11, 2014/ Michael Warren

1873 - 1932

James Edward Harvey MacDonald was a founding member of the Group of Seven and a key contributor to Canadian painting in the early 20th century. Born in England, he emigrated in his teens, studying at the Hamilton School of Art and Central Ontario School of Design while working at Grip Printing and Publishing Company. Here, he absorbed the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and the philosophy of William Morris.

While at Grip, MacDonald met key members of the future Group of Seven Painters, including Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Franz Johnston, as well as the younger Tom Thomson. Leaving full-time design work to pursue a career as a landscape painter in 1912. That winter, he travelled with Lawren Harris to the exhibition of Scandinavian Impressionists at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, going on to distill those approaches into strategies for depicting the Canadian landscape that moved beyond academic naturalism.

MacDonald’s interest in nature was paralleled by his love of literature; a poet in his own right, he read Whitman and Thoreau and became active in the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. Here, he befriended James McCallum, a crucial future patron of the Group of Seven.

MacDonald was an enthusiastic participant in all of the major sketching excursions to Algonquin Park, Algoma and The Canadian Rockies. A thoughtful and articulate advocate for the arts, he found success as an instructor at the Ontario College of Art beginning in 1921, and serving as Principal from 1928 until his death in 1932.

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JEH MacDonald