The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson by David P. Silcox

I was first introduced to the Group of Seven (which, incidentally, had ten members) as a young child. I didn't like their work at the time because I knew it wasn't as realistic as painting could possibly be, and this coloured my attitudes towards their work right up to the moment when I read this book.

It's a huge-ass coffee-table book on archive-quality paper, presenting a wide assortment of the Group's paintings (not just the most famous ones) and providing some background and context. It was fascinating to read, for example, that the Group of Seven very deliberately went about trying to establish a Canadian identity (when country was only a few decades old), and, through their art, defined Canada as The North. While I identify Group of Seven paintings primarily as slightly abstract nature scenes using a bold impressionistic style with larger strokes - almost hurried sketches in oil paint - this book also showed some of their paintings of portraits and city scenes. The portraits are so realistic that if they were about 4x6" I could mistake them for photographs, and the portrayal of the buildings in the city scenes are also perfectly accurate and realistic. This made me realize that they can do realism, so when the paintings are not perfectly realistic, it must be for a reason. With this knowledge, I can appreciate their work much better. Their abstract portrayal of nature (which is sometimes juxtaposed against rigidly realistic portrayals of buildings) is alluding to movement and light. The painting is trying to represent the clouds scrolling by over time, for example, or the mottles of light streaming through the tree canopy. These are things that can't be captured by a camera, so therefore cannot be painted using realism. It's remarkable what they can do through allusion - the goldish tints make the scene an autumn sunset, the blue alludes to the long shadows of a winter afternoon. It's particularly effective when I take my glasses off and let my astigmatism help me.

All in all, it was a very interesting and educational book. Unfortunately, it's too expensive to buy and too big for reading on the subway, but interesting and educational nonetheless.