Arthur Lismer
Lismer began his distinguished career as an art educator as principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design (later NOVA SCOTIA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN) in Halifax 1916-19. A prodigious worker, he painted views of Halifax harbour and returning troopships for Canadian War Records in 1918-19. He returned to Toronto to become vice-president of the ONTARIO COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN in 1919 and in 1920 became a founding member of the GROUP OF SEVEN.
Lismer's first Canadian paintings were heavily influenced by John Constable, but during the 1920s he developed a powerful expressionist style of his own, characterized by raw colour, heavy impasto, deliberately coarse brushwork and simplified form. But Lismer devoted most of his time to art education. From 1927 to 1938 he was the educational supervisor at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO). In 1932 he undertook a nationwide lecture tour; invitations to conferences in Europe and South Africa followed, and he returned to teach in South Africa in 1936-37.
In 1938 he was visiting professor at Teachers' College, Columbia University. He ran the Montreal Children's Art Centre, affiliated with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1967. This activity left Lismer with little time to paint, but he produced many of his most original works after 1930, painting first in the Maritimes and Georgian Bay, and from 1951 at Long Beach, on Vancouver Island, each summer. The lurid, intestinal and claustrophobic qualities of many of these paintings were not to contemporary taste, but have gained acceptance in recent years, for they seem to have developed from a form of deep, personal expressionism.
September Gale, Georgian Bay
Arthur Lismer, 1920, finished oil painting on canvas (courtesy NGC, bequest of Vincent Massey).
September Gale, Sketch
Arthur Lismer, 1920, oil sketch on panel (courtesy Dr John Parnell, Vancouver).
Privacity Agent
B.K. Sandwell, editor of "Saturday Night," employed Swiftian irony in his essay "The Privacity Agent" (1928) to contrast the 20th century with happier past eras. Illustration by Arthur Lismer, 1928.
Author CHRISTOPHER VARLEY
Suggested Reading
John McLeish, September Gale: A Study of Arthur Lismer of the Group of Seven (1955).
Links to Other Sites
Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery
This website showcases the unique art collection of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven at the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery. It also offers related biographies, chronologies, and commentaries on specific paintings.
Face to Face: The Canadian Personalities Hall
"Face to Face" features outstanding Canadians whose ideas and contributions have transformed this country. Click on the photos in "Meet the Personalities" to see their biographies. From the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
The story of the founding of Montreal is perhaps unique in history....
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