The Wild Men of the North: Tom Thompson and the Group of Seven

In 1924 an exhibition in London of Canadian landscapes moved the critic C. Lewis Hind to celebrate them as ‘the most vital group of paintings produced since the war – indeed, this century’. These landscapes of Canada’s northern lakes and rugged backwoods, painted in a boldly Post-Impressionist style, had been produced over the previous decade by a collective of Toronto-based painters known as the ‘Group of Seven’, whose aim was to forge a national school of landscape painting. This illustrated lecture introduces the painters – including their talismanic colleague Tom Thompson, who died in 1917 – and examines how they stormed the conservative bastions of Canadian art to establish themselves on the international stage as practitioners of a distinctive avant-garde.

Lecturer: Ross King – Ross is the author of eight books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has won both the Governor General’s Award in Canada and the BookSense Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the United States. Born and raised in Canada, he has lived in England since 1992. He has lectured widely in both North America and Europe, and given lectures and guided tours in Florence, Rome, Milan, Paris and Giverny.