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Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-40
With contributions by Rebecca Herlemann, Ruth Phillips, Carmen Robertson, Jeff Thomas, Georgiana Uhlaryik, Reneée van der Avoird, Martina Weinhart and Interviews with Lisa Jackson and Caroline Monnet
In the early 20th century, artists such as Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and members of what would become the Group of Seven, transformed Post-Impressionism techniques into exciting new ways of interpreting the Canadian landscape.
Challenging existing traditions, they left major cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and ventured deep into the Canadian wilderness. Often remaining in the bush for weeks on end, they reimagined the natural world using bold colours, stylized forms, and dynamic brushwork, producing vibrant modernist works that would define Canada and Canadian art for decades to come.
Premiering at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, Magnetic North features 87 works of art, including 23 works from the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition also comprises five films, including two by contemporary Indigenous artists: How a People Live, a documentary by filmmaker Lisa Jackson and Mobilize, a short film by artist Caroline Monnet.
Magnetic North was organized by the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the generous support of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
In the early 20th century, artists such as Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and members of what would become the Group of Seven, transformed Post-Impressionism techniques into exciting new ways of interpreting the Canadian landscape.
Challenging existing traditions, they left major cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and ventured deep into the Canadian wilderness. Often remaining in the bush for weeks on end, they reimagined the natural world using bold colours, stylized forms, and dynamic brushwork, producing vibrant modernist works that would define Canada and Canadian art for decades to come.
Premiering at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, Magnetic North features 87 works of art, including 23 works from the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition also comprises five films, including two by contemporary Indigenous artists: How a People Live, a documentary by filmmaker Lisa Jackson and Mobilize, a short film by artist Caroline Monnet.
Magnetic North was organized by the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the generous support of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
- GenresNonfiction
280 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 12, 2021
The landscape is loaded.
Thus has it always been, but 21st century scholarship is putting a particular point on a fact that’s been steadily gaining sorely-needed attention over the past half-century: the iconic landscape paintings created in the Americas by European settlers and their descendants contributed to a myth of the New World as unsettled virgin country, a Garden of Eden waiting to be occupied by peoples who in fact were displacing long-established Native communities.
In the United States, that meant the Hudson River School; in Canada, a group of seven painters who branded themselves, aptly, as the Group of Seven became the canonical creators of works that helped define the nation’s view of itself and its landscape. As Georgiana Uhlyarik notes in the final chapter of Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-40, the image of a single tree clinging to the unyielding granite of the Canadian Shield “has become emblematic of the rugged yet steadfast Canadian settler identity.”
The Group of Seven weren’t just shaping a national identity, they were branding themselves with sophisticated — yet sincere — savvy, the new book’s contributors note. They converted a boxcar to a cozy communal lodging for their trips to paint en particularly plein air. As befit their backgrounds in commercial art, they designed a group logo to advertise their collective shows; deploying a boldly modern graphic language to craft outwardly unassuming but absolutely engrossing canvases, they created a body of work that became widely reproduced, familiar to most Canadians from classroom prints and family wall calendars.
While the Group of Seven provide the hook that will probably get most readers to pick up Magnetic North — the embossed cover features a detail of an iceberg painting by the fascinating Lawren Harris — the book isn’t just another coffee table volume to throw onto the tall pile of Group biographies.
I reviewed Magnetic North for The Tangential.
Thus has it always been, but 21st century scholarship is putting a particular point on a fact that’s been steadily gaining sorely-needed attention over the past half-century: the iconic landscape paintings created in the Americas by European settlers and their descendants contributed to a myth of the New World as unsettled virgin country, a Garden of Eden waiting to be occupied by peoples who in fact were displacing long-established Native communities.
In the United States, that meant the Hudson River School; in Canada, a group of seven painters who branded themselves, aptly, as the Group of Seven became the canonical creators of works that helped define the nation’s view of itself and its landscape. As Georgiana Uhlyarik notes in the final chapter of Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-40, the image of a single tree clinging to the unyielding granite of the Canadian Shield “has become emblematic of the rugged yet steadfast Canadian settler identity.”
The Group of Seven weren’t just shaping a national identity, they were branding themselves with sophisticated — yet sincere — savvy, the new book’s contributors note. They converted a boxcar to a cozy communal lodging for their trips to paint en particularly plein air. As befit their backgrounds in commercial art, they designed a group logo to advertise their collective shows; deploying a boldly modern graphic language to craft outwardly unassuming but absolutely engrossing canvases, they created a body of work that became widely reproduced, familiar to most Canadians from classroom prints and family wall calendars.
While the Group of Seven provide the hook that will probably get most readers to pick up Magnetic North — the embossed cover features a detail of an iceberg painting by the fascinating Lawren Harris — the book isn’t just another coffee table volume to throw onto the tall pile of Group biographies.
I reviewed Magnetic North for The Tangential.
August 1, 2025
Magnetic North – The Contemporary Revision of the Group of Seven’s Vision
Mission capture occurs in a project or organization when an individual or group with its own strong, vested interests and goals, that has either been invited or inserted itself into the project or organization, co-opts that project or organization and replaces the original interests and goals in order to pursue its own interests and achieve its own goals. Mission capture is the term that came to my mind when reading Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-40. This is not a book about how artists in the first part of the Twentieth Century imagined Canada; it is about how artists (and activists) in the first part of the Twentieth-first Century believe the artists in the first part of the Twentieth Century should have imagined Canada.
Magnetic North is nominally about the Group of Seven and other associated Canadian artists (Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and Yvonne McKague Housser) and how they portrayed rural Canada during the period of their greatest cultural importance and artistic fervor. At least that is what the title indicates, with the National Gallery of Canada and Prestel Verlag’s exhibition and book descriptions reinforcing that idea. To be fair, Prestel’s blurb does state, “It also includes essays and interviews that offer contemporary indigenous perspectives on the impact of industry on nature, issues surrounding national identity, and modern Canadian landscape painting.” Examining the table of contents, one would assume the 40-page section “Land vs Landscape” would be where one would find those contemporary indigenous perspectives. They are present there, comprising the whole of that section, but that section’s position in the book, 40 pages smack dab in the middle of it, physically expresses its centrality to the book’s raison d'etre. That raison d'etre is to express contemporary, often indigenous, perspectives, and from that central section of the book, those perspectives spread like dry rot throughout every corner and every bit of text (and roughly one-third of the book’s pages are comprised entirely of text). That text tends to excoriate the Group of Seven for patriotism, racism, and colonialism while sometimes lapsing into traditional art appreciation discussing composition, color usage, and how works were created.
Plenty of art books unfortunately have terrible text, the overwrought dross of an art history dissertation jazzed up with enough beautiful reproductions that no one bothers to actually read them. Magnetic North does not even have that going for it. The paper quality is unexpectedly terrible coming from Prestel, who I have always considered a publisher of the highest quality. 130g Schleipen Fly 06 is glorified printing paper, just thicker. Printing the Group of Seven’s paintings on matte paper, instead of on glossy art paper, makes the reproductions appear flat and muddy, words that I should never have to say about the work of Lawren Harris (words that have likely never in the history of art been said about the work of Lawren Harris). This gives what should be at least a visually impressive book a cheap feeling, not much better in quality than a print-on-demand book and making whoever pays the impressive retail price (US $60.00, CAN $79.00, GBP £45.00) feel like a sucker.
An art book with no redeeming qualities is a rare find. Yet, there is nothing to recommend in this book to anyone. The text is a revisionist look through a critical theory lens at the Group of Seven. The illustrations are muddy and cheaply printed. Magnetic North does not do justice to the artistic and cultural legacy of the Group of Seven.
Mission capture occurs in a project or organization when an individual or group with its own strong, vested interests and goals, that has either been invited or inserted itself into the project or organization, co-opts that project or organization and replaces the original interests and goals in order to pursue its own interests and achieve its own goals. Mission capture is the term that came to my mind when reading Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-40. This is not a book about how artists in the first part of the Twentieth Century imagined Canada; it is about how artists (and activists) in the first part of the Twentieth-first Century believe the artists in the first part of the Twentieth Century should have imagined Canada.
Magnetic North is nominally about the Group of Seven and other associated Canadian artists (Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and Yvonne McKague Housser) and how they portrayed rural Canada during the period of their greatest cultural importance and artistic fervor. At least that is what the title indicates, with the National Gallery of Canada and Prestel Verlag’s exhibition and book descriptions reinforcing that idea. To be fair, Prestel’s blurb does state, “It also includes essays and interviews that offer contemporary indigenous perspectives on the impact of industry on nature, issues surrounding national identity, and modern Canadian landscape painting.” Examining the table of contents, one would assume the 40-page section “Land vs Landscape” would be where one would find those contemporary indigenous perspectives. They are present there, comprising the whole of that section, but that section’s position in the book, 40 pages smack dab in the middle of it, physically expresses its centrality to the book’s raison d'etre. That raison d'etre is to express contemporary, often indigenous, perspectives, and from that central section of the book, those perspectives spread like dry rot throughout every corner and every bit of text (and roughly one-third of the book’s pages are comprised entirely of text). That text tends to excoriate the Group of Seven for patriotism, racism, and colonialism while sometimes lapsing into traditional art appreciation discussing composition, color usage, and how works were created.
Plenty of art books unfortunately have terrible text, the overwrought dross of an art history dissertation jazzed up with enough beautiful reproductions that no one bothers to actually read them. Magnetic North does not even have that going for it. The paper quality is unexpectedly terrible coming from Prestel, who I have always considered a publisher of the highest quality. 130g Schleipen Fly 06 is glorified printing paper, just thicker. Printing the Group of Seven’s paintings on matte paper, instead of on glossy art paper, makes the reproductions appear flat and muddy, words that I should never have to say about the work of Lawren Harris (words that have likely never in the history of art been said about the work of Lawren Harris). This gives what should be at least a visually impressive book a cheap feeling, not much better in quality than a print-on-demand book and making whoever pays the impressive retail price (US $60.00, CAN $79.00, GBP £45.00) feel like a sucker.
An art book with no redeeming qualities is a rare find. Yet, there is nothing to recommend in this book to anyone. The text is a revisionist look through a critical theory lens at the Group of Seven. The illustrations are muddy and cheaply printed. Magnetic North does not do justice to the artistic and cultural legacy of the Group of Seven.
March 15, 2026
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
An enjoyable read overall, though the Indigenous section in the middle was an absolute chore to get through because it focused almost entirely on film. I picked up this book because I was interested in paintings, as suggested by the title; I couldn’t care less about film. That section was a slog with no original commentary worth noting.
It would have been much better if the curator had included paintings by Alex Janvier or Cape Dorset art from the North, perhaps accompanied by an essay on the interplay between Indigenous art and the Group of Seven. For example, a comparative analysis of the Arctic as depicted by Cape Dorset artists versus Lawren Harris would have been fascinating. As it stands, that entire section could have been cut without losing much of value.
Aside - absolutely adore Lawren Harris and Emily Carr as a close second.
An enjoyable read overall, though the Indigenous section in the middle was an absolute chore to get through because it focused almost entirely on film. I picked up this book because I was interested in paintings, as suggested by the title; I couldn’t care less about film. That section was a slog with no original commentary worth noting.
It would have been much better if the curator had included paintings by Alex Janvier or Cape Dorset art from the North, perhaps accompanied by an essay on the interplay between Indigenous art and the Group of Seven. For example, a comparative analysis of the Arctic as depicted by Cape Dorset artists versus Lawren Harris would have been fascinating. As it stands, that entire section could have been cut without losing much of value.
Aside - absolutely adore Lawren Harris and Emily Carr as a close second.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews