"Autumn," Franklin Carmichael, 1940.
Carmichael (1890-1945) was part of Canada's famous Group of Seven, an art movement dedicated to creating a uniquely Canadian art based on direct contact with nature.
Born into a middle-class family, Carmichael studied art both in Canada and in Europe, but with a group of his friends found it frustrating to attempt to address their land's wilderness with a European sensibility. Forming the Group of Seven, they modeled themselves after the sensibilities of Scandinavian painters, who in their words "started with nature rather than art." Confronting nature and depicting it with a fairly modernist style became a Group of Seven trademark, and the same holds true for Carmichael.
He painted a lot in watercolors, but also in oils, and supplemented his income with work as a commercial designer and printmaker.
Here we have an autumn landscape, representational and somewhat realistic, but instead of depicting the texture of the trees on the hills, it's just bands of color. But it gets the point across nicely.
He died young, of a heart attack, but he remains a significant figure in Canadian art history.
From the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg.
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