Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald

A show by the last member of the Group of Seven opens in Winnipeg, two months late, as an important centenary passes largely unheralded.

by

The same day in March that the Winnipeg Art Gallery finished hanging its largest-ever exhibition by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, the only Western Canadian member of the Group of Seven, the gallery closed indefinitely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The works are up,” gallery director Stephen Borys said in an interview last week. “The labels are up.”

But visitors could not enter the building.

Today, two months later than scheduled, visitors can view Into the Light, which showcases works by FitzGerald, billed as “Manitoba’s first truly modern painter.”

The sudden turn of events came last week after Premier Brian Pallister unexpectedly announced that Manitoba art galleries and museums could reopen this week. The Winnipeg Art Gallery is the first major public art gallery in Canada to open during the pandemic.

Free days were scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday for frontline workers – police, medical personnel, transit drivers and others. Then, starting today, the general public is invited to check out the exhibitions, including the FitzGerald show. Expect hand-sanitizer stations, close monitoring of crowd sizes and requirements for visitors to stay two metres away from each other.

Just last week, Borys was saying his most optimistic scenario was a reopening in early July with the FitzGerald exhibition to run until the end of August, when many loaned works would need to be returned. So the premier’s announcement was a surprise.

The show, which will close Sept. 7, includes more than 200 paintings and drawings that explore FitzGerald’s early 20th-century prairie scenes and his St. James neighbourhood in Winnipeg. There are also still lifes, abstract paintings from his sojourns in British Columbia during the 1940s, and several erotic drawings.

The exhibition marks two anniversaries. One is the eve of the 100th anniversary of FitzGerald’s first solo show in 1921 at what is now the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The other is the centenary of the founding of the Group of Seven. Its first exhibition was held May 7, 1920 in Toronto.

Borys concedes that many visitors will wander through the FitzGerald show without realizing he was briefly part of the Group. The gallery’s website, however, details his involvement.

FitzGerald, who lived from 1890 to 1956, was invited to join the Group in 1932, only a few months before it disbanded. Although he did not embrace the Group’s trademark landscape style, Borys speculates the Ontario-centric group may have wanted a Westerner in the fold to be perceived as more national.

While most of the Group spent time in British Columbia and painted rugged mountain scenes, the Prairies were ignored by all but A.Y. Jackson. 

So, while FitzGerald is something of an asterisk, this joint project of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., is the only major show in Canada this year to honour the Group or any of its members. The McMichael exhibited Into the Light from Oct. 12 to Feb. 17, before the pandemic closures.

However, a major international exhibition involving mainly Group paintings is scheduled to open Sept. 25 in Frankfurt. Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-1940 is curated by the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

Within Canada, meanwhile, several commercial galleries, as well as a number of small public spaces in Ontario, have mounted, or at least planned, Group-themed exhibitions. 

Borys says political issues surrounding the Group may have dissuaded major galleries from organizing centenary shows. The Group is perceived by some as a politically incorrect collection of white men who largely portrayed Canada as uninhabited wilderness with nary a sign of the Indigenous people who have lived there for thousands of years.

The National Gallery of Canada had planned a small exhibition on graphic design by Group members, but it has been postponed.

Despite the lack of centenary exhibitions, the Group still retains high visibility in Ontario. Both the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario devote considerable space in their permanent galleries to its artists. Regional Ontario galleries also feature them prominently.

But Western Canada was never as enamoured with the Group. Why? The catalogue for The Group of Seven in Western Canada, which toured nationally from 2002 to 2004, offers some reasons.

Early Group paintings, even from British Columbia, were sold mainly to private and public buyers in Central Canada and were rarely exhibited in the West before the Second World War, the catalogue notes. It says the Lawren Harris painting Untitled (Mountains Near Jasper) at Saskatoon’s Mendel Art Gallery (now the Remai Modern) was, at that time, his “only large mountain painting from the 1920s or 1930s in any public art collection west of Ontario.”

This lack of exposure meant few Group paintings, even of the Rockies, were available for artists in the West to study. Consequently, they developed along different paths and audiences adopted other interests.

FitzGerald’s evolution was certainly unlike other Group alumni, although, like Harris, he embraced abstraction in his later years.

Throughout his career, FitzGerald stuck close to home, mainly painting Manitoba scenes. He is as Manitoban as they come and, as Borys points out, is not as well known in other parts of Canada. Perhaps that explains why no other galleries have chosen to display Into the Light. ■ 

Into the Light is open to the general public from May 7 to Sept. 7, 2020. A video of the show can be seen here.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.

WAG-Qaumajuq RGB LB.jpg

Winnipeg Art Gallery | Qaumajuq

300 Memorial Blvd, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 1V1

204-786-6641

please enable javascript to view

Visit Website

Tues to Sun 11 am - 5 pm, Fri til 9 pm