OAG’s Firestone Collection of Canadian Art Goes National with the National Arts Centre

Happy Group of Seven Day! On July 7, we reflect on the legacy of the Group of Seven – artists whose bold, vibrant paintings of the Canadian wilderness played a major role in shaping what came to be known as a distinctly Canadian style of art.

Active in the 1920s, the Group travelled extensively across Canada, sketching intuitively outdoors (en plein air) to capture their immediate impressions. Carrying portable painting kits—even in winter—they captured the light, texture, and atmosphere of the landscape in vivid colours and bold brushstrokes.

Works by members of the Group continue to inspire generations of artists, and their legacy lives on through the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art (FCCA), housed at the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG). OAG is committed to making this important collection accessible to audiences across the country through travelling exhibitions, loans, and partnerships—like this new collaboration with the National Arts Centre (NAC) for the 2025–26 Popular Music and Variety season. This marketing campaign brings iconic works from the FCCA to new audiences and contexts, sharing this remarkable collection with a wider audience.

With over 100 shows a year, the NAC’s Popular Music and Variety series brings together emerging and established artists from across Canada and beyond, in jazz, hip hop, pop, blues, and more. Showcasing new images throughout the year, the series’ poster campaign celebrates Canadian seasons and landscapes with the historical work of Anne Savage (Banff, 1949), Arthur Lismer (Georgian Bay Pines, 1962), and Franz Johnston (Algoma Landscape, 1923).

Group of Seven founding member Franz Johnston was particularly known for his wintery landscapes. Algoma, the subject of his work Algoma Landscape (1923), was a very popular painting spot for the group. Here, Johnston captures the crisp blue sky on a bright, chilly Canadian winter day, expressing a sense of stillness after a fresh snowfall.

Arthur Lismer took part in the Group of Seven’s regular sketching trips to Georgian Bay, where the contrast between the lush forest and the starkly exposed Canadian Shield captured his imagination. In his later work, Lismer began to concentrate on detailed foregrounds and tightly framed close-ups of vegetation and land formations.

While the Group of Seven was exclusively male, women such as Anne Savage shaped Canada’s modern art movement in vital ways.  Savage was a member of the Montreal-based Beaver Hall Group and taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts (now the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity) in the summer of 1949 – the same year she painted Banff (1949). This work, and Arthur Lismer’s Georgian Bay Pines (1962) are currently on view in the Firestone Gallery as part of the exhibition Visions and Views at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

Experience the Group of Seven, and other amazing Canadian works, at the Ottawa Art Gallery through the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, a significant art collection that spans the modern period displayed in OAG’s the Firestone Gallery.