Arts & Culture

I ride the Yonge line every day and often look out the window as the train approaches Rosedale station to gaze at the Studio Building on Severn Street east of the subway tracks. It’s an understated Arts and Crafts beauty situated at an odd angle to the street to capture the best light, I suppose.

Commissioned by Lawren Harris, it once contained the studios of some of the members of The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson.  When the train whizzes by, I like to imagine which works might have been completed there. Perhaps some of the finishing touches to their depictions of war were made in that building.

Many future members of this iconic collective were hired as part of the War Art Program during the First World War.  A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley and Frank Johnston all cut their artistic teeth on the battlefields of Europe. 

You can see examples of their wartime work in Oliver Dean’s Canvas of War: Painting the Canadian Experience 1914-1945 , in Art or Memorial? The Forgotten Story of Canada’s War Art by Laura Brandon and in Heather Robertson's A Terrible Beauty: The Art of Canada at War.   Or visit the Canadian War Museum's virtual exhibit of Canadian war artists.