A.Y. Jackson (Alexander Young Jackson)

1882-1974

Born in Montreal, Quebec, his interest in art was stirred through the activities of his brother Harold, a lithographer. A.Y. Jackson attended the Prince Albert Public School in Montreal until he was 12; then he started work as an office boy for a lithographing company. He sketched during his free moments usually making copies of drawings from newspapers. Later his boss saw some of these drawings and placed him in the art department. Jackson worked there for six years then got a job as a designer for a printing house. Later, he worked with a photo-engraving house, then a lithographing firm. He attended the Monument National four nights a week and visited occasionally the Art Gallery in Montreal. He also attended art classes under William Brymner.

At the age of 23, he worked his passage to Europe with his brother Harry. They visited many museums in Paris and spent a short time with Clarence Gagnon and Eddy Boyd who had taken classes under William Brymner in Montreal. They returned to Montreal where Jackson spent some time at Hemmingford, Quebec, before going on to the U.S.A. where he studied at The Art Institute of Chicago, nights, while working with a firm of designers in the day-time. By 1907 he had earned enough money from his day work to study in Paris. He arrived there in September and enrolled in the Académie Julian where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens for six months. He then travelled to Italy with others where they visited galleries in Rome, Florence and Venice. They returned to France and Jackson painted a canvas at Etaples which was hung in the Paris Salon.  He left France when his funds were low and returned to Canada in 1910. During this period Jackson’s paintings were in the tradition of the French Impressionists. Then the work of Canadian artists Maurice Cullen and J.W. Morrice led him further in the discoveries of snow and other elements of Canadian subject matter which were to become an integral part of his work throughout his life. He worked again at a photo-engraving and saved enough money to return to France with Albert H. Robinson in 1911. Jackson learned much from Robinson. In December of that year Robinson returned to Canada while Jackson stayed on in France.

He travelled again around Europe before returning to Montreal where he exhibited jointly with Randolph Hewton at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Their exhibition was not a financial success but Jackson however did sell some sketches through a Montreal art dealer not long afterwards. He went to sketch with Hewton in Emileville, Quebec; one of his canvases which he almost scraped off, “Morning after Sleet” was saved by Hewton who traded Jackson a clean canvas for it. Ten years later Hewton entered it in the Spring Exhibition of the Art Association of Montreal, on behalf of Jackson, where it won the Jessie Dow Prize and was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada the same year.

When Jackson was still at Emileville he received a letter from a J.E.H. MacDonald of Toronto who wanted to purchase his “Edge of the Maple Wood” on behalf of a third party, Lawren Harris. Jackson sold the picture and later met MacDonald when he stopped off at Toronto on his way to Kitchener, Ontario. In Toronto he also met, through MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick H. Varley and other members of the Arts and Letters Club who were employed by the Grip Engraving Company as commercial artists. From Kitchener Jackson went to Georgian Bay to sketch and was visited there by Dr. James McCallum a friend of Lawren Harris. McCallum, who had a summer home at the Bay, offered Jackson a place to work in the Studio Building which McCallum and Lawren Harris were having built for Canadian artists in Toronto. McCallum further guaranteed Jackson’s expenses for a year. In the meantime Jackson was invited to stay at McCallum’s summer home. On his return to Toronto Jackson stayed at Lawren Harris’s studio in Toronto until the Studio Building was completed. There one day he was introduced to Tom Thomson. Thomson had also worked for the Grip Engraving Company. They ended up sharing a studio in the Studio Building. They moved into their new surroundings in January of 1914.

Thomson had soon inspired Jackson to visit Algonquin Park in February of 1914. Later J.E.H. MacDonald and J.W.Beatty joined him for ten days during which time they sketched the country. In the summer of that year, Jackson and J.W. Beatty were commissioned by the Canadian Northern Railway to produce pictures of Western Canada useful for advertising purposes. When he returned from this trip Jackson went directly to Algonquin Park where he joined Thomson.

In the spring of 1915, Jackson enlisted as a private in the 60th Batallion. While with them, he was wounded and invalided to England. When he went back to the front, it was as a Lieutenant with the Canadian War Records. In 1918, he found himself home in Canada and sent to Halifax, where he kept painting anything of war interest. As a war artist, he created one of the finest collections of war paintings Canada possesses. Many of those works are now in the National Gallery of Canada Collection and the Canadian War Museum Collection. Jackson was discharged from the Army in April of 1919 and returned to Toronto. His “Terre Sauvage” was exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy show in Montreal and became the subject of controversy. In the Autumn of 1919 he went to Algoma with J.E.H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris and Frank H. Johnston. The same year he became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy. The following year he went to Georgian Bay where he made many sketches. He ran short of panels and used the reverse side of those he had painted on.

On May 7th, 1920 the first exhibition of the Group of Seven opened at the Art Gallery of Toronto. The Group had been formed earlier by Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, Frank Carmichael, Frank H. Johnston, F.H. Varley and A.Y. Jackson. Tom Thomson had been drowned in Canoe Lake in 1917 or he would have certainly been amongst the original members. Contributing to the Group’s exhibition were three guests exhibitors from Montreal, Randolph Hewton, Robert Pilot and Albert H. Robinson; the exhibition was received with great controversy. The group continued to exhibit until 1931. Each exhibition of the Group was met with great protest from the critics. Editorials appeared about ‘Art gone mad’ and others demanded ‘a return to sanity in Canadian Art.’ At the time of the Wembley Exhibition held in North-West London in 1924, the National Gallery of Canada – always good friends with the Group – had, despite the protests of the Royal Canadian Academy, included a number of paintings from the Group. The Tate Gallery in London ended up purchasing a canvas from A.Y. Jackson making him the only living Canadian artist to be represented in the British National Collection, J.W. Morrice, who was represented there, having died recently.

In July of 1927 Jackson went to the Arctic on the steamer Beothic with Dr. Frederick Banting. They sketched at many areas of the Arctic and when Jackson came back his sketches were exhibited at the Art gallery of Toronto. Jackson took a second trip to the Arctic with Lawren Harris in 1930 and when they returned home an exhibition of their Arctic sketches took place at the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition was also showed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Gallery of Toronto. A.Y. Jackson resigned from the Royal Canadian Academy in 1932 as a protest to the Academy’s unsympathetic view to the younger artists. His decision was also due to the actions of the Academy to decry the National Gallery of Canada over the Wembley exhibition of 1924 and the fact that the executives continued to cling to the rigid traditionalism.

In 1933 the remaining original members of the Group of Seven decided that they should disband. Frank H. Johnston had left the group in 1922; J.E.H. MacDonald had died in 1932; Arthur Lismer and Franklin Carmichael had become involved in teaching; A.J. Casson who had replaced Johnston, was involved in improving graphic arts; Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald and Edwin Holgate had just become members, but the impetus and feeling of initial discovery of the land was ebbing out. Frederick H. Varley had turned to portrait. Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson were the only original members that were relatively free. A new group, The Canadian Group of Painters, was formed in 1933; it included a membership of over forty. Jackson was a founding member of this group.

In the following decades A.Y. Jackson continued to travel to virtually every corner of Canada. He also illustrated many books. From 1943 to 1949, he taught at the Banff Summer School of Fine Arts. He also taught at the Ontario College of Art. In 1953 a large exhibition of his works took place at the National Gallery of Canada. A.Y. Jackson had his headquarters in The Studio Building, Toronto until 1955 when he moved to Manotick, Quebec. There was a feeling that his departure was the closing of a door on the first great important movement in Canadian Art. After a stroke in 1968 he moved to Kleinburg where he lived on the site of what is now  the McMichael Conservation Collection. He died in Kleinburg at age 91.

Collections:

- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Québec, QC)
- Musée d’Art de Joliette (Joliette, QC)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC)
- Museum London (London, ON)
- Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
- Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton, ON)
- Tate Gallery (London, England)
- The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, ON)
- McGill University (Montreal, QC)
- Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
- Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MN)
- Victoria University  (Toronto, ON)
- Art House, University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)
- University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)
- London Public Library and Art Museum (London, ON)
- University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK)
- Women’s Art Association (Kitchener, ON)
- Edmonton Museum of Arts (Edmonton, AB)
- St-Petersbourg Art Gallery (St-Petersbourg, Russia)
- Wellington Gallery (Wellington,  New Zealand)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Firestone Art Collection (Ottawa, ON)

Affiliations:

- Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy (1914)
- Royal Candian Academy (1919-1933, 1953)
- Ontario Society of Artist (1915)
- Group of Seven (1920)
- Canadian Group of Painters (1933)
- R.S.A.