Arthur Lismer

1885-1969

Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. He was the only child who wanted to become an artist out of a family of six. At the age nine he was continually sketching and making cartoons. Later he attended the Sheffield Central High School, and at the age of thirteen he won a scholarship to study nights at the Sheffield School of Art. During the day he served his apprenticeship in the printing business. When he was fifteen he took the post as illustrator for the Sheffield Independent in addition to his schooling and apprenticeship. At the Sheffield School of Art he found the instruction almost dull and wanted to experiment more freely, but nevertheless he was receiving a thorough grounding in basic fundamentals of drawing, design, and general knowledge of the visual arts. Lismer completed his apprenticeship with the Eadon Engraving Company and also his scholarship course at the Sheffield School of Art with distinction.

After staying in Antwerp for a year and a half, where he attended Académie des Beaux-Arts, he then returned to Sheffield in 1907 where he opened his own business of pictorial publicity. He found it very hard to make ends meet but carried on for three years. Near the end of this three year period Lismer’s attentions gradually turned to Canada. He received encouraging reports from his friend William Broadhead who had gone out to Canada and found a job with the Grip Engraving Company. His interest intensified when several other men from Canadian engraving firms arrived in Sheffield in search of trained engravers. He was approached by a man from Rolph-Clarke-Stone, then Frederick Brigden and his father (Toronto Engraving Co.).

After some hesitation he made his decision to go to Canada where he reached Toronto in January of 1911. He was then hired by David Smith and Company but quit due to intolerable conditions. He ended up joining the Grip Engraving Company under Albert Robson, where he was introduced to his fellow employees including J.E.H. MacDonald, Tom Thomson, Frank H. Johnston, and others. He renewed his acquaintance with William Broadhead and met his friend Tom MacLean. It was Tom MacLean who invited Lismer to join the Arts and Letters Club. It was there that Lismer met Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson.

Lismer had been inspired by tales of Thomson and Broadhead after their canoe trip through many rivers and lakes ending along the Mississagi River and on to Bruce Mines. Lismer had listened keenly to their descriptions of sunsets, huge water falls, mountains, rapids, and soon longed to venture forth himself. He did his early sketching with Tom Thomson in and around Toronto. Thomson’s great feeling for the north country would help immensely Lismer’s understanding of a land he wanted to know more about. In 1912, Robson changed firms and went to Rous and Mann taking Carmichael, Johnston, Lismer, Varley and Thomson with him. In 1913 he received an invitation to spend part of September at Dr. MacCallum’s summer home at Go Home Bay in the Georgian Bay area. MacCallum had become a patron of Canadian artists interested in painting open country, bushlands and lakes. It was there that Lismer experienced for the first time a spiritual awakening towards the Canadian landscape.

In 1913, he had accepted an offer to teach summers in art for Ontario teachers under the directorship of G.A. Reid. The classes were held under the auspices of the Ontario College of Art. Money was scarce and it gave him a reliable income. Equally important, it introduced him to a role which was to take up more of his time as the years went by.

In May of 1914 Lismer made his first visit to Algonquin Park in the company of Tom Thomson. For three weeks they visited Ragged Lake, Smoke Lake, Wolf Lake and Crown Lake, lived in a pup tent and travelled by canoe. Lismer made several sketches. He then returned to Toronto to his job at Rous and Mann but in the autumn of that same year, He was back in the Park with his wife and daughter. They joined forces with A.Y. Jackson, Varley and Thomson. Many sketches were made that fall from which important canvases were produced. When Lismer returned to Toronto he did the large canvas which was then exhibited in the Royal Canadian Academy show and acquired by the National Gallery of Canada shortly afterwards.

In 1915, Lismer moved next door to J.E.H. MacDonald. During March of 1915 he visited Dr. MacCallum at Go Home Bay. In the fall the doctor commissioned J.E.H. MacDonald, Thomson and Lismer to paint decorative wall panels for the living room of the cottage. The wall space was measured and the artists went to work in the Studio Building that winter. In April of 1916 the panels were installed as a birthday surprise for Mrs. MacCallum. Lismer’s part included six panels. A.Y. Jackson completed the decoration in 1953 and in 1968 all the panels were given to the National Gallery of Canada by the then owners of the cottage.

In the late summer of 1916 Lismer departed with his family to Halifax where he became principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design. During his four year stay in Halifax, he also opened, for the first time, his Saturday morning art classes for high school and elementary school pupils. He gave art instruction as well to the handicapped. After enquiring from the National Gallery, Lismer received a commission from the Canadian War records in June of 1918, to paint the activities of the Canadian armed forces around Halifax. During this period he did several large canvases, several black chalk drawings, and about seventeen lithographs with scenes of ships and seaplanes. He also did many drawings and paintings apart from his War Records commission. In July of 1919, he exhibited fifty-three canvases at the Victoria School of Art and design.

In August he moved back to Toronto with his family in preparation to take over his duties of vice-principal of the Ontario College of Art, the job having been offered to him in April by G.A. Reid, principal. During this year Lismer was elected Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy. At a studio space Lismer and A.Y. Jackson found at the Studio Building, they continued painting War Records until October when Lismer took up his duties at the Ontario College of Art.

In the spring of 1920 however he joined Jackson, Harris, MacDonald and Dr. MacCallum on a trip to Algoma country. They travelled on the Algoma Central Railway in a special railway freight car fitted out with windows, lamps, bunks, stove, water-tank, sink and cupboards. Harris had made arrangements with the railroad on two previous trips for a special boxcar to the same region with Dr. MacCallum, J.E.H. MacDonald and Frank H. Johnston in mid-September of 1918 and again in the fall of 1919 with Jackson, MacDonald and Johnston. The boxcar A.C.R 10557 was in fact a studio on wheels. Lismer returned to Algoma in the spring and autumn of 1921 and the spring of 1924 and 1925. He also returned to Georgian Bay in 1920 with Varley and Dr. MacCallum. It was then that he did his first sketch for his large canvas ‘’ A September Gale, Georgian Bay’’. A larger study was made from the sketch and finally the canvas itself which was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada in 1926.

Lismer exhibited sixteen of his works in his first Group of Seven show at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1920. In 1922 he completed ‘’Isles of Spruce’’ from a sketch made at Sand Lake, Algoma in 1921. A reproduction of this work was made by Sampson-Matthews of Toronto, and in 1970, the Canadian Post Office Department issued a six cent stamp featuring this work to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Group of Seven. The stamp was reproduced by Ashton-Potter Ltd. of Toronto in 36, 000, 000 copies. Lismer did hundreds of sketches and drawings on his trips to Georgian Bay, Algoma, the Maritimes and around Toronto.

During these years he continued to teach at the Ontario College of Art but unable to implement all his teaching methods and concepts of discipline, he resigned as vice-principal of the College in 1927 although he continued with his duties as principal of the College’s summer school. The same year he was offered and accepted a post of educational supervisor of the Art Gallery of Toronto. In this capacity he was able to implement ideas on child and adult art education which he had begun to develop in Halifax. Later the Art Centre for Children was initiated. His responsibilities also required him to give informal gallery talks to thousands of visitors, study groups and members of the Gallery; classes for teachers from public and private schools and the setting up of reading and reference room facilities.

During the summers of 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930 he sketched in the Gaspé Peninsula, Rocky Mountains, McGregor Bay (at Georgian Bay), New-Brunswick and Nova Scotia. From his Rocky Mountain trip he did the canvas “Cathedral Mountain” which was acquired by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In March of 1932 under the auspices of the National Gallery of Canada, Lismer set out on a tour across Canada to deliver a number of lectures including “The necessity of Art”, “Art Appreciation”, “Art in Canada”, “Education Through Art”, “Art and the Child” and “Canadian Painting Today”. His tour was a great success. In 1932 he was invited to the New Educational Fellowship conferences in France and England and South Africa in 1934; United States in 1935 and 1936; Australia and New Zealand in 1937. Also in 1936-37, at the request of the government, he lectured to teachers and established children’s art classes in South Africa. At all these places during his free hours he invariably sketched. It was in South Africa that he used water colours extensively for the first time because they were more easily carried. In 1938-39 he was a visiting professor at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, where he taught four courses and devoted the balance of his time to visiting New-York City schools and colleges. It was at these schools and colleges that he studied the conceptions of art education. These trips took him further afield to Milwaukee and Iowa also to Massachusetts and New-Jersey. He spent long hours with Dr. Frederick Keppel discussing his findings. It was Dr. Keppel who had made possible a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to support Lismer’s Saturday classes and also for the Child Art Centre.

While at Columbia University he accepted a post in Ottawa at the National Gallery. He arrived there to take up his duties in October of 1939. Lismer’s plan was to set up a national art programme but the plan never fully realized. Then the outbreak of Second World War drastically reduced the activities of the Gallery, but Lismer gave lectures on “Brueghel”, “Goya”, Cézanne”, “Van Gogh” and lectures based on his 1932 tour but enriched by his travelling and teaching experiences. In 1940 he became Educational Supervisor for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In 1946 he was elected full member of the Royal Canadian Academy. He became Assistant Professor of the Department of Fine Arts at McGill University in 1948. For well over a decade Lismer and his wife spent about a month at long beach, B.C., using as his base Wickanninish Lodge.

In later years he exhibited his paintings at the Dominion Gallery, Mtl.; Laing Galleries, Tor.; Galerie Agnes Lefort; Galerie Martal, Mtl. and probably elsewhere. He was further honoured by a Canada Council Medal presented to him by the late George P. Vanier, Governor-General of Canada. Lismer died in 1969 at the age of eighty-three. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the National Gallery of Canada in May of 1969.

Collections:

- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
- Hart House, University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)
- The McMichael Conservation Collection (Kleinburg, ON)
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University (Kingston, ON)
- Museum London (London, ON)
- Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MN)
- University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, (Montreal. QC)
- Concordia University (Montreal. QC)
- The New Brunswick Museum (Saint-John, NB)
- Dalhousie Art Gallery, Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Firestone Art Collection (Ottawa, ON)

Affiliations:

- Arts and Letters Club (1911)
- Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy (1919)
- Group of Seven (1920)
- Royal Canadian Academy  (1946)