A Like Vision

A Like Vision is a lavish celebration of the legacy of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Canada’s canonical landscape painters. The Group’s depiction of the rugged beauty of the Canadian landscape — from the coastal mountains of British Columbia to the north shore of Lake Superior, the villages of rural Quebec, and the rocky, windswept coves of Newfoundland — charged Canadians to experience their country in a bold new light and changed the face of Canadian art forever. Through their vigorous and expressive painterly style and vibrant colours, the Group of Seven significantly contributed to Canada’s sense of autonomy and identity as a modern state in the aftermath of the First World War.

Featuring three hundred full-colour images, A Like Vision includes a lead essay by Ian A.C. Dejardin, Executive Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and contributions by a host of artists, curators, and writers. Among them are Indigenous art historian and curator Gerald McMaster, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, novelists David Macfarlane and Jane Urquhart, painters John Hartman and Robert Houle, and Inuk writer Tarrilik Duffy.

One hundred years on from the Group’s first exhibition in 1920, A Like Vision is both a chance to review the Group’s legacy and a tribute to these giants of Canadian art and culture.