2020 is the centenary of the founding of the Beaver Hall Group.
​Let's celebrate their contribution to  Canadian Modernism!

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THE BEAVER HALL GROUP AND ITS LEGACY
​

Have a look inside!
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​​THE WOMEN OF BEAVER HALL: CANADIAN MODERNIST PAINTERS

Finely researched ... Unencumbered by abstract jargon ... lavish colour plates [which] testify to the extraordinary range and abilities of the artists. 
(Linda Morra, Canadian Literature, Autumn 2007, Issue CL194).​

Nora Collyer    Emily Coonan    Prudence Heward    Mabel Lockerby
Henrietta Mabel May    Kathleen Morris    Lilias Torrance Newton    
Sarah Robertson    Anne Savage    Ethel Seath


Hard copies or ebooks: Jargon free. Perfect for students and scholars of Canadian art.
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​ARCHIVES:

1. Art Gallery of Greater Vancouver: The Discerning Eye: The George & Lola Kidd Collection, Part 2

August 26, 2005 to September 25, 2005

Given the up-coming release of The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters it is of interest to note that The Blue Cape by Henrietta Mabel May is on prominent display at The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. That May would be part of the Kidd collection is to be expected since she spent the last years of her life in Vancouver. This is the second exhibition honouring the George and Lola Kidd bequest to the gallery. You will find a number of works by Canadian artists such as Alan Edson, A.J. Casson, W.J. Phillips, Carl Schaefer, and Horatio Walker. Not to be missed are the landscapes painted in and around Victoria and the West Coast, sculptures by Joe Fafard, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor- Côté, and the local Elza Mayhew. Rounding out the show are key pieces from the Kidd print collection, including two very fine etchings by James McNeil Whistler.

2. Book Launch and Exhibition

DAVID MIRVISH & DUNDURN PRESS

INVITE YOU TO A BOOK LAUNCH 
TO CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION OF
THE WOMEN OF BEAVER HALL
CANADIAN MODERNIST PAINTERS
BY EVELYN WALTERS
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2005 6-8 PM
LAUNCHING IN CONJUNCTION WITH 
CATHY DALEY WORKS ON PAPER
DAVID MIRVISH BOOKS ON ART
596 MARKHAM STREET TORONTO 
416-531-9975
WWW. DMBOOKS.COM

3. Verity:

WOMEN, WORTH & WELLNESS
SERIES AT VERITY
Nancy Griffin invites you to a celebration of women artists
Evelyn Walters will be on hand to sign copies of
The Women of Beaver Hall
Canadian Modernist Painters
VERITY
111 Queen Street East (at Jarvis Street)
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
6:00-8:00 pm
DUNDURN BLACKMONT CAPITAL VERITY

4. Art Gallery of Ontario: Favourites: Your Choices from Our Collection

Check out the Art Gallery of Ontario's current exhibition: Favourites: Your Choices From Our Collection. (Until March 12, 2006). Have a look at Torrance Newton's Nude in a Studio from the Thomson collection. In 1934 she challenged Canadian prudery by attempting to show it at The Art Gallery of Toronto--- now the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her submission was perceived to be doubly offensive because the painter was a women. Reacting to the Gallery's refusal, Donald W. Buchanan in The Canadian Forum decried the "perverse logic that pervades the miasma of the censoring minds":

… simply paint a model naked in a studio, let the figure be not veiled in a wistful aurora, or let her be not poised alone in a wilderness of rocks and distant forests, but be standing solid and fleshly, like a Renoir maid-servant, and then taboo --- you are out and in the basement. ( Donald W. Buchanan, "Naked Ladies", The Canadian Forum Vol XV, No.175 , (Toronto, April 1935).

5. Agnes Etherington Art Centre

If you are in the Kingston, Ontario, area, you might want to stop in at The Agnes Etherington Art Centre…watch for the sign along the 401. The exhibition, (until April 2, 2006), Looking Back, is a selection of works by artists who worked in the Kingston area… a history of Canadian art from a local perspective.

You will see nineteenth century topographical sketches by British military officers who were stationed in British North America, portraits by early itinerant painters-for-hire, paintings by residents such as William Sawyer and Daniel Fowler, and twentieth century works by André Biéler, Grant Macdonald, Lilias Torrance Newton (of the Beaver Hall Group), Goodridge Roberts, and Frederick Varley.

6. BioLibrary

Evelyn Walters will be discussing her book The Women of Beaver Hall on BioLibrary with Carolyn Weaver:
“Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Paintings,” by Evelyn Walters, is reviewed and spotlights the Montreal-based group.
First Aired: December 7, 2006
Wednesday, May 17, 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Thursday, May 18, 8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.
Saturday, May 20, 7:00 a.m. - 7:30 a.m.
Toronto: Rogers Cable (channels 10 or 63)

7. VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
75 Years of Collecting British Masters, Group of Seven and Pop Icons
Feb 4 to May 14, 2006.
You can explore selections from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection in this web-based celebratory publication. The first of four exhibitions, these works are documented with images, in-depth catalogue entries, artist biography, bibliography, exhibition history, correspondence and other historical documents. Look for Autumn in the Laurentians by Beaver Hall's Henrietta Mabel May who spent her last years in Vancouver.

8. GLENBOW MUSEUM

Variations: Holgate, Group of Seven & Contemporaries.

Not to be missed at the Glenbow Museum from March 18 to June 4, 2006. This three-part exhibition includes Edwin Holgate: Canadian Painter, travelling from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art and Society in Canada 1913-1950, travelling from the National Gallery of Canada, and Beyond the Group of Seven, works from the Glenbow's own collection.

Edwin Holgate (1892-1977) was one of the original nineteen members of the Beaver Hall Group. Best known for his nudes and portraits, he was invited to join the Group of Seven in 1929. This first major retrospective features nearly 130 drawings, watercolours, prints and book illustrations.

You might choose to see the exhibition on April 18, 2006 when as part of its Variations Film Series, the Glenbow will be showing By Woman's Hand . (12 p.m.) This 1995 National Film Board documentary pays tribute to Prudence Heward, Sarah Robertson and Anne Savage, three prominent members of the Women of Beaver Hall. The dramatization captures the spirit of the times through interviews with family members, exemplary works, and their individual passions, sorrows, loves, and friendships.

9. TOM THOMSON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY


Skiing at Blue Mountain? Take a short trip over to Owen Sound, Ontario, and visit the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery where you will find the third largest collection of Thomson's drawings and paintings as well as landscapes by the other members of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries. The gallery's over 1,500 works include current Canadian painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and crafts.


The exhibition, The Painted Country,Treasures from the Permanent Collection,(Friday, February 3, to Monday, June 12, 2006) features art from various periods, movements and locales, including paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff, David Milne, Maxwell Bates, Bobs Haworth and Beaver Hall's Sarah Robertson. And don't miss the most recent acquisitions --- a winter landscape by George Thomson (Tom's brother) and an oil painting by Grace Coombs.

10. MASTERWORKS  
July 20, 2006 TVO 10 pm

Don't miss By Woman's Hand, the 1995 National Film Board documentary, which pays tribute to Prudence Heward, Sarah Robertson and Anne Savage, three prominent members of the Beaver Hall Group. The dramatization captures a bit of their lives and the spirit of the times through interviews with family members and exemplary works.

11. PRESS RELEASE

New Book Examines Canada's Hidden Treasures: The Women of Beaver Hall.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, October 30, 2005. In many ways the witty and sophisticated Lilias Torrance Newton was ahead of her time. She married on condition that she could spend three months of the year studying in Paris, she divorced when divorce was frowned upon, raised a child on her own, and supported herself as a portrait painter in a traditionally male profession.

Lilias Torrance Newton is but one of the ten Montreal women, contemporaries of the Group of Seven, who are the focus of The Women Of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters. Whether it was Lilias Torrance Newton, the reclusive Emily Coonan, who suddenly withdrew from public at the height of her career, or Anne Savage, who decided against marrying A.Y. Jackson, their private lives often attracted more attention than their paintings.

Like the Group of Seven, the Beaver Hall women were Modernists struggling against the Victorian tastes of the time, but unlike the Group of Seven who became Canada's most recognized artists, the women were ignored and their paintings left to gather dust in the vaults of our galleries.

Evelyn Walters brings to light the work of a group who, despite social mores and their often prestigious backgrounds, forged a place for women in the male-dominated art world. Creating an identifiable Canadian art did not much concern them. They were more interested in new techniques and in shifting emphasis from landscape imagery to the personal aspects of expression. Many embraced the Quebec Francophone tradition that landscapes include signs of habitation: the picture could be devoid of man himself, but not of his tools, buildings or other imprints of civilization. For the most part the paintings are small in scale, depict tranquil country scenes, and combine both modernist and traditional styles.

The over sixty-five colour plates gleaned from galleries and private collections make this hard-cover book a work of art in itself and a must-have for every library. As a reference, it is arranged alphabetically by artist, with biographies, exhibition lists, endnotes, and a bibliography. Its readable style is directed to the aficionado and scholar alike.

With an increasing number of retrospective exhibitions, soaring prices at auction, and the upcoming release of The Women of Beaver Hall, Canada is at last discovering another of its hidden treasures.

About the author:

Evelyn Walters' expertise on the Beaver Hall Group is an outgrowth of her 1990 doctoral thesis on Canadian women and from research for a personal art collection. After teaching in France and Montreal, she recently moved to Toronto where she has been actively involved in the Canadian art scene.

12. McMICHAEL GALLERY

EDWIN HOLGATE
June 24 to September 17, 2006

For an authentic Canadian experience, plan to spend an afternoon this summer at the McMichael gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario.

The Edwin Holgate exhibition. Best known for his nudes and portraits, Holgate was one of the founders of the Beaver Hall Group and a member of the Group of Seven. This first major retrospective features nearly 130 drawings, watercolours, prints and book illustrations.
The thirteen exhibition galleries. The McMichael's permanent collection consists of almost 6,000 artworks by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, First Nations, Inuit and other artists who have contributed to Canada’s artistic heritage.
The surroundings. Built of fieldstone and hand-hewn logs, the McMichael is situated amid 100 acres of serene conservation land. Through a network of outdoor paths and hiking trails visitors can enjoy views of the densely wooded Humber River Valley, discover outdoor sculptures and explore the McMichael Cemetery where six Group of Seven members have been laid to rest.

13. FOR MRS DALLOWAY

Tom Thompson Memorial Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario
Floral Studies from the Permanent Collection
Friday, June 30, 2006 to Sunday, September 24, 2006

This exhibition features a selection of rarely seen paintings from the Permanent Collection, particularly floral still lifes. All are by women artists, many from the 1950s and 1960s. Some would be called amateurs, others were celebrated painters. Hester Currie Andrew, Kate Andrew, Molly Lamb Bobak, Eva Bradshaw, Grace Coombs, Rita Cowley, Jean Dawson, Mary Legate, Eleanor Lochead, Isobel Milne, Gisele Osgood, Ann Rogers and Ethel Seath are featured. Many of the frames and supports on these paintings convey the aesthetics of earlier times.

14. A TRIBUTE TO THE ARTISTS AND THE BUILDERS

The town of Cowansville in Quebec's picturesque Eastern Townships should be a popular destination this summer for Beaver Hall fans. Nearby on Lake Memphremagog was Strawberry Hill, Nora Collyer's summer home, a frequent gathering place for her painter friends. Prudence Heward also had a connection to the area through her sister Honour who had a country house near Knowlton. And the locals will tell you stories about Heward's audacious nephew --- Heward Grafftey--- who served Brome-Missisquoi as their Conservative MP for many years.

From June 17 to October 9, 2006 Cowansville is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Cowansville Art Centre with an exhibition of the Bruck-Lee collection dating from 1891-1980. Look for paintings by Nora Collyer, Prudence Heward, Kathleen Morris, Sarah Roberston, Anne Savage, Ethel Seath and AY Jackson. Of special interest to collectors is Collyer's Foster Village. This sketch served as the basis for the larger Country Village, which recently sold at Joyner Waddington's spring auction for the record-breaking price of $92,000.

Information 
225, rue Principale 
Cowansville (Québec) 
J2K 1J4 
Phone: 450-266-4058 

15. BEAVER HALL COVERAGE

Forgive the pun, but look at the cover of Sotheby's May 2006 Catalogue ---Important Canadian Art. This is a first for a Beaver Hall woman painter. Henrietta Mabel May's Knitting is one of the 186 lots offered in the auction and well deserves the special attention.

And kudos to Power Financial Corp for the art in their annual reports. The 124-page 2005 Annual Report has Lilias Torrance Newton's Self-portrait on the cover and includes 21 pictures of famous Canadian paintings depicting women. Kathleen Morris's Hitching Posts can be found in their 2004 Annual Report which featured Canadian paintings of Montreal.

16. HOT CANADIAN ART MARKET ON A COLD NIGHT IN TORONTO

by Evelyn Walters

TORONTO, ONTARIO, November 25, 2005. Many of us trudged through Toronto's snow storm Thursday night to attend Heffel's auction of Canadian art at the elegant Park Hyatt hotel. Perhaps elated by the day's surge in the stock market, buyers were out in full force, breaking 17 records for art sold at auction.

We espied Ken Thomson's man, David Loch, his ear to the phone throughout much of the evening. Undoubtedly, Thomson was the winner of the top prize, Maurice Cullen's The Bird Shop, first time on the market since 1923, for which he paid the record price of $1,495,000.


We are reminded that Cullen was a respected teacher of the Women of Beaver Hall at the Art Association of Montreal and were delighted to see Kathleen Morris's Moving Snow, Berthierville (estimate $70-90,000) break its record at $149,500.


Over the past five years, prices for Beaver Hall paintings have been spiraling upward, a trend that was confirmed in Thursday's auction when all exceeded their estimates. Nora Collyer's Rural Home, Charlevoix, Quebec (estimate $3-4,000) sold for $6,325, Prudence Heward's Near Cowansville, Quebec (estimate $12-15,000) sold for $27,600, and another by Kathleen Morris, A Sunny Day (estimate $12-15,000), sold for $18,400.

In the end, it was an evening of broken records. Heffel's broke their earlier record of total Canadian Fine Art sales at auction by bringing in $12.2-million, well above Sotheby's $8,372,250 earlier in the week.

17. TEMPTED BY THE BULL MARKET IN CANADIAN ART?

by Evelyn Walters

TORONTO, December 16, 2005. A Paul Kane for $5.06 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for Canadian art. A Maurice Cullen for $1.495 million, five times its high-end estimate. A Kathleen Morris for $149,500, another Beaver Hall breaking a record.

These are but a few examples of the hot Canadian art market, and it's getting hotter. According to Anthony L. Westbridge, compiler of the 2006 Canadian Art Sales Index, t otal sales were a phenomenal $39.877 million, up 17.26% or almost $6 million over the previous year! And don't let the prices intimidate you: there is plenty of choice in the four-figure category. A painting or two might be more pleasant to look at than your monthly portfolio statement.

Canada's three largest auction houses --- Heffel, Joyner Waddington, and Sotheby's --- will hold their next semi-annual sales of Canadian art in May, 2006. Ready to jump in? No other deal closes more quickly. All done in less than two minutes. You'll experience the suspense of the bid, the thrill of the win, or the disappointment of the loss. There will be a variety of auctioneers and venues: Toronto's hometown boys from Joyner Waddington at their large Bathurst Street headquarters, Vancouver's affable Heffel brothers at Yorkville's sumptuous Park Hyatt Hotel or Vancouver's Sheraton Wall Centre, and Sotheby's dashing import from New York at Ritchies on King Street East.

And while waiting to bid, you'll be entertained by a motley assemblage of consignors, collectors, aficionados, and the Who's Who. Look for the billionaire collector with his bidder seated discretely at a distance, a Bay Street financier dropping $650,000. for an office-wall picture, an art dealer surreptitiously passing out business cards or updating clients on his BlackBerry. You might be distracted by the media cameras or by a bevy of beauties at the telephones while you peer at the large-screen slide show of some of the best Canadian art currently on offer.

As the drama unfolds expect the unexpected: a speakerphone call to the ninety-something artist whose work has just sold for $920,000, possibly more than he earned in a lifetime of painting; the applause when another record is broken; or necks craning to identify a mysterious bidder who has just made the biggest purchase of the evening and is about to disappear into the night.

Now if you are tempted to enter the market not just for the pleasure of looking at a painting that for some inexplicable reason appeals to you, but also for the possible satisfaction of seeing your investment multiply, a few cautionary measures might be in order.

18. EDWIN HOLGATE

October 6 to January 7, 2007

If you missed it in Calgary, this travelling exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is now at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. Edwin Holgate (1892-1977) was one of the original nineteen members of the Beaver Hall Group and a member of the Group of Seven. This first major retrospective features nearly 150 works ---paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints, book illustrations and archival photographs. See Glenbow Museum

19. Evelyn Walters will be the guest speaker at a luncheon hosted by the Women's Art Association of Canada on Wednesday, February 14, 2007.

Evelyn Walters will discuss her book, The Women of Beaver Hall, Canadian Modernist Painters, and the many challenges this overlooked group of Montreal artists faced in securing an important place in the history of Canadian art. A question and answer session will follow the presentation.

The event will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Women's Art Association, 23 Prince Arthur Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.
For further information, please call the Women's Art Association at 416-922-2060.

20. EDWIN HOLGATE: MASTER OF THE HUMAN FIGURE

February 11, 2007 - April 15, 2007

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery
703 Queen Street
Fredericton
New Brunswick

Edwin Holgate (1892- 1947) was one of the original nineteen members of the Beaver Hall Group. Best known for his nudes and portraits, he was invited to join the Group of Seven in 1929.

This exhibition explores, in chronological order, the many aspects of the production of this versatile artist, who has been a portraitist, a painter of the human figure, landscapist, printmaker, book illustrator, war artist, muralist, and teacher. Although his subjects were traditional, Holgate sought a modern way of interpreting them. Inspired by the great modern French artist Cézanne, he focused above all on form, structure, volume, and colour to give visual impact and expression to his work.

Holgate was a veteran of both World Wars, and his wartime experiences held an important place in his life and his memories. The exhibition includes canvases depicting Canada’s Second World War preparations at the Sorel and Halifax shipbuilding docks, which were ports-of-call for warships. As a government war artist he was sent, in 1943, to southeast England, where he captured the daily 
activities of officers at Royal Canadian Air Force bases in sketches and paintings. At the end of the war, back in Montreal, he felt less at home in the city’s art community. In 1946 he and his wife Frances withdrew from the urban bustle and moved to Morin Heights in the Laurentians, where he continued to paint until a few years before his death in 1977, at the age of eighty-five.

Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

21. THE BEAVER HALL GROUP OF WOMEN PAINTERS

April 26 - 28, 2007
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff
1200 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The Walter Klinkhoff Gallery is proud to host this non-selling exhibition which features a selection of works by the women of Canada's innovative Beaver Hall Group. The paintings are predominantly on loan from private collections, but also from the permanent collections of the McCord Museum and Power Corporation of Canada. Organized by Bishop's University Graduate student Mary Trudel, the primary objective of the exhibition is to raise funds in support of The Auxiliary of the Montreal Chest Institute.

Vernissage on Wednesday April 25th, from 5 to 8 pm. Tickets are $100 each. Exhibition catalogues $20 each (complimentary with ticket purchase). All proceeds from the sale of tickets and catalogues go to The Auxiliary of the Montreal Chest Institute.

To donate independently, please send your cheque made out to The Auxiliary of the Montreal Chest Institute care of the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery.

22. BEAVER HALL WOMEN PAINTERS

April 21st, 2007
Bishop's University Knowlton Campus
99 chemin de Knowlton
Lac Brome, Quebec

A highlight on the spring calendar this year is a first-class art exhibit at the Bishop’s University Campus in Knowlton on Saturday, April 21. This unique show will feature over 35 works from private collections by the Beaver Hall Hill group [sic] of Canadian women painters.

In an era when women artists were left out of the mainstream world of professional art, the Beaver Hall Group was the first Canadian artists association in which women played a central role. Several of the group exhibited in the United States and England with Canada’s all-male Group of Seven.

Many of the paintings shown will come from the Eastern Townships and will have an Eastern Townships “bent”. The exhibition will be hung by Conrad Graham, Curator of Montreal’s McCord Museum. From Knowlton, the exhibit will be transported to Montreal where it will form the core of an even larger collection on display at the Galerie Walter Klinkhoff from April 25 through April 28.

Tickets for the evening are $50 per person, with all profits going to the purchase of additional medical equipment for the BMP Hospital.

Those interested in attending should call the Foundation office at 450-266-5548 for tickets.

23. ArtChat: BEAVER HALL WOMEN

Sun 27 May, 11:30 am, 2007
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
10365 Islington Avenue Kleinburg ON

ArtChat: Beaver Hall Women. This interactive program, led by experienced McMichael docents, will introduce participants to a variety of ways of looking at art by women artists from the famous Montreal group, contemporaries of the Group of Seven. Included with admission


24. ANNE SAVAGE: THE LIVING SPIRIT AND HER CONCORDIA LEGACY

July 9 to August 17, 2007
Monday - Friday 11am to 7pm
Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery
Concordia University
1515, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest
Montreal, Quebec

This exhibition focuses on the life and work of Anne Savage, a prominent member of the Beaver Hall Group. Using to advantage Concordia's extensive archival holdings, it portrays her spirit and influence on those who founded the Faculty of Fine Arts. Savage's papers, drawings, photographs, paintings, memorabilia, audio tapes and a collection of her students' work are highlighted.

25. ART and SOCIETY in CANADA 1913-1950 
McMichael Canadian Art Collection 
10365 Islington Avenue
Kleinburg, Ontario
June 2 to August 19, 2007

Canadian artists have repeatedly responded to the changing nature of society and to the social and political issues of their times. This exhibition, organized by the National Gallery of Canada, looks at three generations of Canadian art including that of the Group of Seven, the Social Realists and the Automatists.

26. AROUND SEVEN: THE GROUP OF SEVEN AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES
Art Gallery of Hamilton 
123 King Street West
Hamilton, Ontario
May 26 to September 3, 2007 

The year 1920 marked the inception of two important artistic groups. In Toronto the Group of Seven held its first exhibition, and in Montréal a less formal (and much shorter lived) association was established --- the Beaver Hall Group. While both groups were interested in furthering a modern approach to painting, the groups differed with respect to their subject interests. The bushwhacking ideology of the Group of Seven found representation in the rural and frontier landscapes of Canada, and while some of their Québec contemporaries shared this interest, there was a greater interest among the Montréal painters in depicting their immediate surroundings and the individuals who peopled them. Around Seven takes the work of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson as its starting point and then considers the various approaches taken by their Ontario and Québec contemporaries – many of whom were women – to carve their own artistic paths in light of the Group’s national presence.


27. Sotheby's Auction, November 19, 2007

It's auction season again here in Toronto. And what a celebration for the Beaver Hall Group! Sotheby's has found itself to be the consignee of the largest known private collection of Beaver Hall paintings, and with it comes the makings of a whodunit.

On September 1, a wealthy Canadian (Michael Dunn) drops dead on a street in Zurich. A few days later the executors from a small Vermont town, poring over his will, read, "I have a collection of Canadian art which has some value and you should probably call Sotheby's in Toronto". Sotheby's sends the callers back to the farmhouse to check names of the artists. The call comes back: Coonan, Collyer, Heward, Morris …. along with Varley, Jackson, Harris, and other members of the Group of Seven. By the weekend, David Silcox, president of Sotheby's, is off to the Lake Memphremagog area of Vermont. As Silcox tells it, the farmhouse "was like a hermit had lived there. It was pretty messy, things piled in the corners, piles of paper and clothing, stuff stacked all over the place. But there were pictures on the walls ---quite amazing. In the living room, which wasn't easy to get through, there were paintings piled on chairs and the sofa and the side tables, and three or four paintings leaning against walls and dressers. And I picked up one that was sitting on the floor behind an easy chair ---and it was a Tom Thomson." Millions of dollars worth, uninsured and no security alarms!


Given the time constraint, Sotheby's can be forgiven for a few errors in the cataloguing: most importantly, the information on Marian Scott whose painting, Lorne Crescent, is on the cover. Her name is misspelled and she is incorrectly described as a Beaver Hall member. Somewhat younger, she knew them, attended the same art school, received instruction from a few of them, but did not frequent their circle. Hers was a left-leaning intellectual group connected to her husband, a McGill professor and a founder of the CCF party.
It is an outstanding collection and a rare opportunity to purchase Beaver Hall paintings given that so many are hidden away in family collections. Don't miss it!

Image: Kathleen Moir Morris, McGill Cab Stand : est: $40,000 to $60,000. This image was used on a Canadian stamp issued in 1980. Sotheby's Catalogue, November 19, 2007, #24.

Evelyn Walters, November 8, 2007

See a follow-up to the Dunn story by Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker, October 5, 2009

Listen to the David Silcox CBC interview with Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada

28. WATCH FOR THE WOMEN OF BEAVER HALL  

Rarely seen paintings discovered in Vermont cabins the real story, not Thomson sketch
November 17, 2007, Peter Goddard, Toronto Star.

The only unknowns found at recent art auctions have been the exact heights scaled by final sales prices. But that's not the case with the Sotheby's/Ritchie's fall sale Monday, kicking off the auction season that continues through the rest of the month.

With the Sotheby's sale, the mystery comes wrapped up in an enigma. The mystery has little to do with money – the total of $8.5 million Sotheby's aims to fetch from the 277 lots is hardly in the blockbuster category dollarwise – but with the works themselves.

These include Algonquin Park (1917), an unknown late-period Tom Thomson oil sketch with a presale estimate between $400,000 and $600,000. At last fall's Sotheby's sale, Thomson's Burnt Area With Ragged Rocks sold for $934,000. Its presale estimate went no higher than $250,000.

The enigma concerns the source of the Sotheby's Thomson along with a significant cache of rarely seen works by women of the Beaver Hall group, formed in Montreal in the early '20s.

The source was Michael Dunn, a Montreal native and investor. Heir to piles of real estate money but fearful of the rise of the Parti Québécois, Dunn decamped permanently to Lake Memphremagog deep in rural Vermont just south of the Canadian border in 1978, bringing some 300 original art works with him.

Before his Sept. 1 death of a heart attack on a Zurich street at age 65, Dunn had instructed the executors of his estate to contact Sotheby's in Toronto to sell his paintings, with the proceeds to go to an undisclosed American art institution.

"Seeing them for the first time was unbelievable," says Sotheby's president David Silcox, remembering walking into one of Dunn's two remote cabins at Eagle Point, Vermont.

"The door we opened first almost hit the Marian Scott (painting titled Lorne Crescent) on the catalogue cover. We went into the living room and there were seven (Maurice Galbraith) Cullens on the walls."

Every cramped, wonky room revealed more and more. Silcox found the Thomson squirreled away behind an easy chair. Sketches by the dozens were leaning up against walls. And everywhere were the works by the Beaver Hall crowd. Silcox estimates Monday's sale will have more work by women artists than any previous Canadian auction.

In fact, whether the Thomson goes for more than its presale estimation – and I think it should, given the remarkable breakthrough evident in the artist's last works – the Beaver Hall works may prove to be the real story.

(Joyner Waddington's Tuesday auction also features a major Thomson, Winter Thaw, also from 1917, with a presale estimation from $300,000 to $400,000. Another significant Thomson, the recently discovered Woodland Interior, Algonquin Park, is expected to go for around $450,000 at the Heffel Auction.)

Named after a studio at 305 Beaver Hall Hill in Montreal, the group formed in 1920, with A Y. Jackson its mentor, and was meant to be inclusive in the way the boys club Group of Seven, formed the same year, was not.

Forced to fold in 1922 due to financial difficulties, the group's embryonic feminist spirit continued through the networking of the women artists themselves. Most came from middle-class Montreal Anglo society – Emily Coonan, the poorest of the lot, remained the one loner – but most nevertheless had to find ways to support themselves. Only Lilias Torrance Newton married, and that was only briefly.

But the startling success of Ethel Seath's painting, Cab Stand in Phillips Square, which sold last year for $260,000, five times the price originally anticipated, gave Beaver Hall even more of a lustre. Silcox figures it should continue on Monday.

It'd better. While crossing the border two months ago with his Michael Dunn treasure, Silcox was hit with a GST bill for $127,000 that Sotheby's had to ante up.

pgoddard@thestar.ca

29. LECTURE: The Women of Beaver Hall Group


February 5, 2008
Beaconsfield Library
303 Beaconsfield Blvd,
Beaconsfield, QC

Free lecture/audio-visual program, The Women of the Beaver Hall Group by Dr. Janice Anderson, Visual Resources Curator & teacher of Art History at Concordia University, introducing the Canadian modernist painters who challenged the male-dominated art world. Info: 514-428-4460.

30. LECTURE : L'ENFANCE DANS L'ART CANADIEN AU XXE SIECLE

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1380 Sherbrooke Street West,
Montreal, Quebec

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 3.30 p.m. in French, second in the series, "The Depiction of Age in Canadian Art" by Francois-Marc Gagnon, director of the Jarislowsky Institute, Concordia University.

It was only in the contemporary era that children and adolescents were depicted on their own, outside their family context. They became individuals in their own right in the works of the Beaver Hall Group and in those of Muhlstock, Roberts, Pellan, Borduas and Jean-Paul Lemieux.

31. EVENTS: 2007

February 14, 12:30 pm.

Evelyn Walters will be the guest speaker at a luncheon hosted by the Women's Art Association of Canada. She will discuss her book, The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters, and the many challenges this overlooked group of Montreal artists faced in securing an important place in the history of Canadian art. A question and answer session will follow the presentation. The Women's Art Association, 23 Prince Arthur Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.

May 17, 2006

Evelyn Walters author of The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters will be interviewed by Carolyn Weaver on BioLibrary. Check Rogers: Channel 10 or 63 for times.

November 16, 6-8 pm, 2005

Nancy Griffin's Women, Worth & Wellness Series. Evelyn Walters will speak about the Beaver Hall Women artists and sign copies of her book, The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters. Verity at 111 Queen Street East, Toronto.

November 10, 6-8 pm, 2005.

Book Launch and Exhibition to celebrate the publication of THE WOMEN OF BEAVER HALL: CANADIAN MODERNIST PAINTERS. In conjunction with CATHY DALEY WORKS ON PAPER at David Mirvish Books on Art, 596 Markham Street, Toronto.

32. ISABEL McLAUGHLIN (1902-2002) PAINTER, PATRON, PHILANTHROPIST

ROBERT McLAUGHLIN GALLERY
72 Queen Street, Civic Centre, Oshawa, Ontario
15 March - 4 May, 2008

About thirty five miles from Toronto, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a perfect destination for a spring drive through the countryside (if you avoid the 401). Designed by noted Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, the gallery itself is a work of art. You might like to add lunch or dinner to the experience at the highly- recommended Gallery Cafe and Restaurant.

This show is a peek into the life of Isabel McLaughlin, daughter of automobile magnate Sam McLaughlin. One of Canada's earliest abstract painters, she included in her wide circle of friends two generations of Canadian artists --- the Group of Seven, the Beaver Hall Group and Painters Eleven. Among them A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Anne Savage, Arthur Lismer, Prudence Heward, Yvonne McKague Housser, William Ronald and Kazuo Nakamura stand out. Her involvement with the Art Students League and the Canadian Group of Painters, her patronage of Toronto's Heliconian Club and Oshawa's Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and her support of fellow artists give us a unique perspective on Canadian art at the time. The exhibition includes letters, photographs, catalogues, Christmas cards, sketchbooks and original art works. Look for Sarah Robertson's On Lake St Louis, from the gallery's own collection.


33. THE 1930's: A CANADIAN VIEW

Lecture by Charles C. Hill, curator of Canadian Art, in conjunction with the current exhibition The 1930's The Making of the New Man. National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Drive , Ottawa. Lecture hall, 2 pm Sunday, July 20, 2008.


34. WOMEN OF BEAVER HALL GAINING ATTENTION OF CANADIAN ART MARKET

(Evelyn Walters, Toronto, May 27, 2008)

Once again Sotheby's has obtained a record price for a painting by a woman of the Beaver Hall Group. Although Tom Thomson's Pine Trees at Sunset ($1,957,500.) stole the show at Sotheby's on Monday, one could not but be impressed by the $405,000. paid for Kathleen Moir Morris's Waiting.

Sotheby's has become the auction house of choice for sellers of Beaver Hall paintings. Over the past eight years, they not only have been instrumental in increasing the value of the Group's work, but also have achieved record-breaking prices for many of them --- Emily Coonan, Prudence Heward, Henrietta Mable May, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage and Ethel Seath. (See Art at Auction). In their most recent sale on May 26, 2008, they offered a total of nineteen paintings by the Group, quite a feat given the scarcity of works.

Sotheby's is to be congratulated on their experise in locating works, bringing them to auction, and obtaining top prices for them.

35. CANADIAN WOMEN MODERNISTS: THE DIALOGUE WITH EMILY CARR

Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, B.C.
April 19 to September 28, 2008

This exhibition places Emily Carr within the context of modernism as practised by women in this country and illustrates how they were both influenced by and reacted against her work. Drawn from the collections of both the Vancouver Art Gallery and the private sector, the show features the works of Emily Carr and other Canadian figures such as Helen McNicoll, Anne Savage, Kathleen Morris, Irene Hoffar Reid, Molly Lamb Bobak, Ghitta Caiserman Roth, Vera Weatherbie, Lilias Farley, Bess Harris, Jori Smith, Joyce Wieland, Ina Uhthoff and Beatrice Lennie. Included are paintings, sculptures and works on paper, covering approximately 1900 to 1960.

Curated by Ian Thom.

A teacher's guide to the exhibition is posted online.

36. INHABITED LANDSCAPE: Selections from the Canadian Historical Collection

August 30, 2008 - April 6, 2009
Agnes Etherington Art Centre,

University Avenue at Bader Lane , Kingston , OntarioTaken from the AEAC's own collection, the exhibition features inhabited landscapes by the Group of Seven, their Modernist contemporaries and their predecessors. Look for Prudence Heward's Church at Athens 

37. RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION

Paintings by 39 Acclaimed Heliconian Women Artists
The Toronto 
Heliconian Club
35 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto , Ontario
April 18 to April 19, 2009

38. INSPIRATIONAL: THE COLLECTION OF H.S. SOUTHAM

January 17 to May 3, 2009
Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King ST West , Hamilton ON
Guest Curated by Alicia Boutilier

For the first time in decades Inspirational reassembles major works from Southam's collection. The exhibition moves from canvases of the Group of Seven to the highly charged period of the 1930s, including works by many women artists such as Emily Carr, Prudence Heward, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage and Lilias Torrance Newton. It ends with Southam's later taste for such Quebec artists as Louis Muhlstock, Jacques de Tonnancour, and Paul- Emile Borduas. A sampling of Southam's European collection reveals not only how his early aesthetic interest shaped his later Canadian choices, but also how international movements inspired Canadian art.

39. ...& ordinary folk

Published in the National Post, May 15, 2009
Re: A Perversion Of Art, Barbara Kay, May 13.

At last someone dares to speak for the ordinary folk. Barbara Kay decries the degenerate state of contemporary art, but equally obscene is the price paid for these works. Kay mentions Bacon's painting of an abattoir with entrails and blood which sold for $86-million. She might have included a New York investment banker's $12-million purchase of a decaying stuffed shark by Damien Hirst.

Having worked for a while in a Yorkville art gallery, I've seen first hand how intimidating the art world can be. It's time to realize that we are being manipulated by a few critics and dealers, not to mention buyers with too much money. How refreshing to have the views of ordinary people who want to enjoy art validated.

Evelyn Walters, Toronto.


40. WOMEN ARTISTS GAINING SPACE, 1900-1965.
Works from the collection of the Musée National des Beauxs-Arts du Québec
Parc des Champs-de-Bataille, Quebec City, Quebec
May 7 - August 16, 2009

Covering the period from the 1900s to the era of abstraction, this exhibition celebrates the outstanding contribution to modern art made by Quebec 's women artists. Esther Trepanier, newly appointed Executive Director, has selected works from the museum's over 2600 works by women. Given Trepanier's writing on the Beaver Hall Group in "Peinture et Modernité au Québec",  1919-1939 (Editions Nota Bene) and the museum's extensive collection of their paintings, the show promises to be a must-see for those of us with a special interest.

41. The Bruck-Lee Collection
Cowansville Art Centre , Bruck House, 
225 rue Principale, Cowansville , Quebec
June 24 to October 12, 2009


The Bruck-Lee collection dates from 1891 to 1980. Look for paintings by Nora Collyer, Prudence Heward, Kathleen Morris, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage, Ethel Seath and A.Y. Jackson. Of special interest to collectors is Nora Collyer's Foster Village. This sketch served as the basis for the larger Country Village which sold at the 2006 Waddington Spring Auction for the record-breaking price of $92,000.

The town of Cowansville in Quebec 's picturesque Eastern Townships was a popular destination for the Beaver Hall women. Nearby on Lake Memphremagog was Strawberry Hill, Nora Collyer's summer home, a frequent gathering place for her painting friends. Lilias Torrance Newton often spent time in the area and lived out her last days in a local nursing home. Prudence Heward had a connection to nearby Knowlton through her sister Honour who had a country house there. And the locals can tell you stories about Heward's nephew, Heward Grafftey, who served Brome-Missisquoi as their Conservative MP for many years.

42. The Nude in Modern Canadian Art

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec 
Parc des Champs-de-Bataille 
Québec City, Québec .
October 8, 2009 to January 3, 2010

Glenbow Museum
130 - 9 Avenue S.E. 
Calgary, Alberta
February 13, 2010 to April 25, 2010

Winnipeg Art Gallery
300 Memorial Blvd
Winnipeg, Manitoba
May 20, 2010 to August 8, 2010

The Nude in Modern Canadian Art is the first major exhibition to deal with the nude as a central theme of modernism. It traces the nude's history through the 1920s, 30s and 40s, as images of the naked body gradually broke with classical tradition for more liberal, humanist, intimate and socially progressive forms. Included in the 130 paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs brought together from major Canadian museums and private collections are works by Prudence Heward and Lilias Torrance Newton of the Beaver Hall Group and others such as Jean Dallaire, Paul-Émile Borduas, Alex Colville and Edwin Holgate. 

A catalogue with essays by Michèle Grandbois and Anna Hudson accompanies the exhibition.

See review by Alison Gillmor

43. WINDFALLS: MR. MOMA by Calvin Tomkins 
(The New Yorker, Oct. 5, 2009)

Calvin Tomkins' article provides an interesting follow-up to our story on Michael Dunn the Canadian art collector who died suddenly in 2007. Tomkins reports that Dunn has unexpectedly left over ten and a half million dollars to New York's Museum of Modern Art.


44. Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY
Through January 25, 2010

One cannot help but be struck by the similarities between Oskar Schlemmer's painting Bauhaus Stairway, 1932 exhibited here and Tenants, 1940 by Canadian painter Marian Dale Scott. A cursory survey of Scott's work reveals Modigliani faces, O'Keefe flowers, Leger, Braque, Dufy and more. Esther Trepannier in her book Marian Dale Scott: Pioneer of Modern Art notes that Scott "made numerous drawings after the works of contemporary artists to fully grasp their approach." (p.112). It seems, however, that the drawings often found their way into her final product.

Nevertheless, this show serves as a nice little addendum to the outstanding 2006 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition held in London, Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939.

45. American Modernism 1920's to 1940's

Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
January 11 - March 15, 2010

An exhibition of over 100 paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture and drawings from the Kresge Art Museum collection which focuses on a time when American artists were searching for a disctinctly modernist style, approaches that were in tune with the changing world. They looked to Europe, specifically France and Germany, to experiment with Cubism, Surrealism and abstraction. The show provides an interesting context for Canadian artists of the time such as the Group of Seven and the Beaver Hall Group.

46. Painting Her Story: Women Artists in Canada

McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1035 Islington Ave., Kleinburg, Ontario
January 14 to February 18, 2010 (6 classes)
New OCAD Program at the McMichael:

This Ontario College of Art & Design continuing education course will explore works from significant twentieth century Canadian women artists. You can enjoy instruction by an OCAD instructor and study original artworks from the McMichael permanent collection. The fourth session, "Painting Friends", should prove to be of special interest to those wishing to learn more about the women of the Beaver Hall group.

At the same time you can visit the exhibition, Maurice Cullen and His Circle (January 15 to March 21, 2010), organized by the National Gallery of Canada. The show explores the art and careers of Maurice Cullen, James Wilson Morrice, William Brymner and Edmund Morris all of whom had a direct influence on the Beaver Hall Group.

47. Maurice Cullen and His Circle

McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario
to March 21, 2010

The exhibition explores the art and careers of Maurice Cullen, William Brymner, James Wilson Morrice and Edmund Morris. Comprised of nearly forty oil paintings, the show also includes works of those Cullen influenced, including his stepson, Robert Pilot, and future member of the Group of Seven, A Y Jackson.

During the last decade of the nineteenth century Cullen and his circle were among the many artsts who flocked to Paris and were inspired by Impressionism. Upon their return to Montreal, Cullen and Brymner directly influenced their students at the Art Association of Montreal, many of whom eventually became members of the Beaver Hall Group. Cullen's outdoor sketching trips to rural Quebec were especially popular among the Beaver Hall women.

48. The Beaver Hall Group: William Brymner's Students and the Montreal Art Scene in the 1920's

The Francis K. Smith Lecture on Canadian Art given by Brian Foss, Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University, Ottawa.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
Sunday, March 28, 2010, 2 pm in the Atrium
A reception celebrating the opening of the William Brymner exhibition (see below) will follow.

49. The Shock of Seven: The Group and Their Contemporaries

April 10 to March 14, 2010
Art Gallery of Hamilton,
123 King St. West , Hamilton , ONCurated by Tobi Bruce

This exhibition takes us back to the 1910s and 1920s when an audience accustomed to representational landscapes, portraits and still lifes was confronted with the modernist works of the Group and their contemporaries. Vibrant avante-garde works are set against those of the more traditional artists such as Fred Haines, G. Horne Russel, G Wylie Grier and Hamilton 's Arthur Heming. Do not miss the AGH's collection of Beaver Hall paintings.

50. Art Docs: By Woman's Hand (1994, 58 minutes)

Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston Ontario
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 2 pm

This National Film Board documentary by Pepita Ferrari and Erna Buffie explores the life and times of three Beaver Hall women artists --- Prudence Heward, Sarah Robertson and Anne Savage.

Although Heward and her friends exhibited with the Group of Seven and around the world to favourable reviews, their paintings all but disappeared after their deaths. In an era that placed the greatest value on the art of male artists, their works remained on the walls of family homes or hidden in the vaults of galleries.

"Subtly constructed and wonderfully comprehensive, with a richness and depth that few films manage to achieve." Will Aitkens, CBC Radio


51. WYNDHAM LEWIS (1882-1997)

Fundacion Juan March , Castello 77, Madrid, Spain
February 5 to May 16, 2010

I would love to be in Madrid right now. The Wyndham Lewis exhibition at the Fundacion Juan March is the thing to do.

According to the blurb, this is the first exhibition on Wyndham Lewis to be presented in Spain and the most comprehensive to be organized since the retrospective by the Tate Gallery in 1956. More than 150 works of art and 60 of Lewis's publications offer a complete survey of the artistic and literary output of this multifaceted and controversial man who was one of the key figures within international modernism of the first half of the twentieth century.

In 1914, Lewis founded Vorticism, the only British avant-garde movement, and was also a pioneer of abstraction, a war painter, a portraitist (whose sitters included contemporary authors such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Rebecca West). A novelist, essayist, publisher, editor, literary and art critic, Lewis founded journals such as Blast and The Enemy and could be described as a "single-handed avant-garde movement" , as well as "the most fascinating personality of our times", as T.S. Eliot wrote in 1913.

The exhibition has been organized by the Fundacion Juan March with the collaboration of Paul Edwards, the invited curator and leading international expert on Wyndham Lewis, and the help of specialists on Lewis including Richard Humphreys, Alan Munton, Yolanda Morato. The works are on loan from museums and galleries in Europe, the USA and Canada, as well as from private collections.

Although we tend to think of Paris, Berlin and New York as the centres of early twentieth century avant-garde activity, London, too, contained a stimulating art environment. During the First World War, two of the Beaver Hall women, Prudence Heward and Lilias Torrance Newton, were volunteering with the Red Cross in London and would have been very interested in what was happening in the contemporary art world. Heward apparently did not have time to paint, but Torrance Newton was taking art classes with Alfred Wolmark, one of the pioneers of the New Movement.

A contemporary of the Beaver Hall Group, the British-born Canadian, Sybil Andrews, was obviously influenced by the British modernists. Her work is now attracting some important attention. It figured prominently in a recent show called Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Born in Bury St Edmunds, England in 1898, she immigrated to Canada (Vancouver Island, BC) in 1947, where she died in 1992.

Now what about claiming Wyndham Lewis as Canadian? Undoubtedly, he would have rejected the idea. Although born on a yacht near Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1882, he moved with his mother to London in about 1893. Returning to Canada during the Second World War, he spent some desperate years in Toronto which he summarily described as a "sanctimonious icebox". Years later in an interview with Charles Hill, Torrance Newton recalled, "Everybody was sore as can be.

52. WOMEN ARTISTS GAINING SPACE

Musee d' Art de Joliette, 145 Pere Wilfred Corbeil Street, Joliette, Quebec
May 23 to August 29, 2010

The exhibition presents a selection of works taken from the permanent collection of the Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec. Fifty artists from the first half of the twentieth century have taken their place among the leaders of the modern art movement in Quebec. Included are works by Marcelle Ferron, Jeanne Rheaume, Francoise Sullivan, Agnes LeFortand, Suzanne Duquet and Beaver Hall Group members Lilias Torrance Newton and Anne Savage.

The sequel, Women Artists: Breaking Down Barriers 1965-2000 continues until October 10, 2010 at the Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec in Quebec City.

53. Painting Her Story: Women Artists in Canada

McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario
October 14 to November 18, 2010, Thursdays 1 to 3pm.
Course offered by the Ontario College of Art and Design in partnership with the McMichael.

Instructor: Anna Stanisz, MA

This continuing education course will explore works from significant twentieth century Canadian women artists. Enjoy instruction by an OCAD instructor and study original works from the McMichael permanent collection.
Cost: $300 + HST 

54. And She Was

Curated by Tobi Bruce
Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King St W., Hamilton, Ontario
September 18, 2010 to January 2, 2011

A parallel to Forging a Path, the exhibition below, this is an opportunity to see the Art Gallery of Hamilton's recently acquired works by women. The thirty drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures by more than twenty artists span the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.

Highlights include Anne Savage of the Beaver Hall Group, Marian Dale Scott, Charlotte Schreiber, Rody Kenny Courtice, Harriet Ford, Florence Wyle and Paraskeva Clark.

55. Forging A Path: Quebec Women Artists 1900-1965

Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec
September 18, 2010 to January 2, 2011

Works from the collection of the Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec. Curated by Esther Trepanier

This selection of over seventy works celebrates Quebec women artists. It examines their contribution to defining modern figurative art in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century and is followed by an exploration of their role in the early avant-garde abstract movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

Look for Anne Savage, Lilias Torrance Newton, Sarah Robertson and Mabel May of the Beaver Hall Group as well as Marian Scott, Helen McNicoll, Suzanne Duquet, Jeanne Rheaume, Francoise Sullivan, Anne Kahane, Marcelle Ferron and Rita Letendre.

56. FORGING THE PATH: THE FORERUNNERS (1870-1920)

McMichael Canadian Art Collection,
Kleinburg, Ontario
October 2, 2010 to January 23, 2011

The exhibition presents a journey through five decades of fine art creation in Canada and Europe at a time when the French Impressionists established themselves as a tour de force in Paris. From early canvases by Paul Cezanne and Alfred Sisley to selected works by Canadian pioneering painters who trained or travelled through Europe at the time, these works demonstrate how artistic practices in Canada evolved at a different pace. Among those who were established and celebrated at home and abroad are James W. Morrice, Maurice Cullen, M.A. de Foy Suzor-Cote, William Brymner, Paul Peel, W. Blair Bruce, W.H. Clapp, Clarence A. Gagnon, Helen McNicoll, Franklin Brownell, Laura Muntz Lyall, Arthur D. Rozaire and others. Look for Beaver Hall member Emily Coonan.

57. VALENTINE'S DAY

Sunday, February 13, 2011
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Kleinberg, Ontario

Valentine Tours:

One day before Valentine's Day, the tales of art and love will come to life at the McMichael. The series of short twenty-minute tours is given by knowledgeable gallery docents. Each tour explores one of the McMichael's most romantic encounters: A.Y. Jackson's friendship with Anne Savage, the mystery of Tom Thomson's Algonquin muse, the passionate relationship of Fred Varley and Vera Weatherbie, and the unrequited love of Mayo Padden for Emily Carr. Discover this romantic side of the collection!


58. THE CANADIAN FEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN BRANTFORD

Thorpe Carriage House, 
96 West Street, Brantford, Ontario

March 3, 2011, 7:30 pm

The Evening Book Group will be discussing The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters by Evelyn Walters at their Thursday evening meeting. Visitors are welcome.

59. THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE COLLECTION: GREAT ART FOR A GREAT UNIVERSITY

University of Toronto Art Centre (UTAC)
January 18, 2011 to March 19, 2011

The University of Toronto Art Centre is mounting a first major exhibition to highlight the University College Art Collection as a whole. Created largely through the generosity of donors over many generations, it comprises some 500 works which range from the earliest years of the College to the present day.

Focusing on Canadiana, the collection is wide ranging and includes works from the 19th century, the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, Quebec abstraction, First Nations and from contemporary Canadian. Among the Beaver Hall Group, look for The Skier by Prudence Heward, Fletcher's Field by Anne Savage and several ink drawings, watercolours and pastels by Sarah Robertson.

60. FACES: Works From The Permanent Collection

The Walter C. Koerner Library, 1958 Main Mall, UBC and the Satellite Gallery, 560 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC

Faces features works from the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery of the University of British Columbia. Over 90 paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos from the collection and archives are presented at two different locations.

January 14 to April 30, 2011:

At the Walter C. Koerner Library are portraits created by some of the major figures in the history of Canadian art --- Peter Aspell, Robert Harris Charles Stegeman and Beaver Hall member, Lilias Torrance Newton.

61. SEARCHING FOR TOM --- TOM THOMSON: MAN, MYTH AND MASTERWORKS
The Museum, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, Ontario
Through May 8, 2011

Searching For Tom takes visitors through Thomson's life, his mysterious death and his influence on historical and contemporary Canadian artists.

Thomson changed and defined the way Canadians view their nation. Each theme uses objects, moving images and sound to give atmosphere to Thomson's inspiration.

On exhibition are over 100 works by Thomson, the Group of Seven and contemporary artists from both public and seldom-seen private collections.

Look for Beaver Hall artists Prudence Heward and Anne Savage.

62. THE VORTICISTS: MANIFESTO FOR A MODERN WORLD

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, England
June 14 to September 4, 2011

Vorticism was England's short-lived radical art movement which took place before and during the First World War. It embraced modernity in combining machine-age forms and energetic movement, a style that blasted away at the staid legacy of the Edwardian past. Among its adherents was Alfred Wolmark, the teacher of the Beaver Hall Group's Lilias Torrance Newton while she was living in England from 1916 to 1918.

63. POINT HISTORY SOCIETY & PSC COMMUNITY THEATRE TO HONOUR EMILY COONAN

Annual Joe Beef Market Event, Point St Charles, Montreal Quebec
September 10, 2011

Beaver Hall Group member Emily Coonan (1885- 1971) lived most of her life on Farm Street in Point St. Charles, Montreal. Although from a working class family, her outstanding talent led to studies with the well-known William Brymner at the elite Art Association of Montreal. She won scholarships, travelled to Europe, and gained recognition, but mysteriously withdrew from exhibiting in 1933 at the height of her career.

64. POW! POWER OF WOMEN

Selected Works from the Tom Thomson Gallery's Permanent Collection,

840 First Avenue West, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada
May 13 to Sept 25, 2011

The exhibition consists of works selected from the over five hundred works by women artists in the gallery's permanent collection. They range from the historic to the contemporary and from textiles to oil paintings to bronze sculptures. Don't missThe Blue Sleigh by Beaver Hall painter, Sarah Robertson.


65. GENDER AND MEMBERSHIP IN THREE CANADIAN ART GROUPS FROM THE AGW COLLECTION

The Group of Seven, The Beaver Hall Group, The Canadian Group of Painters
Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor Ontario
July 9 to September 25, 2011

A few errors here in their write-up on the Beaver Hall Group. The original group was called the Beaver Hall Group, not the Beaver Hall Hill Group. When organized under A.Y. Jackson it was originally made up of eleven men and eight women ... not eleven members, and not mostly women. They officially disbanded, about two years later. A loosely-knit group of about ten women, orginal members and friends, continued to paint and exhibit together. But don't let this deter you .....

66. IN FOCUS: A COLLECTOR'S HISTORY

Selections from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art
11 February 2011 to January 2012
Ottawa Art Gallery, Art Court, 2 Daly Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario

This exhibition explores the Firestones' desire to form a collection representing a diverse range of Canadian art styles, geographic regions, time periods and artists. Look for paintings by Edmund Alleyn, Molly Lamb Bobak, Paul-Emile Borduas, William Brymner, A.J. Casson, Maurice Cullen, Marcelle Ferron, Lawren Harris, Edwin Holgate, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, David B. MIlne, Anne Savage, Philip Surrey and Harold Town.

I was disappointed with  this small exhibition. The Firestone collection consists of over 1600 works, but only sixteen are on display in two small rooms of an old rabbit-warren of a building. The collection was originally on display in the expansive residence of the Firestones, a 1960s Modernist-style house built and designed to show their collection. Sadly, the house has since been demolished. An important collection of Canadian art deserves better. (EW)

67. CANADIAN WOMEN ARTISTS HISTORY INITIATIVE 2nd CONFERENCE

May 3rd to 5th, 2012
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

Is it time for a new history of women and art in Canada? If so, what might such a history, or set of histories, look like?

68. GALLERY SELECTIONS

Earls Court Gallery
Until March 24, 2012
215 Ottawa St. N., Hamilton, Ontario

This private gallery exhibition brings together a collection of 20th Century Canadian artists. Included are works by Hortense Gordon, Leonard Hutchinson, Lisa Knowles, Isabel McLaughlin, Manly MacDonald, Frank Panabaker, Alma Sawbridge, Mary Wrinch and Beaver Hall painter Anne Savage.

69. ART HISTORY COURSES

Fine Art's Department, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

CANADIAN ART IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Special Topic: The Life and Work of Anne Savage (offered by Alena M. Buis)

This course examines the career of Anne Savage within the context of twentieth century Canadian art. A member of the Beaver Hall Group and closely linked to the Group of Seven, Savage was an influential artist and educator.

Although the registration date may have passed, it would be worthwhile to explore similar courses offered in the future.

70. ICONS OF MODERNISM

Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
February 11, 2012 to May 21, 2012

The Modernists abandoned the conventional traditions of the Paris Salon and sought new forms that could express their experience of modernity. In 1905, rather than trying to represent the world naturalistically, Henri Matisse and his fellow Fauves started using intense colour as a means of expression. Soon after, the Cubists, notably Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, began actively deconstructing the world around them, to convey the vitality and complexity of life in the new century. A host of other modernist movements followed – Surrealism, Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Dadaism – sweeping across Europe and shaping the history of art to the present day.

This exhibition focuses on the diversity, creativity and achievements of these artists by presenting a selection of paintings, sculptures, films and photographs from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition includes some 15 masterpieces by artists such as: Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Ferdinand Léger and Marcel Duchamp, amongst others.

The Beaver Hall Group, many of whom studied in Paris at the time, were inspired by these contemporaries.

71. MUSEUM of the MISSING by Simon Houpt (Key Porter/Madison Press, 2006). 

Interested in the underworld of art? Houpt's book takes you there. Well-researched and well-written with excellent illustrations of the stolen art.

Simon Houpt is the New-York based arts and culture columnist for The Globe and Mail.

72. FRIDA & DIEGO: PASSION, POLITICS and PAINTING

Art Gallery of Ontario, Dundas Street, Toronto, Ontario

October 20, 2012 to January 2013

The exhibition Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting features more than 80 works on paper and paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and more than 60 photographs of the couple, whose shared passion for each other and Mexico's revolutionary culture during the 1920s and 1930s have made them Mexico's most famous artists. Assembled from three distinguished Mexican private collections on Mexican art, the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Colección Gelman, and Galería Arvil, the exhibition provides the opportunity to view almost one quarter of Kahlo's entire body of work and a range of Rivera's painting styles from his early cubist period and studies for his Mexican murals to his portraits and later landscapes.

73. PICASSO AND THE ART MARKET

June 6, 2012

If you missed this excellent lecture at the Art Gallery of Ontario presented by Sotheby's experts, Molly Ott Ambler and Elizabeth Gorayeb, a copy should soon be posted in the AGO website archives. 

74. Darrell Morrisey
Check antique markets and your attics for paintings by Darrell Morrisey (1897-1930), an original member of the Beaver Hall Group. To date only one of her works has been located, yet as details of her life unfold, a thriller is emerging.

Read poet Stephen Morrissey's dedication to Darrell Morrisey on the 115th anniversary of her all-too-early death: http://www.coraclepress.com/the-chapbooks/darrell-morrisey-a-forgotten-beaver-hall-artist/. Then, join the search!


75. A VITAL FORCE: THE CANADIAN GROUP OF PAINTERS

Touring Exhibition

To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Canadian Group of Painters' founding, A Vital Force examines the artistic and social impact of these modernist artists. The exhibition features paintings by artists such as André Biéler, Jack Bush, Emily Carr and Lawren S. Harris.

A Vital Force, curated by Alicia Boutilier, will travel to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ont., the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, N.B., and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Sask. A major catalogue published by the Art Centre accompanies the exhibition.

76. Autour de l’art québécois moderne

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 
Lectures: Tuesdays @ 14:00
A series of three  lectures to rediscover Quebec artists from the early twentieth century. By Esther Trépanier, professor, Department of Art History, Université du Québec à Montréal.
1. Feb 10, 2015: Autour de la nordicité
L’hiver, le froid, le peintre et le tableau.
2.  Feb 17 2015: Autour des femmes artistes
La contribution des peintres professionnelles à un art montréalais.
This lecture will examine how women (such as the Women of Beaver Hall) gained access to the painting profession and their contribution to the development of modern art in Quebec through the 1940s.
3. Feb 24 2015: Autour de la ville
La ville comme indice de modernité artistique

77. Wednesday Morning Lecture Series: 1920s Modernity: The Beaver Hall Group 

March 11, 2015, 10:15 AM
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
by Jacques Des Rochers, Curator of Quebec and Canadian Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 

78. The Artist Herself Conference and Exhibition
 
May 8 and 9, 2015
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
Kingston, ON

Canadian Women Artists History Initiative conference and the launch of The Artist Herself, a new exhibition and catalogue.
A three-way collaboration between Concordia University, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Art History at Queen’s University which will bring together over 60 scholars, curators, archivists, and conservators presenting new and creative ways to think about women’s contributions to Canada's cultural heritage through the lens of self-representation. 
Highlights include a keynote address by Dr. Beverly Lemire, a reception at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and tours of Queen’s University Archives and the Queen’s Art Conservation Program. 
The conference honours the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking exhibition From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada, curated by Dorothy Farr and Natalie Luckyj at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 1975.

79. Artist and Model

March 21 to April 18, 2015
Mira Godard Gallery
22 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto

Simon Andrew, Lindee Climo, Alex Colville, Joe Fafard, Colin Fraser, Peter Harris,Andrew Hemingway, Fabian Jean, Peter Krausz, David Milne, Lilias Torrance Newton, Mary Pratt, Phil Richards, Jeremy Smith, Michael Thompson, Frederick H. Varley. Be sure to look for portraits by Beaver Hall Group founder, Lilias Torrance Newton.
 
80. Lecture-Luncheon: “Sketching out-of-doors”
Presented by : Dr. Monique Nadeau Saumier
May 30, 2015 @ 10:15 am

Stanstead Historical Society | Colby-Curtis Museum
535 Rue Dufferin
Stanstead, QC J0B


The lecture will present several women artists who, in the early 1900’s, studied with William Brymner (1855-1925) at the art school of the Art Association of Montreal (now the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts ). Several among them were founding members of the Beaver Hall Group, a Montreal artist’s association that will be featured in a forthcoming exhibition scheduled for October 2015, at the MMFA.

The lecture will present vintage photographs taken during the sketching classes directed by Brymner in Phillipsburg, 1910, and by Maurice Cullen, in Georgeville and North Hatley in the 1920’s. It will focus on several of Brymner’s students, who later were involved in the Beaver Hall Group, such as Mabel May, Mabel Lockerby, Lilias Torrance Newton, Anne Savage, Prudence Howard, Sarah Robertson, Kathleen Morris, Nora Collyer, Ethel Seath and Emily Coonan. This lecture will offer a preview on the work of these women artists, whose talent failed to be recognized during their lifetime, but whose works are now in the permanent collections of several Canadian Museums and are eagerly sought after by art collectors.
​
81. The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
May 2 to August 9, 2015

The Artist Herself expands the genre’s definition by moving beyond the human face to propose other forms of self-representation, from both settler and indigenous perspectives. The result is a thought-provoking selection of 55 works by 42 women artists in a range of media, including paintings, textiles, photographs and film.

The Artist Herself will travel to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

82. Female Self-Representation and the Public Trust: Mary E. Wrinch and the AGW Collection
The Ottawa Art Gallery
May 30 to August 16, 2015

As artist, educator and property owner, Mary Wrinch was an atypical woman for her generation. Trained initially in the art of the miniature, she moved on to paint in oil on panel boards and on enlarged stretched canvases beginning in the 1910s, followed by printmaking in the 1920s. Wrinch’s work is marked by a confidence in working in diverse media and a strong command over form, line and colour in the modernist tradition.

83. MMFA Exhibit lecture: 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group

Cote Saint-Luc Public Library, Montreal, QC
Thursday, November 12 at 7 pm
Free
Grace Powell introduces the new exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts which sheds  light on the Beaver Hall Group, an association of modernist artists who shaped artistic life in 1920s Montreal.


84. Lecture Series in connection with 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Maxwell Cummings Auditorium

September 24, 2015 @ 2 pm:October 1, 2015 @ 2pm: "Montréal dans les années 1920: une métropole moderne". Michèle Dagenais.

October 1 , 2015 @ 2pm: "Une modernité des années 1920 à Montréal. Le Groupe de Beaver Hall". Jacques Des Rochers.

October 8, 2015 @ 2pm: "L’école de la modernité".  Samuel Montiège.

October 15, 2015 @ 2 pm: "Regard sur la mode à l’époque du groupe de Beaver Hall (1920-1930)". Véronique Borboën. 

85. A STORY OF CANADIAN ART AS TOLD BY THE HART HOUSE COLLECTION

This travelling exhibition portrays the historic role that Hart House of the University of Toronto  has played in collecting Canadian art. Look for Beaver Hall Group members and affiliates: Prudence Heward, Edwin Holgate, A.Y. Jackson, Kathleen Morris, Lilias Torrance Newton.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre: August 29 - December 6, 2015

86. Guided Tour to Montreal: 1920's Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group
​North Hatley Library: North Hatley, QC
December 2, 2015

87. Painting the Beaver Hall Group: New Viewpoints New Colour 
Ottawa School of Art,  245 Centrum Blvd., Orleans, ON 
Nov 7 & Nov 8, 2015 9 to 4pm
Learn to intensify your subject with strong planes, expressive outlines, and rich colour from an interesting point of view. Concurrent to the exhibition in Montreal, this workshop discusses the predominantly female art group of the 1920s, modern realists focused on people, city scenes, and Quebec landscapes. Oil (no solvent) or acrylic. 

88. Regard sur la mode à l’époque du Groupe du Beaver Hall (1920-1930)
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Octobre 15, 2pm
Difficile de résister à la séduction des images de la mode des années folles! De l’illustration de mode parisienne aux luxueuses robes perlées des musées, nous tenterons, grâce aux photographies des albums de famille, de poser un regard inusité sur les vêtements des années 1920 tels qu’ils étaient réellement portés au Québec.

89. Brockville Museum Tour, Brockville, Ontario
To the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts:
1920's Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group
October 28, 8:15 am to 6 pm

The Beaver Hall Group was a group of artists who were  contemporaries of the Group of Seven.  One of these artists was Prudence Heward, who spent many of her summers here at the family’s summer home at Fernbank.


90. The Artist Herself: Self Portraits by Canadian Historical Artists
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Oct 2 to Jan 3, 2016

The Artist Herself  moves beyond the human face to propose other forms of self-representation, from both settler and indigenous perspectives. The result is a thought-provoking selection of 55 works by 42 women artists in a range of media, including paintings, textiles, photographs and film.

91. L’école de la modernité lecture by Samuel Montiège   
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Thursday, October 8, 2015
2 to 4 p.m. 

92. Francis K Smith Public Talks in Canadian Art
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
36 University Avenue, Kingston, Ontario
October 4, 2015 2 pm

What new approaches can we bring to the much-loved iconic Canadian art of the inter-war period? Dr Christine Boyanoski, curator of A Story of Canadian Art: As Told by the Hart House Collection, and Sarah Milroy, art critic and co-curator of From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia offer their perspectives through short presentations and a discussion. Admission is free; a reception follows.

93. Science on Stage:  Voices from Beaver Hall  
Redpath Museum, McGill University
859 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal
Nov. 22, 2015 at 2 pm.

A staged reading about McGill's connection to the artists of the Beaver Hall. Directed by Colleen Curran, this reading coincides with the exhibit at the Beaux Arts Museum about the Beaver Hall Group.
The First World War marked the end of an epoch in the art world. In Europe, the talk was of Picasso, Braque and Matisse. In Toronto, a group of painters led by Tom Thomson forged the way for a national art born out of the rugged wilderness and pioneering spirit of a country that no longer saw itself as an English colony. In Montreal, a group of painters, encouraged by A.Y. Jackson, pooled their resources to rent exhibition and studio space in a building near the foot of Beaver Hall Hill. Though they would work together for only two years, the Beaver Hall painters, most of them women drawn from the city`s wealthy English speaking elite, would forge lasting bonds and produce a remarkable trove of work hailed for its exuberance and sense of Montreal. Voices from Beaver Hall is their story, told by fourteen Montreal writers who each chose one artist to dramatize.

94. Picturesque: Voices from Beaver Hall
​Redpath Museum, McGill campus, Mtl
​November 22 & 29, 2015, 2 pm.
​Directed by Colleen Curran

Fourteen dramatic works celebrating the Painters of Beaver Hall: Prudence Heward, Ethel Seath, Lilias Torrance Newton, Kathleen Morris, Nora Collyer, Anne Savage, A.Y. Jackson, Mabel May, Emily Coonan, Mabel Lockerby, Sarah Robertson.
​
95. VOICES FROM BEAVER HALL
By Byron Toben

​“This could be the start of something big” as Steve Allen’s song from the ’50s resonates.
That something big is the revival of attention to the overlooked talents of 11 Montreal women painters from the ’20s, who comprised part of the Beaver Hall Group. Until now, it had been overshadowed by the more famous men’s assemblage, the Group of Seven.
Coinciding with the current Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibit “Colours Of Jazz” about the Beaver Hall Group, which terminates on January 31, 2016, is a new work arranged and directed by NDG prolific playwright Colleen Curran. Ms. Curran, a McGill grad, has written some two dozen plays, many produced successfully elsewhere in Canada and abroad until, finally, the Centaur mounted her “True Nature” in 2011. That play, like a few others, had had an initial dramatic reading in the steep amphitheatre of McGill’s Redpath Museum.
The dam really broke open for Picturesque when Gazette journalist Susan Schwartz wrote an article about the staged reading. Within a day, all 120 seats were reserved, leading to a second Sunday reading, also “sold out” within a day. The word of mouth has led to inquiries about Ontario and B.C. counterparts.
The dam really broke open for Picturesque when Gazette journalist Susan Schwartz wrote an article about the staged reading. Within a day, all 120 seats were reserved…
This wide interest cannot be attributed only to the popularity of Colleen and sister Peggy (recently retired Gazette columnist), whose following comprise our very own Curran Nation, a more charming sibling act than Toronto’s Ford Nation.
Picturesque consists of 13 vignettes of 5 to 7 minutes, each dealing with one of the group. Most were written by Colleen’s playwriting students at Montréal’s Siasma school of Irish Music. She wrote two herself, one about artist Emily Coonan. Sister Peggy tackled artist Mabel Lockerby. Local historian Dorothy Williams contributed an ode to artist Prudence Heward. A token, dare I say, male writer was Charles Abramovici who posited an interview between Canadian icons painter A.Y. Jackson and CBC’s Peter Gzowski.
A token, dare I say, male writer was Charles Abramovici who posited an interview between Canadian icons painter A.Y. Jackson and CBC’s Peter Gzowski.
Four performers of note were Mary Burns, Tamara Brown, Jane Hackett and Ms. Curran herself. The seven others were drawn from Siasma students and the Curran Nation.
Someone should suggest to the MMFA to make its auditorium available for another staged reading of this show, which fits so well with its current exhibit. It’s a natural.

96. The Montreal Gazette's Illustrated Edition of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts  exhibition "1920s Modernism in Montreal: the Beaver Hall Group"
Have a look at some of the works in the show.
A collection of daring local artists, known as the Beaver Hall Group, heralded Montreal’s arrival on the modern art scene in the 1920s. They had the backing of A. Y. Jackson and critical acclaim but remained largely shadowed by the Group of Seven.

97. THE BEAVER HALL GROUP: SOME WESTMOUNT LINKS
Westmount Public Library, 4574 Sherbrooke St. West
Thursday, January 21, 2016, from 7 to 9 pm

​SPEAKER: Elena Kruger, Volunteer Guide, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 
The Beaver Hall Group gave new impetus to painting in Canada. A number of the artists in the short-lived group lived, were educated, worked, or had family connections in Westmount. Some of their paintings depict people or scenes from our city. Works of this diverse group, made up of male and female painters, can currently be seen at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Elena Kruger will present the ties to Westmount.
Info: 514-989-5510

98. THESES ON THE BEAVER HALL GROUP

Available by request at your local library:

1.  The Beaver Hall Group and its Place in the Montreal Art Milieu and the Nationalist Network by Susan Avon, Concordia University, Montreal.

2. L'Apport de Prudence Heward, Lilias Torrance Newton et Jori Smith a L'elaboration de la Modernite Picturale Canadienne, Julie Anne Godin Laverdiere, Universite de Quebec, Montreal.

3. Challenging the Status Quo: Prudence Heward's Portrayals of Canadian Women from the 1920s to the 1940s, Grace Powell, Concordia University, Montreal.

4. H. Mabel May (1877-1971) The Montreal Years, Karen Antaki, Concordia University.

99. The Legacy of Beaver Hall
Thursday, February 18 at 7:00 p.m. 
Speaker: Jacques Des Rochers, Curator of Quebec and Canadian Art (before 1945), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
​
Artists of the Beaver Hall Group sought to convey a sense of Modernism in their work, expressed through portraiture, figure studies and urban landscapes. The Group, with its parity of male and female members and its significant legacy has impacted the landscape of Canadian art in many ways. This talk will provide insight into the Group, the exhibition and will offer a sneak peek of the exhibition itself two days prior to the official opening.

100. Documentary on the Women of Beaver Hall:
CBC Radio One
Sunday, February 21st, 10 a.m.

Alisa Siegel's documentary on the Beaver Hall Group will air on CBC Radio One - "The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright".  Or, if you miss it, you can listen to it here: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/ghomeshi-and-presumption-of-innocence-walter-robinson-of-spotlight-the-beaver-hall-group-retraction-watch-1.3452369/the-beaver-hall-group-an-alisa-siegel-documentary-1.3453672

101. Lecture Series at the Art Gallery of Hamilton: In Contemporary Terms: Responding to the Beaver Hall Group
Thursday, March 10 at 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Artists, Andrea Kastner, Katherine MacDonald, Christina Sealey. Moderated by Tobi Bruce, Director, Exhibitions and Collections and Melissa Bennett, Curator, Contemporary Art.  
Artists are often impacted by those who have come before them, sometimes directly and sometimes in more subtle ways. This event brings together contemporary women artists to talk about Beaver Hall. Each will share their responses to works in the exhibition and will consider their own practice through this experience.

102. Lecture Series at the Art Gallery of Hamilton: Shared Vision: A Conversation About Artist Collectives
Thursday, April 7 at 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Artists, Svava Thordis Juliusson, (F)NOR collective, Liss Platt & Claudia Manley, Shake ‘N Make collectiove. Moderated by Tor Lukasik- Foss, Director of Programs and Education, artist, TH&B collective.
Beaver Hall was a shared studio space in Montreal that brought together an outstanding group of artists, each with their own practice and direction, into a significant and powerful force in Canadian art history. Artists continue to work together through shared studio space and in formal artist collectives. This event brings together representatives from two collectives to discuss the impact that this idea of shared vision and production has had on their work, individually and together.

​103. A PRIVATE PASSION: Modern Art in Québec from the Pierre Lassonde Collection 
Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec
Québec City QC 
October 29, 2015 to March 27, 2016

With an abundant sampling of work by the greatest practitioners of modern art in Québec, the Pierre Lassonde collection traces the lines of interest of a singular passion.

From the Impressionists to the Plasticiens by way of the members of the Beaver Hall Group and the Automatists, this selection of a hundred key paintings in the history of Québec art is a unique opportunity to plunge into a world of astonishing aesthetic connections and unusual dialogues between the senses. 

104. In good company?

PICTURESQUE: VOICES FROM BEAVER HALL

Redpath Museum, McGill campus, Mtl
​November 22 & 29, 2015, 2 pm.
​Directed by Colleen Curran
Fourteen dramatic works celebrating the Painters of Beaver Hall
​
MANY THANKS TO

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 
for permission to quote from material in the Royal Archives,
Barbara Meadowcroft, author of “Painting Friends”
Sheila Mappin Arthur and Eve Marshall for sharing memories of Ethel Seath,
Philip Dumbrowsky, National Gallery of Canada Archives, Ottawa,
Miss P.M. Clark, Royal Archives, Windsor, UK., 
Eric Klinkoff, Klinkoff Gallery,
Newton Photographic Archives, City of Ottawa Archives, Ottawa,
Charles Robert, Clerk of The Senate of Canada,
Concordia University, Karen Antaki, Pepita Ferrari, Louise Abbott, Katrie Chagnon, 
Isabelle Mignault, Sheelah O’Neill, Susan Schwartz, Marie-France Coallier, Suzan 
Pietracupa, Erin Hurley, Helen Meredith, J. Bertrand Simard, Norma Jean Horner, 
The Little White Church of Highgate Springs, Evelyn Walters, QWF, Ingrid Birker, 
Science Outreach, Redpath Museum, Dean Bruce Lennox, Dean of Science.


105. 'As Well As Men': Gender and the Beaver Hall Group
Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 7:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Kristina Huneault, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Concordia University 
Art Gallery of Hamilton
For many years, the Beaver Hall Group of artists has been thought of exclusively, and inaccurately, as a group of women painters. How did this perception develop? And in returning men to the story of the Beaver Hall Group, what does this exhibition mean for the history of women and art in Canada?​

106. "Exploring Group Culture in Modernist Canada: The Beaver Hall Group and the Group of Seven" 
Panel Discussion
Art Gallery of Windsor 
​Saturday, June 25, 2016, 2 pm – 4 pm.
Join moderator Catharine Mastin and Charles Hill, Brian Foss, Jacques Des Rochers and Kristina Huneault for a captivating discussion.

107. Fine Art & Hockey (1859-2015) 
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery
Montreal: October 15 - October 29, 2016 
A non-selling exhibition with the objective of welcoming everyone, especially those who might be intimidated by art galleries, to the Klinkhoff Gallery.
Look for  Adrien Hébert's  Skating, La Fontaine Park, Montreal, circa 1936.

108. Out for Lunch Tour: Voices from Beaver Hall
Glenbow Museum Calgary
December 1, 2016, 12 pm
Join students from the University of Calgary's "Women, Canada, and Modernism" course as they animate the paintings in the exhibition through spoken word vignettes inspired by the art and legacy of the Beaver Hall Group. 

109. The Modernist Tradition, 1900-1950
Winnipeg Art Gallery
June 16, 2015 to December 31, 2016

Throughout the early 20th century, Canadian artists absorbed modern art principles from reading international art magazines, studying overseas and in the United States, and attending groundbreaking exhibitions like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. However, they all reacted differently to these influences. Some welcomed modernism for its own sake; others adapted European innovations toward creating a distinctly national art. While several Canadian painters experimented with Expressionism and Abstraction as early the late 1920s, both remained undercurrents of the Canadian scene until 1940, when the Quebec-based group the Automatists used abstraction as a rallying call for social revolution.

110. Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, Van Gogh and more:

​Until February 12, 2017, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (partnering with the Musée d’Orsay):  A journey through Europe, Scandinavia, and North America from 1880 to 1930, a time when artists were disillusioned with traditional religious institutions and searched for a spiritual path through mystical experiences. The exhibition features close to 90 paintings and 20 works on paper. Look for Canadian Modernists.

111. Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, until February, 2017.

​See what was happening in Paris when Canadian Modernists were trying to find their way “The Shchukin is easily the most important collection of early 20th-century Modern art in Russia, and certainly one of the most important in the world,” said Anne Umland, a senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “It’s an unparalleled and not-to-be-missed opportunity to see this group of work brought back together.” 

112. 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group

Travelling Exhibition: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Windsor, The Glenbow (Calgary) now closed.

"They were bold and experimental and at the forefront of modern painting in Canada in the 1920s. And they were not the Group of Seven.

The painters associated with Montreal’s Beaver Hall Group (so named for the location where they shared studio and exhibition space) were among Canada’s most avant-garde artists of their day and yet until now their contribution as an association has yet to be fully researched and presented.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has righted the situation and organized the first major exhibition to shed new light on this pivotal association of artists. In essence, the Beaver Hall Group was to Montreal what the Group of Seven was to Toronto. But rather than offering an image of Canada’s identity through the depiction of untamed landscapes, they showed their attachment to the portrait and to humanized cityscapes and landscapes.

The exhibition levels the art historical playing field. In locating the activities of this Montreal group in a national context, we are given a broader view of the artistic landscape in Quebec, Ontario and indeed Canada. This is particularly important as the Beaver Hall Group has always, in part, been characterized by its female membership. As the first association of its kind in Canada to bring together professional women artists, it provided both a community and public forum for their activities and the development of their practices, another sign of the Group’s progressive, modern nature.

Don’t miss the opportunity to see newly discovered paintings as well as masterworks by such modern greats as Edwin Holgate, Anne Savage, Sarah Robertson, Prudence Heward, and A.Y. Jackson. Many are a revelation."

113. Let's compare Canadian to American Modernism. 
It Was a New Century: Reflections on Modern America 
Yale University Library, New Haven, Ct.
December 23, 2016–June 4, 2017
​
This exhibition captures the vitality and spirit of urban life at the beginning of the 20th century. Drawn from a private collection, the nearly 60 paintings, prints, watercolors, and drawings on view illustrate the major artistic directions of the day—both progressive and nostalgic—by well-known artists such as George Bellows, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Walt Kuhn, Maurice Prendergast, and Everett Shinn.Taken together, these exceptional works present a compelling panorama of a new, modern America.

114. Undaunted: Canadian Women Painters of the 19th Century. 

Art Gallery of Alberta
Edmonton, AB
Until March 25, 2018.

​Look for the women of Beaver Hall at  this celebration of women born in the 19th century who overcame the barriers of their time  to achieve success and acclaim as professional artists.

115. "THIS ABOVE ALL" by DIANE VANDEN HOVEN

It was well worth the drive through the storm to see the award-winning “This Above All”. Outstanding performances by Catharine Sullivan and Todd Baubie tell the story of Prudence Heward and Lawren Harris and shed light on the Modernist period of Canadian art. March 1-10, 2018, London, Ontario. London Community Players


116. Caveat Emptor!

I. Don’t be bamboozled by inscriptions and labels  ––– especially labels that appear to have been removed from an earlier backing and then reattached. Participation in certain exhibitions and authentications of unsigned works enhance value, but can easily be faked.

Carefully research exhibition history. Old catalogues can be found in libraries or in the archives of the named gallery itself. Royal Canadian Academy and the Art Association of Montreal exhibitions can  be checked in the Evelyn de R. McMann reference books:
1. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, formerly Art Association of Montreal: spring exhibitions 1880-1970 by Evelyn de R. McMann.
2. Royal Canadian Academy of Arts/Académie royale des arts du Canada: exhibitions and members, 1880-1979  by Evelyn de R. McMann.

II. Signatures can be added or altered. 
As values increase, signatures of painters in demand can be changed or added to works of less well-known painters. Alterations can usually be detected by examination under black light.

III. Images on pages taken from a catalogue can be altered (photoshopped) so that a painting appears to have been listed and sold at auction at a high price, thereby giving it provenance and enhanced value.

117. Center for the Arts, Evergreen, Colorado

​September 24, 2018 - October 29, 2018
Six Monday mornings: Sept, 24-October 29, 10:00am-noon

​Course description: The Beaver Hall Group, a Montreal-based group of Canadian painters, met in the late 1910s while studying art at a school run by the Art Association of Montreal. The Group is notable for its equal inclusion of men and women artists, as well as for its embrace of Jazz Age modernism. In contrast to the familiar modernist icons of the Toronto-based Group of Seven, the Montreal Beaver Hall painters were occupied with distinctly urban subjects: industry, fashion, and city life. The class will focus primarily on the 10 female artists of this group: Nora Collyer, Emily Coonan, Prudence Heward, Mabel Lockerby, Mabel May, Kathleen Morris, Lilias Torrance Newton, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage and Ethel Seath. Depending upon interest, Karen may schedule a trip to Montreal the first week in May. 

________________________________________________________________________________
118. Canada's Summer with the Impressionists.

Three major Canadian galleries are holding Impressionist exhibitions this summer (2018).  Look for influences on our Modernists:
​
1. French Moderns: Monet to Matisse at the Winnipeg Art Gallery until September 9. 
2. Berthe Morisot, femme impressionniste at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec until September 23.
3. Impressionist Treasures: The Ordrupgaard Collection at the National Gallery until September 9.

________________________________________________________________________

119. Picturesque: Voices From Beaver Hall

Wednesday, October 3 to Saturday, October 6th, 2018 at Dawson College, Montreal.
"Picturesque" based on the artists of the Women of Beaver Hall, is getting a new run at Dawson!
Playwright: Colleen Curran
Director: Jude Beny
Student Groups: Second Studio, Year Two Group Two
Sixteen short plays by thirteen Montreal writers:
Charles Abramovici * Terri Griffin Burman * Aycan Cetin * Ellie Chartier * Colleen Curran * Peggy Curran * Marlena Daley * Lesley Forrester * Carole Laviolette * Laura Newman * Heather Pengelley * Dorothy Williams * Anna Dupuis Zuckerman

________________________________________________________________________

120. The Beaver Hall Group and Prudence Heward

Feb 19, 2019, Lecture. "The Beaver Hall Group and Prudence Heward" by Dr. Brian Foss. Sixteenth Annual Winter Lecture Series at the Brockville Museum. Heward's summer home "Fernbank" was near Brockville on the St. Lawrence River.
​
​Doors open at 9:30 a.m. with lectures starting promptly at 10 a.m. There will be a 20 minute intermission with light refreshments at 11 a.m. and the lecture will conclude at noon.

________________________________________________________________________

121. Colours of Jazz: 1920s Modernism: Montreal's Beaver Hall Group 1915-1917
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The first major exhibition on this subject will shed new light on the short-lived association of artists whose works imbued artistic life in 1920s Montreal and Canada with a certain colour: it offered one the most original expressions of pictorial modernity in the country. Although the group’s artists, and those associated with them, did not espouse a specific aesthetic, they were to Montreal in a sense what the Group of Seven was to Toronto. But rather than offering an image of Canada’s identity through the depiction of untamed landscapes, they showed their attachment – and applied a modern touch – to the portrait and to humanized cityscapes and landscapes.

Mainly spanning the period between 1920 and 1933, from the establishment of the Beaver Hall Group to that of the Canadian Group of Painters, the exhibition will present works by its official members as well as by artists associated with them through friendship and solidarity, including Adrien and Henri Hébert, Hewton, Holgate, Jackson, Johnstone, Lockerby, Mabel May, Torrance Newton, Pilot, Robertson, Savage, Seiden (Goldberg), as well as Biéler, Coonan, Heward, Morris and Robinson.

​________________________________________________________________________
​

122. Defying Convention: Women Artists in Canada, 1900-1960
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"Defying Convention" at the Winnipeg Art Gallery until November 20, 2018, features work by more than 30 women artists of the Canadian Modernist period who challenged convention and defied constraints on women's roles. The art represents their lives and experiences across Canada, from Nunavik to the Prairies, from British Columbia to Eastern Canada. Their stories are as rich and diverse as the styles they explored.
Winnipeg Art Gallery

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123. Painting Picnic with Prudence Heward

​At the Brockville Museum until October 30, 2020

This much-anticipated exhibit celebrates Canadian modernist Prudence Heward  along with her painting friends, Charles and Ruth Eliot, Sarah Robertson, and A.Y. Jackson.  It brings together for the first time 16 paintings of the Brockville area and explores the history of nearby Fernbank in the 1920s and 30s.

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