Close to Home

Since their emergence in the early twentieth century, the Group of Seven have become synonymous with sweeping visions of Canada’s remote and rugged landscapes. Their expressive depictions of the rocky shores in Northern Ontario’s Algoma District, the vastness of the Rockies, and the sublime Arctic helped shape a national visual identity—one rooted in distance, grandeur, and the idea of untamed nature. 

Yet some of their most resonant and revealing works were created in their own neighbourhoods near Toronto.  

Opening January 17 at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Close to Home brings together paintings, drawings, and prints by the Group of Seven and related artists, all inspired by the landscapes of Southern Ontario. The exhibition highlights places including Kleinburg, Vaughan, Thornhill, North York, Markham, Bolton, Orillia, and Barrie as they were a century ago—communities where artists lived, worked, and found enduring inspiration in their everyday surroundings. 

J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, and Fred Varley each lived for a time in Thornhill, while Franklin Carmichael grew up in Orillia before later settling in Lansing (North York). Lawren Harris’s family maintained a property at Allandale on Lake Simcoe, a site that offered both retreat and creative stimulus. These lived connections shaped the artists’ engagement with the landscape, fostering an attentiveness to agricultural rhythms, village life, and the drama of Southern Ontario’s skies. The exhibition also includes ink drawings by Thoreau MacDonald depicting houses from the communities, alongside dynamic woodcuts by Rosemary Kilbourn that capture the rolling hills of Caledon.  

More than a century after these works were created, many of the rural villages, farmlands, and woodlands they depict have been transformed into thriving towns and expanding suburbs. Viewed today, they offer perspective on a changing landscape—inviting reflection on what has been altered, what has endured, and what remains.