Arnold Shives @ Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire

The Influence of Tom Thompson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven

My earliest “art” memories are of a pair of late nineteenth century oils on canvas, portraits with grey-brown backgrounds, that graced the wall of our home, along with a couple of reproductions by the same artist; and I also recall several reproductions of work by Emily Carr and the Group of Seven.  

Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. By the age of nine I came to feel a kinship with them; in fact, sometime before I turned ten, I felt a calling: that to become an artist would be a part of my destiny.  Were the above artists, famous for their celebration of the Canadian wilderness, responsible, at least in part, for my childhood epiphany?  Quite likely.  

And what about those 1890 oils of a man and his wife – just how do they fit into this story?   It turns out that those portraits are of my great grandparents Reuben Booth Belden and Claire Peel Belden, and were painted by Claire Belden’s brother, Paul Peel (1860-1892). Was I influenced by kinsman Peel?  Of course I was, growing up as I did imbibing the mythology surrounding this talented painter who, after a dozen years of art education in London, Philadelphia and in Paris, achieved recognition; yes, and then, after a brief illness, died, in Paris, age thirty one.  I admired his undeniable skill and, of course, there was the gravitational pull of family relationship, but his academic style and the sentimental subject matter for which he is best known, did not resonant with me at all.

The man who commissioned those two portraits – Peel’s brother-in-law – warrants a few words.  Reuben Booth Belden, an American living in Toronto, and in partnership with his brother, published Picturesque Canada; The Country As It Was And Is.  This two-volume book is regarded as the most important – and controversial – guide and tribute to Canada in the post-Confederation period. George Monro Grant was the editor, and the important illustration component of this highly ambitious project was under the supervision of Lucius O’Brien (1832 – 1899) who himself produced many of the 540 wood engravings – an astonishing number – and commissioned other artists, such as F.M. Bell-Smith (1846 – 1923).  The latter was an advocate of a uniquely Canadian school of art with an orientation to Canada’s wilderness landscape.  The following quote from Bell-Smith’s Wikipedia page is germane: “Later artists, including Tom Thompson, Emily Carr, and the Group of Seven, contributed to this focus on Canada’s natural environment in art.”