A. Y. Jackson’s identity is forever entwined in Canadian art history with the Group of Seven. More than any other member, he took to heart the Group’s myth-making land-based nationalism. His long-held belief in a distinctively Canadian art culminated in his autobiographical tome A Painter’s Country (1958), and his extensive body of landscapes served as tribute to his nationalistic outlook. Jackson trained at the Conseil des arts et manufactures and Art Association of Montreal (1896-1899), the Chicago Art Institute (1906-1907) and the Académie Julian in Paris (1907); however, the vigour of painting outdoors captured his interest more than the rigour of studio life drawing. Upon his return to Canada, he found a sympathetic outlook among artists in Toronto, where he eventually moved in 1913. Jackson, however, maintained ties with the art scene of his home city, and in 1920 became a member of both Montreal’s Beaver Hall Group and Toronto’s Group of Seven. After the latter expanded into the Canadian Group of Painters, encompassing wider cross-country membership, he remained a faithful CGP member until it folded in 1969.

Jackson was a consummate traveller, applying a style he had honed early in his career to changing Canadian views, whether Algonquin Park, Albertan foothills, or Arctic ice flows. The Quebec landscape, however, always had a pull for him, particularly communities along the St. Lawrence. In his typical sweep of a street, tangle of trees, and multi-coloured houses, Jackson captures a quiet urban moment with–unusual for him–a lone figure holding an umbrella.