Autumn Tangle, circa 1920

Estate of the Artist Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto S.C. Trono, Toronto Peter Bronfman, Montreal Waddington Galleries, Montreal Private Collection

“Frank Carmichael: Group of Seven”, Retrospective Exhibition, Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto, 14‒31 October 1964, no. 28 “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; travelling to Musée du Québec, Quebec City; Vancouver Art Gallery; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 14 May 1988‒7 May 1989, no. 78 “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 29 October 2015‒25 September 2016

“Frank Carmichael: Group of Seven”, Retrospective Exhibition, Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto, 1964, no. 28, listed Dennis Reid, “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Toronto, 1988, no. 78, reproduced page 72 Ian Thom, et. al, “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver/London, 2015, reproduced page 111

In 1920, Franklin Carmichael became a founder of the Group of Seven landscape painting collective, a moment that marked his first significant recognition as a contributor to modern art in Canada. Beginning in 1912, he had participated in exhibitions of the Ontario Society of Artists (elected 1917), Canadian National Exhibition, and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. But, participation in the Group movement with just six other artists versus the huge group-artist society exhibitions, shone a spotlight on his practice that had not been possible before. Showing a total of forty-two works in the first three exhibitions of 1920, 1921 and 1922, visitors to the Art Gallery of Toronto could begin to experience the evolution of an artist. And it was in these early years of the Group’s formation that Carmichael’s artistic voice began to take shape as a masterful colourist and painter of light. Carmichael had been consistently engaged in plein air sketching in oil since his return from study in Antwerp, Belgium in the fall of 1914. The previous summer on July 14, 1914, Carmichael scurried to Sheffield, England to spend his summer respite from study, residing with the Arthur Lismer family. He narrowly escaped being stuck in Belgium which Germany had begun to invade on July 24, 1914. Without means to remain in England, and no prospect of returning to Belgium to complete his studies at the Académie Royale des beaux art in Antwerp, Carmichael boarded the HMS Olympic to New York on September 23, amidst the reality of the First World War. On his arrival in Toronto in early October, without work, he promptly set up a lean camp with Tom Thomson in the Shack adjacent to the famous Studio Building. It was that winter that he began painting snow scenes, and gradually, he moved into exploring the other three seasons of the year. By the time of the 1920 exhibition, Carmichael had resolved that the fall season offered immense painterly possibilities, notably the glorious pageantry of fall colour offered by the changing colours of the deciduous trees‒red, yellows and oranges‒set against the evergreens. He would explore the beauty of fall change for the rest of his landscape painting career. In “Autumn Tangle”, Carmichael concentrates on these effects in one of his shallowest compositions from this period of his work, similar to his renown easel painting, “Silvery Tangle”, 1921 (Art Gallery of Ontario) and to the sketch “Autumn Foliage against Grey Rock” (National Gallery of Canada). While his use of colour is stunning, and dominates the overall impression, the bald rock face in the foreground occupies nearly half of the composition. It was a strategic decision that set the middle ground colours into sharp relief. In the far distance, only a tiny portion of the composition is dedicated to a distant hazy sky. However, it is not truly a hazy day for the lighting in the foreground bears witness to a blast of sunlight from behind the artist to illuminate his subject, resulting in the striking palette of reds, yellows, and oranges. This warm and joyful sketch is unsigned but bears the estate stamp, proof positive of its larger quality provenance. As well, in the twenties, Carmichael often worked on an incorporated product called Beaverboard, made of compressed fibreboard building materials, a practice consistent with this sketch too. As well, it was included in the Carmichael’s first solo exhibition with a gallerist, Toronto’s Simon Dresdnere; the painting was number 28 in that exhibition, a detail confirmed on the verso of the panel. The Dresdnere exhibition has remained one of the few commercial solo shows in the whole of Carmichael’s posthumous exhibition legacy. Wisely, Dresdnere saw the need for the exhibition to also be a retrospective, drawing on works beginning in the 1920s and continuing to the 1940s. In this context, “Autumn Tangle” offered gallery visitors an introduction to the artist’s early work of the 1920s. We extend our thanks to Catharine Mastin, PhD, art historian, curator and Adjunct Member of the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Art History at York University for contributing the preceding essay. Mastin also curated the exhibition “Franklin Carmichael: Portrait of a Spiritualist”, an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa which toured Canada between 1999 and 2001.