Canadian Art Club

The Canadian Art Club, was founded 1907 in Toronto by Edmund M. Morris and Curtis Albert Williamson.

Joan Murray writes in, 'Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century':

"Most of the members of the group trained in France and several of the artists from Quebec had rarely shown their work in Canada. Of the group, James Wilson Morrice who studied in the Academie Julian and later and later under the French painter, Henri Harpigines, was best known internationally, largely through exhibitions in Paris like the annual Salon d'Automne. In 1909, Louis Vauxcelies, a leading French critic wrote that since Whistler's death in 1903, Morrice had become the North American Painter who achieved in France the most 'notable and well merited place in the world of art'.
The membership of the club included Franklin Brownell, an American with French training who taught art in Ottawa, Archibald Browne, New York based Horatio Walker the Millet -inspired painter of habitant subjects who achieved some success in the United States, and Homer Watson."

Joan also writes that the group went on to include, William Brynner, William H. Clapp, Ernest Lawson, Suzor Cote, and sculptor members Phimister Proctor.

"Later members of the group used a tonal, atmospheric style in their early work by the time they showed with the club they were impressionists with a virtuoso technique, aimed at representing the appearance of the world out-of-doors as it is affected by light, its reflection, and atmosphere."

Source: Joan Murray, pp 12-13, 'Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century'.
Dundern Press. Oxford. Toronto. 1999. ISBN 1-55002-332-2