North Shore

About North Shore

When the world thinks about the famous Group of Seven, this is likely the kind of image they recall—the quiet majesty of the Canadian wilderness. This lithograph by one of its youngest members, Alfred Joseph Casson is one of many classic landscapes he painted of the north—mountains, lakes, bare trees in the foreground rendered in his favoured bright palette of autumn colours—red, yellow, orange, a touch of green, and deep blue lakes against a cloudy white sky. Casson was an avid canoeist and spent many hours camping and drawing in northern Ontario often alongside fellow members of the Group.

“I had to develop my own style. I began to dig out places of my own...” A. J. Casson

He moved on to two commercial art firms in Toronto where he worked as an assistant to the artist Franklin Carmichael, one of the founding members of the renowned Group of Seven, (A group of Canadian landscape painters that included Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris and A. Y. Jackson.). Carmichael encouraged him to sketch and paint on his own. Casson was invited to join the Group of Seven in the 1920’s with whom he painted for years. Following their demise, he formed the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1933. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1940 and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Casson became the Art Director and finally the Vice President of the Ontario College of Art. He retired in 1957 to paint full time.
He died a few days short of his 94th birthday and is buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario beside five other members of the Group of Seven. His work is held in many private collections around the world and publicly in the Ontario Gallery of Art, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and the National Gallery of Canada.