As the only published limited edition member of the Group of Seven, Canada's most
celebrated and loved landscape artist, A.J. Casson has had a remarkably long and prolific career. For over 70 years, he crisscrossed Ontario, recording its landscape, its village's and rural life in a distinctive painting style that has won him international recognition and acclaim.

The year 1990 marks the 70th anniversary of the first Group of Seven exhibition
at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario in May 1920.

Born in Toronto in 1898, Alfred Joseph Casson could not have imagined the astonishing
career that lay before him when in 1919, he was hired by a Toronto printing firm and
apprenticed to Franklin Carmichael. A prominent graphic designer and accomplished
painter, Carmichael became a founding member of the Group of Seven.

Through Carmichael's instruction and guidance, Casson's own artistic strengths flourished
and in 1926, five year's after Franz Johnston resigned from the Group, he was formally
accepted as the seventh member.

In the fall of 1928, Casson participated in one of the Group of Seven's famous
sketching trip's to Northern Ontario.

When the Group of Seven disbanded in 1932, several of the member's moved to other
parts of the country, but A. J. Casson remained in Ontario, and continued to paint
the landscape's and village's that served as an unfailing inspiration for his art since his
youth. He married in 1924, and in 1931 he built a splendid Georgian-style house in
North Toronto where he has lived to present day. The Casson's have one daughter and
three grandchildren.

Today painting's by A.J. Casson hang in the most public and private collection's across
Canada.

Book's and film's have documented his life, a lake near Sudbury and a township near
Thessalon have been named after him. He has received several honorary doctorate degree's
from Canadian universities, and 1979 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Northern Panorama | The Rural Setting | Watercolors | Framed Pieces | Ordering Prints