In 1920, seven Canadian landscape painters, Lawren Harris, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston, Franklin Carmichael and A.Y. Jackson, exhibited as the "Group of Seven". The Group’s first exhibition opened at the Art Gallery of Toronto in May 1920.
Arthur Lismer Isles of Spruce 1922
As described by Canada's National Gallery in Ottawa: "... they brought to the Canadian landscape the buoyant post-impressionism of Van Gogh and they painted Canada as nobody had ever thought of painting it before. The wild colours of a Canadian autumn; the solitary lakes of northland; the monolithic islands of Lake Superior; the glacier-tortured landscape of the Laurentian Shield; the grim exhaustion of a hillside emerging from four months of winter snow - this was Canada as it is, a land like none other, and Canadians abruptly recognized it as their own."
Canada Post Office issued a stamp to honour the 50th anniversary of the formation of the "Group of Seven" on September 18, 1970. Arthur Lismer's painting Isles of Spruce was selected to represent the group.
National Archives of Canada
First Day Covers
Canada Post Office Replacement
Canada Post Office "Official" First Day Cover Pre-cursor
Prior to selling its first "official" first day covers in 1971, Canada Post Office produced sample first day covers for the Group of Seven stamp. These covers were never placed on sale but were distributed to philatelic organizations.
Schering Corporation
Unidentified
House of Commons
Overseas Mailers
H & E
Cole Cover
Rosecraft
David Pritchard
Usage
Domestic Letter
Coronation, Alberta, to Toronto, October 19, 1970
6 cents domestic letter rate