A.Y. Jackson loved the wild beauty of Canada and he painted it as only a Canadian could. As one of the founding members of the Group of Seven, which was formed in April 1920, he became known as the grand old man of Canadian painting. His time on the front lines during World War I influenced the way he approached landscape drawing and those motifs and themes reappeared in his later work. Born in Montreal in 1882, he worked as a commercial artist in Montreal and Chicago and took art classes in the evenings. He helped support his younger siblings, but once they had grown up he was free to leave for Paris where he mixed with some of the world’s most influential artists and took up studies at the Académie Julian. He returned to Canada and in June 1915 enlisted in the 60th Infantry Batta...