A Like Vision

Winner, Canadian Museums Association’s Outstanding Achievement in Research Award and IPPY Awards Silver Medal (Fine Art)
A Toronto Star Holiday Gift Guide Selection

A Like Vision is a lavish celebration of the legacy of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Canada’s canonical landscape painters. The Group’s depiction of the rugged beauty of the Canadian landscape — from the coastal mountains of British Columbia to the north shore of Lake Superior, the villages of rural Quebec, and the rocky, windswept coves of Newfoundland — charged Canadians to experience their country in a bold new light and changed the face of Canadian art forever. Through their vigorous and expressive painterly style and vibrant colours, the Group of Seven significantly contributed to Canada’s sense of autonomy and identity as a modern state in the aftermath of the First World War.

Featuring three hundred full-colour images, A Like Vision includes a lead essay by Ian A.C. Dejardin, Executive Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and contributions by a host of artists, curators, and writers. Among them are Indigenous art historian and curator Gerald McMaster, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, novelists David Macfarlane and Jane Urquhart, painters John Hartman and Robert Houle, and Inuk writer Tarralik Duffy.

One hundred years on from the Group’s first exhibition in 1920, A Like Vision is both a chance to review the Group’s legacy and a tribute to these giants of Canadian art and culture.

AUTHOR

Sarah Milroy

Sarah Milroy is Chief Curator at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. A highly respected art critic and exhibition curator, she has contributed to more than a dozen books on art, including Mary Pratt, From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia, and David Milne: Modern Painting.

Reviews

“This beautifully produced book with full colour reproductions … looks at the paintings through the eyes of immigrants or Indigenous people. As Milroy writes in her introduction, ‘These are either the least political paintings ever made (just trees, please, we’re Canadian) or the most — in what they leave out.’”
– Toronto Star

“Exceptionally informative as a collective enterprise expertly showcasing the life and art of Tom Thomson.”
– Midwest Book Review

“A gorgeous book featuring the art of the Group of Seven, yes, but also an examination of how their painting fits into a longer history of this land that includes — and excludes — Indigenous peoples. Beautiful and thought-provoking.”
– Toronto Star‘s “Book Gift Guide”