David P. Silcox

With about fifty pages of well written and informative introduction about the group and their painting, this is essentially a catalogue of the artists’ work. It concludes with a chronology and a general and artist specific bibliography, and a detailed list of the works included.

The paintings are reproduced sometimes two to a page and frequently one to a page and total nearly three hundred and seventy in full colour. The standard of reproduction is good and the colours rich and strong, often the quality of the brush work and texture of the paint is apparent. As a result we can truly appreciate the stunning beauty of the work and the rich variety to be found in the artists’ painting.

This is a most enlightening book brimful of gorgeous paintings, if you are not familiar with this group’s work, as I was not until I acquired this volume, it is bound to win you over.… (more)

According to the flyleaf this is the most extensive collection of the artists works, published on the occasion of the centenary of Thomson's birth. Through eight chapters the accessible and very readable text by art historian David P Silcox provides a critical commentary along with biographical details. The book includes a separate chronology, bibliography and an index of illustrations.

The book is very well illustrated with 177 paintings shown in full colour, many of them to the same dimensions as the original. The pictures run with the text so they are close to where they are discussed. The captions to the pictures provide only the title, the full captions are listed separately at the back of the book. In addition there are nearly 60 black and white images including paintings and period photographs.

This is a substantial book, large in size and landscape in format, and printed on heavy stock. However there are some shortcomings, mainly due to the quality of the printing; the black and white half-tones are soft and very dense, and lack detail in the dark areas, and while the colour plate are much crisper they too suffer from a lack of detail in the dark areas, and they appear to have a cream cast to them (I have note been fortunate to see the originals and base this on a comparison with Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, which appears to be a much better produced book). These are common failings with some printing of the period (1977).

It is a shame that the quality of the printing is questionable here, for there is so much to be said for having so many paintings reproduced life size.… (more)