24 Facts About Franklin Carmichael

Franklin Carmichael was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven.

The youngest original member of the Group of Seven, Franklin Carmichael often found himself socially on the outside of the group.

Franklin Carmichael was born in 1890 in Orillia, Ontario, the son of David Graham and Susannah Eleanor Carmichael.

In 1910, at the age of twenty, Franklin Carmichael arrived in Toronto and entered the Ontario College of Art, where he studied with William Cruickshank and George Reid.

Franklin Carmichael moved to Antwerp, Belgium in 1913 to study painting at Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

In 1922, Franklin Carmichael joined the Sampson-Matthews firm, a printmaking business.

Franklin Carmichael used watercolour consistently from this point onward, painting some of his most famous works with the medium.

Franklin Carmichael died suddenly of a heart attack while returning home from the Ontario College of Art on October 24,1945.

Franklin Carmichael is buried at St Andrew's and St James Cemetery in Orillia, Ontario.

Franklin Carmichael eventually came to favour landscape art, and many of his pieces display an effort to achieve rich colour and design.

Franklin Carmichael's final painting, Gambit No 1, was painted in 1945 and was his only abstract piece.

Art historian Joyce Zemans thought the painting indicated Franklin Carmichael was moving in a new direction, though given the timing of the work at the end of his life it is difficult to know whether he would have continued.

Famous for his watercolours, Franklin Carmichael was a passionate landscape painter.

Franklin Carmichael's developing maturity is seen in perhaps his most famous work, The Upper Ottawa, Near Mattawa.

Beyond simple representation of picturesque views, Franklin Carmichael attempted to capture contrast.

From 1924 on, Franklin Carmichael painted the La Cloche Mountains, located in northern Ontario, above Lake Huron, and he expressed his admiration for the "humped contours", white quartzite rock and long stretches of water.

Franklin Carmichael believed in the independent validity to the medium, and believed them to be equal to oil painting.

Franklin Carmichael co-founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1925, in an effort to give the medium the importance and recognition it deserved.

Jackson's 1932 depiction of the Falconbridge smelter near Sudbury, Smoke Fantasy, though she found Franklin Carmichael better imbued his painting with power and meaning than Jackson did his.

Franklin Carmichael produced many etchings, linocuts and wood engravings over his lifetime, and was an expert at woodblock and linoleum prints, having become familiar with printing methods from his work in commercial art.

In commercial art, the other members of the Group of Seven typically restricted themselves to illustration work; Franklin Carmichael took an active role in book design.

Franklin Carmichael worked on book illustrations for Canadian publishers from 1942 until the end of his life.

Franklin Carmichael produced illustrations for magazines, including the cover of a 1928 issue of Maclean's magazine.

Franklin Carmichael was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and awarded the RCA Medal in 1969.