Beaver Hall Group

In an era when women artists were often excluded from professional art, the Beaver Hall Group was the first Canadian artist association comprised primarily, though not exclusively, of professional female artists. When the Group of Seven formally disbanded in 1932, the women of the Beaver Hall Group helped establish the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933, to provide exhibition opportunities to their members. Members and associates included Canadian art icons such as A.Y. Jackson (the Group’s first president), Mabel May, Lilias Torrance Newton, Randolph Hewton, Edwin Holgate, Mabel Lockerby, Anne Savage, Emily Coonan, Adrien Hébert, Henri Hébert, and Prudence Heward. 

The painters met in the late 1910’s while studying at the Art Association of Montreal. Sharing a studio space at 305 Beaver Hall Hill in Montreal, members are now collected in the National Gallery, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario and private collections.

Situated in the heart of Montreal’s artist community, the association was connected to Toronto by their President, A.Y. Jackson, who supported and stimulated the group. Jackson would arrange exhibitions between the Group of Seven and the Beaver Hall Group, identifying their goals as in line with each other.

Speaking to the spirit of Beaver Hall’s goals at their first exhibition in 1921, Jackson underlined the artists’ core idea as freedom from rules or requirements. The artist paints “with utter disregard for what has hitherto been considered requisite to the acceptance of the work at the recognized art exhibitions in Canadian centres. ‘Schools’ and ‘isms’ do not trouble us,” Jackson emphasized, “individual expression is our chief concern”.

When the women of Beaver Hall helped formed the Canadian Group of Painters, they elected Prudence Heward, a leading figurative painter known for defiant female subjects, as co-founder and vice president (1933–39).