The Dorset Heritage Museum is on the map. When the museum kicks off this year’s season with the unveiling of two outdoor murals, it becomes a stop on the Group of Seven Outdoor Gallery tour.
“We became a part of the tour by a happy bit of fate,” says museum working committee member, Kerry Lock. “I called artist Gerry Lantaigne to ask if we could commission him to paint a mural for us.” Lantaigne is the tour founder and the artist behind much of Huntsville’s mural magic. That conversation planted the seed of possibility for the museum to become part of the popular outdoor gallery tour.The gallery works are large in scale; each is a reproduction in mural format of a painting by a member or associate of the iconic Canadian artists, the Group of Seven. The tour is based in Huntsville but there are long range plans to turn it into a road trip that circles Lake of Bays. Art lovers and curious wanderers would stop first at Huntsville where the majority of the paintings can be viewed, move on to Dwight, Dorset and Baysville, then return to Huntsville. Lantaigne envisions each satellite community hosting 5 or 6 murals.
Lock brought the concept of commissioning the murals to the museum committee who gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Two pieces were selected from the work of Franz (Frank) Johnston, one of the founding members of the Group of Seven. “We chose Franz Johnston because after he died in 1949, his widow came to live here and owned the Dorset Hotel, which (was) where the Fiery Grill is now,” explained Lock, “One of the sons, Paul Rodrick, was also an artist. He owned a home in the area and frequently gave painting lessons.”
The earlier work chosen is ‘Moose Pond’. Painted in 1918; the original is only 26.5 cm x 33.8 cm. This landscape is weighty, painted in thick strokes of greens, orange, rust, blue and cream. “’Moose Pond’ has the lyrical quality of a group of seven painting,” says Lantaigne.
The second painting, ‘Northern Evening’ depicts a man traveling across a frozen lake on a horse-drawn logging sleigh. “”It’s a really peaceful, serene painting of late afternoon in winter; there’s just a touch of sunlight. The calm scene has a lot of blues in it; blue sky and blue in the snow,” says Lantaigne. “This painting is more realistic in approach and very different from Moose Pond. Johnson went for a pastoral approach in his later work after leaving the Group of Seven. He was afraid his association with them would damage his career.”
The murals wouldn’t have come into being without the generous support of two memorial funds. Northern Evening was sponsored by the friends and family of Lorne E. Greenaway. Greenaway was Locke’s father and in his teens he worked at a logging camp in the Burks Falls area. Northern Evening was chosen to be sponsored by the memorial fund because it so suits the memory of Greenaway’s early years. Moose Pond was sponsored by the Dorset Heritage Museum's Memorial Fund.
The official unveiling takes place at the museum on Saturday, May 16 at 2 p.m.
For more information visit www.dorsetheritagemuseum.ca or www.groupofsevenoutdoorgallery.ca.
