This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Alexander Young Jackson was best known as one of the members of the
Group of Seven, the famous group of Canadian modernist painters.
Born in Montreal, he started working at age twelve after his father
abandoned the family of six children. The young Jackson went to work as
an office boy for a Montreal printing company, where he received his
earliest training.
In 1906, he attended art classes at the Art
Institute of Chicago. One year later Jackson traveled to Europe on a
cattle boat, remaining in Paris to study at the Academie Julian until
1912. He decided to become a professional painter after studying
Impressionism in Paris.
He returned to Canada and settled in
Montreal. He often took sketching and painting trips to the near
by countryside. Back in Toronto, an artist by the name of J.E.H.
MacDonald contacted Jackson about a painting he had seen earlier in a
Toronto exhibition. Jackson soon developed a friendship with
MacDonald, and was thus linked to Toronto and it's artists.
Jackson had a great sense of adventure, and in 1913 Lawren S. Harris
talked Jackson into spending the entire summer painting around Georgian
Bay.
He also took trips every spring to Quebec and the
Canadian Arctic. In the fall he returned to his art studio in the
Studio Building, and in the winter he painted canvases. He lived in
Toronto until 1955 and was involved in the local art scene into his
eighties.
Source:
David Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art
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Biography from Mayberry Fine Art:
| Born in Montreal, Alexander Young Jackson left school at the age of twelve and began work at a Montreal printing firm. In 1906 he undertook art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago*. The following year he enrolled at the Academie Julian* in Paris and remained in France until 1912. During this period his painting was strongly influenced by the Impressionists*.
After his return to Canada, Jackson took up residence in Montreal and made many sketching trips to the surrounding countryside. Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald were impressed by Jackson's work and, in 1913, persuaded him to move to Toronto.
Jackson's great sense of adventure carried him from the east coast across Canada to the Rocky Mountains of the west. He made regular sketching trips to Quebec every spring and traveled to the far regions of Canada during the summer, including the Canadian Arctic. In the fall he would return to the Studio Building in Toronto (where he lived until 1955), spending the winters painting canvases. He continued this active lifestyle until he was in his eighties. |
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Alexander Jackson is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Impressionists Pre 1940
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