Artist. Known primarily as a portraitist, he played a major role in Montreal's art community, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where he both studied and taught. He was considered the "eighth" member of the Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933 that included Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley, he was invited to join the group in 1930. He was born in Allandale, Ontario, Canada on August 19, 1892. In 1895 his family moved to Jamaica where his father worked as an engineer and two years later he was sent to Toronto, Ontario, Canada to go to school. In 1901 his family returned from Jamaica and settled in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He then studied art at the Art Association of Montreal and in 1912 he travelled to Paris, France for further study. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was travelling in the Ukraine and was forced to cross Asia to return to Canada. Soon afterward he enlisted the 4th Division of the Canadian Army and returned to France until 1919. In 1920 he returned to Paris to further his art studies. His first art exhibition was held at the Arts Club of Montreal in 1922. From 1928 to 1934 he taught wood engraving at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. He occasionally accompanied fellow artist and friend A.Y. Jackson on painting expeditions in western Canada. He established a distinctive method of portraying the human figure in the landscape and was also instrumental in the revival of woodblock printing. In 1935 he was elected as an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. During World War II he travelled to England to work as a war artist. In 1943 he returned to Montreal only to find that the art scene had changed, with the arrival of the Les Automatistes, an art movement that was founded by a group of art dissidents from Montreal led by painter Paul-Emile Borduas. He then left Montreal to live in the Laurentians, a region of southern Quebec known as a retreat for artists. He moved back to Montreal for health reasons and died there at the age of 84.