Arthur Lismer, well-known member of the Group of Seven, was also one of Canada's most innovative educators. Using previously untapped correspondence and papers as well as interviews with Lismer's teaching colleagues, child students, and art students, Angela Nairne Grigor examines Lismer's Arts and Crafts Movement background in his native England, the evolution of the humanistic ideas and ideals that guided his work as both an artist and a teacher, and his international influence as an educator. She gives a vivid portrait of his approach to teaching in an illustrious fifty-year career that took him from Toronto to Halifax, Montreal, New York, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and during which he played a pivotal role in the development of some of Canada's most important art schools and museums. Lismer pioneered new progressive ideas in art education through his work with children as educational supervisor at the Art Gallery of Toronto and, later, at Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts. In exploring Lismer's development as an educator, Grigor traces the history of art education in twentieth-century Canada and charts changing attitudes towards children and art.
Lismer emerges as an artist with a social conscience who captured the hearts and minds of the thousands who heard him speak or were fortunate enough to have been his students. Arthur Lismer, Visionary Art Educator includes over a dozen drawings from Lismer's teaching and lecture notes that have not been previously published.