For over a century the natural world and our relationship to it was a major subject for Canadian artists. Through paintings in the 1800s by Cornelius Krieghoff, Zacharie Vincent and others, Embracing Canada begins with early depictions of Indigenous peoples. European settlers in the Canadian landscape are also depicted by the artists such as Charlotte Schreiber and Homer Watson, who are associated with the founding of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1880, as well as the artists associated with the expanding Canadian Pacific Railway including Frederick M. Bell-Smith. As the exhibition progresses, artists' paintings of Canada shift toward the landscape itself rather than human activity within it, as demonstrated by extraordinary works by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. They and other figures such as Emily Carr, David Milne and Jock Macdonald, who begin to define a unique modern Canadian style.

Drawing on the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery and a remarkable loan from an important private collection, Embracing Canada surveys the history of artistic engagement with the Canadian landscape from c. 1840 to 1940, a period that produced many outstanding Canadian artists.