A work from the Vancouver Art Gallery's permanent collection is now making its way to envelopes and stamp collections.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Group of Seven’s first exhibition in 1920 at the Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada Post has released a set of seven stamps featuring one work by each of the members of the influential artists' collective.

Church by the Sea by painter and Group of Seven founding member J.E.H. (James Edward Hervey) MacDonald is the VAG work featured in the commemorative stamp set.

The artwork was gifted to the VAG collection in the same year it was completed, in 1924. 

MacDonald was a leading graphic designer, a popular art teacher, a poet, and a calligrapher.

His work joins that of Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Francis Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley. Their paintings became a national movement, drawing from post-Impressionism and romanticizing the majesty of the Canadian wilderness--a landscape previously undercelebrated through artwork. (Tom Thomson and B.C.'s legendary Emily Carr were also closely tied to the movement.)

 “One of the reasons that this work was chosen is that it encapsulates remarkably the sense of spirituality that many of the Group of Seven had in relation to the landscape,” Ian Thom, senior curator emeritus at the VAG, explained in the announcement. “Here we see the church, suggesting traditional spirituality, embedded within a strongly stylized landscape. The building, while important, is dwarfed by the expanse of nature.  It is an image that was important to MacDonald because he used a simplified version of the composition as one of the images that he contributed to the portfolio, Canadian Drawings by the Group of Seven, published by Rous & Mann in 1925. It is an evocative and striking image that suggests both the power of nature and the power of the human spirit.”

Canada Post has issued a self-adhesive booklet and gummed mini-pane of seven permanent domestic-rate stamps and a set of seven Official First Day Covers cancelled in locations significant to each artist.