Franklin Carmichael

Apprenticing in his father's carriage shop in Orillia, Carmichael studied in Toronto and Antwerp before joining Rous and Mann as an industrial designer. A founding member of the Group of Seven in 1920, he built a cabin in the La Cloche hills north of Georgian Bay.

While other Group members worked in oils, Carmichael championed watercolor, co-founding the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1925. His sweeping, light-filled paintings, like Mirror Lake and A Northern Silver Mine, captured Ontario's mining frontiers with luminous delicacy.