Jackson, A. Y. (Alexander Young), 1882-1974 : A.Y. (Alexander Young) Jackson was born in Montreal, the son of Henry A. Jackson and Georgina Young. He began his career as a commercial artist in Montreal. After working his way to Europe on a cattle boat with his brother H.A.C. Jackson in 1905, he spent 1906-1907 in the United States, studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and working as a commercial artist. He also studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris, 1907-1909. He travelled again to Europe in 1911 with Albert Robinson and in 1913 exhibited his work at the Art Association of Montreal with Randolph Hewton, whom he met in Paris during this trip. He then moved to Toronto, where he shared space with Tom Thomson in the Studio Building, and was elected an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1914 (becoming a full member in 1919). He served in the First World War, initially as an enlisted soldier, 1915-1917, and later, after being wounded, as an official war artist, 1917-1918.
After the war, Jackson settled again in Toronto and was a founding member of the Group of Seven. He continued to maintain links with Quebec, being associated with the Beaver Hall Hill Group, going on annual sketching trips in the province, and illustrating Chez Nous by Adjutor Rivard in 1924. He travelled to the Pacific Northwest in 1926 and went to Greenland and Ellesmere Island in 1927 on the supply ship, the Beothic, with Frederick Banting, publishing an account of the trip, The Far North (Rous and Mann 1928). He went to Great Slave Lake in 1928 and, with Lawren Harris, made a second trip to the Arctic in 1930.
A founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933, Jackson was active in the organization throughout the 1930s. He was a prolific painter of Canadian landscapes and made many painting trips across Canada, including ones to Alberta in 1937, Great Bear Lake 1938, Western Canada and Alaska 1943, and the Northwest Territories 1949, 1950 and 1951. A large exhibition of his work was held by the Art Gallery of Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada in 1953. In 1955, he left Toronto, where he had occupied the Studio Building for forty years, and settled in Manotick, Ontario. He published his memoirs, A Painter's Country, in 1958. In recognition of his contributions to Canadian art, he received honorary degrees from McMaster, Queen's, Carleton and McGill Universities and the Universities of British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967. He spent his last years in Ottawa and then at the McMichael estate in Kleinburg. He died in a nursing home in Woodbridge, Ontario, in 1974.
