There’s more to Canadian art than just the Group of Seven, as art historian Anne Newlands demonstrates in Canadian Art: From Its Beginnings to 2000. The book profiles 300 artists, presenting them in alphabetized one-page entries (two pages are devoted to seminal figures such as Tom Thomson and Emily Carr), which include a colour reproduction of a characteristic work. The accompanying text provides an interpretive description of each work, its historical and regional context, and a brief bio of the artist.

Newlands’s alphabetical approach dissuades the pigeonholing of artists into time period, cultural background, or stylistic affiliations. Instead, readers are invited to draw their own parallels among a varied array of works, which range from early Inuit and native artifacts through various forms of painting and sculpture to the multimedia installations of the contemporary avant-garde. The format allows allows lesser-known but important artists ample space amid their more famous peers. With Canadian Art, the rich legacy and stylistic diversity of the Canadian visual arts have been stylishly encapsulated in print.