Toronto Gallery Robbed, 11 Pieces Taken

Thieves show discerning taste in taking off with a handful of paintings by the Group of Seven.

Eleven paintings ­– including five painted by members of the Group of Seven – have been stolen from a Toronto art gallery. The suspects broke into the gallery early Monday morning and hauled off paintings worth about $387,000 altogether. Among those stolen were works by A.Y. Jackson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Frederick J. Varley, Frank H. Johnston, and Alfred J. Casson, all artists whose somewhat surreal landscapes of Canada's wilderness helped to establish a national identity in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s as members of the Group of Seven. The Jackson painting that was stolen, Les Eboulements, is valued at $135,000, and depicts a horse-drawn sleigh plodding along a snow-swept Quebec background.