Kathleen Munn, born in 1887 in Toronto, trained under Farquhar and Elizabeth McGillivary Knowles who encouraged her to go to New York in 1912 where she studied at the Art Students League and a won a prestigious student prize. When she returned to her family home on Spadina Road in 1918, she had fully embraced the avant-garde, having been influenced by Cubism and Futurism. She began to reinterpret conventional subjects through this lens – quiet pastoral scenes and classical nudes – creating daring criss-cross compositions of red, purple, green and yellow. Combining mythical aspects of modernism with her own spiritual beliefs, Munn’s artistic practice culminated in her greatest series, the Passion of the Christ, in the late 1920s. Munn was not religious but was a passionate humanist and strove to find a modern expression for religious subject matter. Equally passionate and determined, Brooker’s encouragement complemented Munn’s ambition; he was her greatest supporter and promoted her as a pioneering talent.

Born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1900, Lowrie Warrener studied sculpture at the Ontario College of Art with Emmanuel Hahn (1881-1957). He left for Europe in 1924 to attend the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp where his teachers recognized his talent, comparing him to Van Gogh and Gauguin and invited him to represent Belgium in the Prix de Rome competition. Warrener returned to Ontario in 1925 and embarked on a sketching expedition of Georgian Bay with Carl Schaefer, George Pepper and Hahn, culminating in a 121-work solo exhibition in Sarnia in 1926, as well as group exhibitions at Toronto’s National Exhibition, and the National Gallery of Canada. Warrener’s paintings stood out from those of his peers, distilling familiar northern landscapes into jewel-like compositions of delineated shapes, and broad planes. His northern shorelines and mountain-scapes are romantic, grandiose and suspenseful. An accomplished set designer, it was through theatre that Warrener met Brooker, who deemed him a fellow spiritual artist, working with “lines, curves, whirls, and flame-like rhythms, which flow through every manifestation of nature.”

Bertram Brooker was born in Croydon, England in 1888 and immigrated to Canada in 1905. In 1921, he moved to Toronto and joined the staff of Marketing Magazine becoming its editor and publisher in 1925. He soon discovered a passion for painting and began experimenting with abstract shapes and forms. In 1927, a solo exhibition of his works caused a sensation at the Arts and Letters Club – receiving praise from David Milne and A.Y. Jackson. At the time, he was one of only a few Canadian painters to have solo shows at both the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

Both Warrener and Munn participated regularly in gatherings known as the Brooker artist roundtables along with Will Ogilvie, Charles Comfort, and Lionel LeMoine Fitzgerald. While it’s difficult to determine who influenced who, the development of these three artists was a passionate, inclusive dialogue that lasted for years. Recently, Munn, Warrener and Brooker have benefited from a repositioning in our historical canon as artists who were truly ahead of their time.