J.W. Bengough brilliant illustrator and founder of Grip magazine later Grip Ltd.

On my walk at Forest Lawn Mausoleum in Toronto, I discovered the crypt of J.W. Bengough, the famous Canadian political cartoonist and founder of the influential magazine Grip.

Bengough was a brilliant political caricaturist who used Grip, founded in 1872, as his platform to lampoon and comment on Canadian society and politics. From this magazine grew Grip Ltd., a commercial art firm that became a creative hub in the early 1900s.

Grip Ltd. was home to a remarkable group of artists who would become Canadian art royalty. Among them were head designer J.E.H. MacDonald (known as “Jimmy” at Grip), Frederick H. Varley, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael, Frank Johnston, and his brother Bob Johnston. Remarkably, five of these artists went on to become founding members of the iconic Group of Seven.

It was in this very same studio that a young, quiet, raw-talented artist named Tom Thomson emerged—an artist who would become one of Canada’s greatest landscape painters and an enduring figure in the country’s artistic heritage.

Thomson sitting at his desk at Grip Limited. 

Tom Thomson’s view from the windows of Grip Ltd. 1908-10.

J.W. Bengough, died in Toronto on October 2, 1923. He was 72.