A LONG, LOST LAWREN HARRIS HAS BEEN FOUND

October 23, 1885 - January 29, 1970

background painting: Lawren Harris - Shacks

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Lawren Harris - References

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Footnotes - Discovery ●

Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
The painting is, in fact, very similar in subject, time of year, composition and mood of van Wille, like Departing Winter in the Eifel. The Edge of the Maple Wood was in Harris’s collection until it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in 1937 ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 16
...one of his new friends, J.E.H. MacDonald, later to be one of the architects of the Group of Seven, whom he met in November 1911 at an exhibition of MacDonald’s work at the Arts and Letters Club. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930/ colour experiment
Harris has made a radical departure toward a new, intense colour scheme by aggressively juxtaposing thick strokes of complementary hues to add a new vitality to his work. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 26
...he saw in MacDonald’s landscapes “the beginning of what I, myself, vaguely felt; what I was groping toward–Canada painted in her own spirit.” ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 44
At some point in the summer, both MacDonald and Harris were at Go Home Bay in Georgian Bay. MacDonald had been offered the use of a houseboat moored near Split Rock Island by Dr. James MacCallum, a Toronto eye doctor, who admired his landscape sketches exhibited at the Arts and Letter Club. Harris may have rented a cottage nearby. ●
MacCallum-Jackman Cottage Mural Paintings / page 14
In the summer of 1911 at a time when MacCallum was building his cottage, Harris was staying at Go Home Bay, where he had rented a cottage belonging to Dr. D.E. Staunton Wishart, located near the Madawaska Club dock. ●
MacCallum-Jackman Cottage Mural Paintings / pages 17/62
...a responsive chord in MacCallums’ nationalist fibre, since he hastened to invite the artist to visit his island the following summer.11
11. Lawren Harris may have spent some time at Go Home Bay during the same summer. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 44
It was from these “eerie wildernesses” that Lawren Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald–like so many others before them–were hoping to forge their vision of Canada. They entered this frozen and supposedly menacing hinterland in January or February of 1912. This deduction is most likely inaccurate because MacDonald and Harris had only met in November of 1911 and Harris would most likely still be in Toronto for the March 1912 OSA Exhibition that first showed his new studio canvas The Drive. Plus they still had one well documented Toronto winter painting trip where Harris did The Gas Works and MacDonald did Tracks and Traffic. They probably did not leave on a three to four month sketching trip until April of May of 1912 leaving them perfect timing to make a return visit to Go Home Bay in late July or early August. ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 19
The Drive is Harris’s first monumental Canadian landscape and his first to depict Northern Ontario. It was developed from sketches made on trips with MacDonald to Mattawa, Burk Falls, and other places in Northern Ontario. These deductions are most likely inaccurate because The Drive was painted in studio over the winter of 1911-1912 and exhibited at the March 1912 OSA Exhibition before Harris and MacDonald even left for their trip to Mattawa, etc. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 43
The Drive of 1912 is probably from Harris’s trip to Temiscaming and Mattawa. The painting was exhibited at the OSA Exhibition in March of 1912 and was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada, making it an important landmark in Harris’s career. This deduction is also inaccurate. See above endnote. ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 19
Without Harris, there would have been no Group of Seven. As A.Y. Jackson acknowledged “He provided the stimulus, it was he who encouraged us always to take the bolder course, to find new trails.” ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 40
But the experiment at the foot of Bathurst Street would never be repeated. Harris and MacDonald seem to have concluded that there was no real “Canadian tang” in paintings of chimney stacks and gasometers: such works could as easily have been done in Berlin or Amsterdam or London. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 121
He was painting his own experimental work as Jackson worked on Terre sauvage. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 46
The Drive, at 91 centimetres high by 138 centimetres wide, his largest work to date. It too took the theme of rural labour beloved of Barbizon and Hague School painters but transplanted it from an agricultural landscape of peasant ploughmen and their beasts of burden to a more distinctively Canadian location in the Ontario bush. The limited colour scale revealed less of a departure from the Hague School tradition. With the exception of the brightly dressed lumberjacks, the tone was still muted and dark, with an umber and russet landscape beneath a lowering sky providing the background for the men’s exertions. The way he lit his composition–darkened edges giving way to a patch of sunlight in the distance central plane–was suggestive of the Barbizon-influenced American painter Henry Ward Ranger, known as the leader of the “Tonal School of America.” ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 33
The Eaton Manufacturing Building,...is one of the two known downtown industrial subjects that Harris painted in the winter of 1911-12. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 38
In 1911 he painted The Eaton Manufacturing Building. This twelve-storey factory on Queen Street West was built two years earlier, the latest addition to the handful of skyscrapers on the urban landscape and a glass-and-steel testimony to Toronto’s prosperity and modernity. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 39
Harris was no doubt hoping for a similar evocation of the city’s industrial sublime when he and MacDonald set up their easels in the snow beside the lakefront. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / pages 33/206
The T. Eaton Company Building on Queen Street West is seen from the rear rising majestically above a series of small, mean foreground sheds. The multi-storeyed structure is treated in a highly impressionistic manner and seems to project a golden, corruscating light by means of a field of small, bright brushstrokes32. 32. This is the only known instance in Harris’ work in which he employs an impressionistic facture to such an emphatic degree. The painting was apparently not exhibited after its appearance in the 40th O.S.A. Ehibition 9-30 March, 1912, no. 86, titled Eaton Mfg. Bldg. from the Ward. ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 21
Harris regarded the period of his work from 1913 to 1918 as a preliminary stage, but it contains some of his most beautiful canvases. He described the treatment he applied to them as “decorative,” since he used brush strokes and heavy paint to enliven the surface of the canvas while juxtaposing contrasting colours, the mark of the postimpressionist. He painted these works both in urban areas and in what appears to be wilderness, though Toronto’s High Park and ravines sometimes provided the rustic settings. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation/ thickly painted brushstrokes
Another work, Building the Ice House, Hamilton, is a more interesting example of Harris’s painting at this time, because of his dramatic use of brushstrokes. The horisontals and then the verticals are painted so as to appear as if done with one brushstroke. Even for the sky and the very distant mauve horizon, the brushstrokes are thickly painted verticals. Being very familiar with J.E.H. MacDonald’s painting at this time, Harris probably would have known a small painting by MacDonald dated 1911 that shows lumberjacks on logs in a river. There are other paint strokes on the logs, but each log is made to look as though it were painted by one stroke. Since Harris would have been aware of this type of brushstroke in MacDonald’s painting, I support the 1912date for Building the Ice House, Hamilton even though the bold confidence of the brushstrokes in this painting has given rise to speculation that it should be dated later. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
...”the world’s worst illustrations. This might explain why only one of the paintings of drawings for them has survived. If they were returned to Harris from the magazine, he may have destroyed them along with all but the few student works he have, since he is known to have destroyed work he considered inferior. Most of the originals of the illustrations were in oils or possibly gouache, which one can see from some of the textural effects Harris created. The only mention of Harris’s medium in the article refers merely to ‘canvas and colours.’ The others were pencil drawings. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
The second trip that Harris does not mention was to Go Home Bay on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, when he rented a cottage for the summer of 1911.
Harris probably discarded many of these early sketches and perhaps some of the paintings, so it is impossible to gain a complete picture of his artistic production. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 44
Harris, on the other hand, was less intrigued with the pictorial possibilities of the region and never painted a significant Georgian Bay composition. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation / pages 31/184
I suspect that Harris destroyed all but a few of his student works. In notes prepared for our interview, Thoreau MacDonald, J.E.H. MacDonald’s son, described an incident in 1934: “Before Lawren left, he threw all his outdoor sketches and drawings in a heap on the basement floor and gave orders to get rid of the.” ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation / Harris’s First Paintings
Very few works survive from Harris’s years as a student in Berlin. ●
Lawren Stewart Harris : A Painter's Progress / page 11
Unfortunately, virtually nothing from this period survives. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 22
Harris probably returned to Canada at the end of the summer of 1907. However, he almost immediately set off to Palestine with the Brantford-born author Norman Duncan. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 23
Harper’s Magazine: Later in his life, the artist was embarrassed by these early illustrations and insisted that they were “the world’s worst.” ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 15
Before returning to Toronto, Harris visited Italy, France, and England. In Italy he met the expatriate Canadian writer (also from Brantford), Norman Duncan...He invited Harris to travel with him to the Middle East to prepare the illustrations. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 23
Harper’s Magazine: Later in his life, the artist was embarrassed by these early illustrations and insisted that they were “the world’s worst.” ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 41
Harris’ earliest form of signature, the block-like initials L S H, which seems to have been discontinued c. 1911. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 207
The Gas Works, 1911-12 is signed both ways. In not known instance after c. 1911 does the early signature reappear. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 39
Harris was no doubt hoping for a similar evocation of the city’s industrial sublime when he and MacDonald set up their easels in the snow beside the lakefront. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation/ not a tonal painting.
Laurentians, Near St. Jovite is not a tonal painting. The shift is towards a brighter combination of different colours. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation/ colour experiments in Go Home Bay.
Harris’s stay at Go Home Bay on Georgian Bay in 1911 produced yet another type of colour experiment, this one prompted by the colours of the water, sand and sky. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 42
Laurentians, Near St. Jovite 1908, oil on board, 6 X 8 ½ in. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 50
Harris has made a radical departure towards a new, intense colour scheme by aggressively juxtaposing thick strokes of complementary hues to add a new vitality to his work. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
These statements also show that Harris was already reaching beyond the realist aesthetic of painting realities that one can observe for oneself. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation / colour experiment
In Harris’s work, Laurentian Landscape constitutes a promise that was not fulfilled, for he mover away from such vigorous colour experiments into the gently decorative snow painting that became his main interest until his breakdown in early 1918. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
Here the paint is applied thickly on the two sides of the house. Wide brushstrokes are laid on top of underpainting in such a way that one can see the individual strokes...Both Jawlensky and Kandinsky used brushstrokes on top of underpainting in a way that resembles the later Harris experiments. In another painting of Harris’s, Little House of about 1909, the brushstrokes are similar: they are mainly horizontal, with some few thickened edges, but without the clear vertical accents of Top o’ the Hill, Spadina. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
The horizontal movement of the strokes is punctuated by verticals that are really the thickened ends of the brushstrokes. These brushstrokes are not representational in intent; rather they are used to enliven the wall area, to make the painting more visually stimulating. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
Harris’s development as a painter during these early years of artistic politics is the growing importance of the decorative effects that were just beginning in the earlier landscapes - the use of brushstrokes and impasto to enliven the flat surfaces. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 30
The Drive, 1912 and Deserted Barn in the Laurentians (unlocated) were his first, full scale Canadian landscape paintings. ●
Lawren S. Harris : Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 / page 50
...a technique popularly known as the “Segantini stitch” after the distinctive manner of the Swiss impressionist painter Giovanni Segantini...he would have had opportunities to become familiar with Segantini’s pictures in European museums. ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 121
Jackson claimed, he would drag his brush through several pigments and the “slap it on the canvas” in hopes of achieving vibrant colours. The actual process was probably more measured, since the end result, Laurentian Landscape, made use of a technique known (after its inventor Giovanni Segantini) as the “Segantini stitch.” ●
Defiant Spirits : The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven / page 122
Where exactly Harris learned this technique remains unclear, but before his premature death from peritonitis in 1899 Segantini had been one of the most famous painters of his day (Austria, Italy and Switzerland all claimed him as their own). ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
Jackson tell us: “One of Harris’s efforts to get vibrant colour was to drag his brush quickly through three or four colours and slap it on the canvas. Among ourselves it was known as Tomato Soup.” ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
The use of purple also suggests that these are student works, Friedrich used purple extensively, and Harris was probably influenced by him in this regard. Harris’s earliest certain Canadian works did not make use of purple, but it becomes a frequent colour in his work around 1912. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation / page 33
What must be called Harris’s first success among his snow paintings is Winter Morning, also of 1914, in which leafless trees form a screen through which one sees the row of purple trees that make the horizon line, and beyond the that the richly developed sky area. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
It is the earliest example of the carefully worked out, layered compositions that were to become his main stylistic feature throughout his career as an urban and wilderness landscapist. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
One can see that Harris has had difficulties similar to those he had in House, Wellington Street with painting the small leafless tree branches against the sky. Again, he has dealt with it by similarly spreading brown paint around these branches, obscuring rather than solving the problem. ●
Light for a Cold Land : Lawren Harris's Life and Work-- An Interpretation
The difficulty is due, I believe, to Harris’s manner of blocking out his paintings. ●
Lawren Harris : An Introduction to His Life and Art / page 19
The painting reveals that Harris at this stage of his life chose to represent the scene as he must have seen it. ●
Beginning of Vision : The Drawings of Lawren S. Harris / page 51 ●

Autumn Harbour

References

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Lawren Harris - Time Line ●

1904
From the time he was a teenager, Lawren Harris had been told that he was going to be an artist.
1904 -1908
He spends four years in Europe studying under German masters in their ways of how to be an artist. He is allowed only charcoal and watercolours for the first two years.
1909
He spends a short period as a commercial artist. This is potentially the only time in his life that he is working for a pay cheque.
1908 - 1912
He goes on six sketching trips from northern Minnesota to central Ontario. Harris is looking for his own style. He completed several studio works in this period.
1911
Harris finds a kindred spirit when he meets J.E.H. MacDonald in November at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. It appears that it was MacDonald that encourages Harris to take his canvases on site.
1911
This is also appears to be the year that Harris met Dr. James MacCallum while on vacation in Go Home Bay.
1912
Harris and MacDonald go on an extended 3 - 4 months sketching trip to Mattawa and Temiscaming along the northern reaches of the Ottawa River.
1912
There are no known records of Harris, his wife Trixie, MacCallum and MacDonald ever going on vacation together, except a Harris family snapshot that seems to confirm this event.

What appears to have happened was that Harris was overwhelmed or uncertain of what he was seeing in the Canadian wilderness because he produced very little on this sketching trip with MacDonald. Dr. MacCallum came up to his cottage on Split Rock Island in Go Home Bay for a short vacation but would soon have to return to Toronto to attend to his busy medical practice. He might have even taken Trixie with him as he travelled north. MacCallum probably stayed only 2 or 3 weeks and when he returned he might have been accompanied by J.E.H. MacDonald would have to get back to work at Grip. Leaving Harris and his new wife to enjoy Go Home Bay for another few weeks.

When the canvas was completed, Harris was now faced with another problem. How was he going to transport it back to Toronto? There potentially would have been a boat trip, a ferry, car travel and then a train plus all of their personal luggage. The canvas had now became a burden and it was quietly abandoned. Dr. MacCallum would not have seen this work because it would have ended up in his collection and Harris would not have wanted to leave a work the he didn’t feel was well done for him. But it was pleasant enough that it ended as an anonymous painting (Harris was an unknown artist in 1912, especially in the wilds of central Ontario) over some lost and forgotten cabin fireplace for almost 90 years.

Bibliography ●

All of these publications were reviewed for this report.

A Canadian Art Movement The Story of the Group of Seven By Housser, Frederick Broughton

A hiker's guide to the Rocky Mountain art of Lawren Harris By Christensen, Lisa / 759.21 H31c 31383058407936

A story of the Group of Seven By Hunkin, Harry/ 759.21 H93t1 31383010616202

An Apprehended Vision The Philosophy of the Group of Seven By Davis, Ann / 759.21 D26

Beginning of vision : the drawings of Lawren S. Harris By Murray, Joan / 741.971 H31m 31383052096792

Best of the Group of Seven By Murray, Joan / 759.21 M98b 31383038243518

Beyond wilderness : the Group of Seven, Canadian identity and contemporary art edited by John O'Brian and Peter White /
759.21 G88o 31383082592463

Canadian Earth Landscape Paintings by the Group of Seven By Boulet, Roger (Book - 1982) / 759.21 B763c

Canadian Landscape Painters, By Robson, Albert Henry (Book - 1932) / 758 R66c

Defiant spirits : the modernist revolution of the Group of Seven By King, Ross / 759.21 G88k 31383093125253

Fine Examples Emily Carr, Lawren S. Harris, Walter J. Phillips (Book - 1994) 759.21 F49h

The Fine Arts in Canada, By MacTavish, Newton McFaul (Book - 1925) / 709.71 M17

Group of Seven and Tom Thomson : an introduction By Newlands, Anne / 759.21 T48n 31383078633099

Group of Seven and Tom Thomson By Silcox, David P. / 759.21 G88s 31383093021080

Group of Seven : art for a nation By Hill, Charles C. / 759.21 G88h 31383089139029

Group of Seven and Their Contemporaries 29 February-22 March, 1980 By Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc (Book - 1980) / 759.21 K36g

Group of Seven, Canadian Landscape Painters From the McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario: at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., January 22-February 20, 1977 (Book - 1977) / 759.21 M167g

Group of Seven. By Mellen, Peter / 759.21 M52g 31383068351603

Group of Seven. By Vancouver Art Gallery / 759.21 V22g 31383046272269
Group of Seven. By MacDonald, Thoreau / 759.21 M135g 31383000359599

Images of nature : Canadian poets and the Group of Seven compiled by David Booth / J759.21 I311b 31383044998360

In The Footsteps of the Group of Seven. Jim and Sue Waddington. ISBN 978-0-86492-908-2

J. E. H. MacDonald, RCA, By Robson, Albert Henry (Book - 1937) / 759.21 M13r

J. E. H. MacDonald, RCA, 1873-1932. [Exhibition held at] the Art Gallery of Toronto, November 13-December 12, 1965; /
759.21 M13 31383000157134

Lake O'Hara art of J.E.H. MacDonald, and hiker's guide By Christensen, Lisa / 759.21 M13c 31383069870270

Lawren Harris : an introduction to his life and art By Murray, Joan / J759.21 H31m 31383067941743

Lawren Harris Paintings, 1910-1948. Catalogue of An Exhibition Organized by the Art Gallery of Toronto for October-November 1948 /
759.21 H31t

Lawren S. Harris : urban scenes and wilderness landscapes, 1906-1930 : Art Gallery of Ontario, January 14-February 26, 1978 By Adamson, Jeremy Elwell / 759.21 H31L 31383064452207

Lawren Harris. By Harris, Lawren / 759.21 H31h 31383086146241

Lawren Harris : North by West : the Arctic and Rocky Mountain paintings of Lawren Harris 1924-1931 - By Jackson, Christopher E. /
759.21 H31j 31383033421036

Lawren Stewart Harris : a painter's progress / 759.21 H31hu 31383086835256

Lawren Harris. Retrospective exhibition, 1963, the National gallery of Canada, 7 June to 8 September 1963 [and] the Vancouver art gallery,
4 to 27 October 1963. / 759.21 H31n 31383030119609

Lawren Harris Paintings, 1910-1948. Catalogue of An Exhibition Organized by the Art Gallery of Toronto for October-November 1948 and Circulated by the National Gallery of Canada By Art Gallery of Toronto (Book - 1948) / 759.21 H31t

Light for a cold land : Lawren Harris's life and work-- an interpretation By Larisey, Peter / 759.21 H31La 31383038233683

MacCallum-Jackman cottage mural paintings By Landry, Pierre / 759.21 L26m 31383031603304

McMichael Canadian Art Collection / 759.21 M167mc 31383084798266

Meet the Group of Seven By Wistow, David / J759.21 W817m 31383058155337

Promotion of the fine arts in Canada, 1880-1924 : the development of art patronage and the formation of public policy /
709.71 R17p 31383069179672

Rocks : Franklin Carmichael, Arthur Lismer, and the Group of Seven By Murray, Joan / 759.21 M98r 31383079435676

Seven years with the Group of Seven : a memoir in words and pictures By Putnam, Joyce / 759.21 P99s 31383032506019

Sketchbook, 1915-1922 By MacDonald, J. E. H. / 741.971 M135s 31383020375997

The Canadian Earth Landscape Paintings by the Group of Seven By Boulet, Roger (Book - 1982) / 759.21 B763c

There is no finality ... a story of the Group of Seven. By Hunkin, Harry / 759.21 H93t 31383048155223

Water : Lawren Harris and the Group of Seven By Murray, Joan / 759.21 H31mu 31383073155544