Lake and Mountains
By Lawren Harris, 1928, oil on canvas, 130.8 cm x 160.7 cm
One of Canada’s most beloved painters is the subject of a major solo exhibition that debuted last year in Los Angeles and concludes this summer in Toronto. Works in The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris were selected by arts aficionado and well-known comedian Steve Martin, who wanted to introduce Harris to U.S. audiences.
Born in 1885 to a wealthy Brantford, Ontario, family, Harris studied art abroad before returning to Toronto in 1908. He soon befriended artists such as Tom Thomson and J.E.H. MacDonald, and in 1920 he co-founded the Group of Seven painters with the aim of developing a uniquely Canadian artistic style.
Harris supported the work of fellow artists, including by arranging trips to paint in remote settings. Meanwhile, his own art evolved from earlier city scenes to landscapes inspired by Ontario’s North, the Rockies, and eventually the Arctic. Lake and Mountains, shown here, was painted after several summer trips to sketch in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. At once stark and dramatic, the work embodies a feeling for the power and beauty of the land as well as a sense for the impact of a clean, almost unearthly design.
Martin notes that as Harris’s iconic landscapes developed towards the pure abstraction of his later works, “The absence of organic things in the mountains, lakes, and icebergs he now painted created a paradoxical effect: the pictures came to life.”
The Idea of North shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario until September 18.