Lawren Stewart Harris CC (1885 –1970) was a Canadian painter. He was born in Brantford, Ontario, and is best known as a member of the Group of Seven who pioneered a distinctly Canadian painting style in the early twentieth century. A. Y. Jackson has been quoted as saying that Harris provided the stimulus for the Group of Seven. During the 1920s, Harris' works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic. He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted. In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Lawren Stewart Harris was born in Brantford, Ontario. The son of Thomas Morgan Harris and Anna Stewart, Harris was an heir to the Massey-Harris fortune. The wealth and status of the family afforded Harris a privileged youth, which allowed him to focus on his painting career. He attended Central Technical School and St. Andrew's College. From 1904 to 1908 he studied in Berlin. He was interested in philosophy and Eastern thought. Later, he became involved in Theosophy and joined the Toronto Lodge of the International Theosophical Society.
In 1918 and 1919, Harris financed boxcar trips for the artists of the Group of Seven to the Algoma region, travelling along the Algoma Central Railway and painting in areas such as the Montreal River and Agawa Canyon. In the fall of 1921, Harris ventured beyond Algoma to Lake Superior's North Shore, where he would return annually for the next seven years. While his Algoma and urban paintings of the late 1910s and early 1920s were characterized by rich, bright colours and decorative composition motifs, the discovery of Lake Superior subject material catalyzed a transition to a more austere, simplified style, with limited palettes - often jewel colours with a range of neutral tones. In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches. The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. After the disbanding of the Group of Seven in 1933, Harris and the other surviving members including A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael, were instrumental in forming its successor, the larger national group, the Canadian Group of Painters.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.
In 1981, South Shore, Baffin Island was sold for $240,000, a record price for a Canadian painting. On May 29, 2001, Harris's Baffin Island painting was sold for a record of $2.2 million (record up to that time). Before the auction, experts predicted the painting done by one of the original Group of Seven would top $1 million, but no one expected it to fetch more than twice that amount. The painting, which has always been in private hands, depicts icy white mountains with a dramatic blue sky. In 2005, Harris's painting, Algoma Hill, was sold at a Sotheby's auction for $1.38 million. It had been stored in a backroom closet of a Toronto hospital for years and was almost forgotten about until cleaning staff found it.
On May 23, 2007, Pine Tree and Red House, Winter, City Painting II by Harris came up for auction by Heffel Gallery in Vancouver, BC. The painting was a stunning canvas from 1924 that was estimated to sell between $800,000 and $1,200,000. The painting sold for a record-breaking $2,875,000 (premium included). On November 24, 2008, Harris's Nerke, Greenland painting sold at a Toronto auction for $2 million (four times the pre-sale estimate).
On November 26, 2009, Harris's oil sketch, The Old Stump, sold for $3.51 million at an auction in Toronto. In May 2010, Harris's painting, Bylot Island I, sold for $2.8 million at a Heffel Gallery auction in Vancouver, British Columbia. On November 26, 2015, his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works. Another piece, Winter Landscape, sold for a hammer price of $3.1 million in the same auction. On November 23, 2016, Mountain Forms sold for $11.2 million.
© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Lawren Stewart Harris or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| Mr. Lawren Stewart Harris |
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| A Row of Houses, Wellington Street (Street Painting I), 1910 |
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| Birches 1912 |
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| Building the Ice House Hamilton, 1912 |
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| Study of Women in the Ward 1913 |
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| Winter Sunrise 1913 |
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| Shacks 1919 |
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| Watertower 1919 |
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| In the Ward 1920 |
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| Algoma Hill 1920 |
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| Warehouse - No. II 1920 |
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| Houses, Winter City Painting v, 1920-21 |
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| Houses Group, No. xx, The Wharf 1921 |
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| Above Lake Superior 1922 |
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| Houses, St. Patrick Street 1922 |
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| Ice house Coldwell, Lake Superior 1923 |
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| Lake Superior 1923 |
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| Afternoon sun Lake Superior 1924 |
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| Pic Island, Lake Superior 1924 |
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| Pine tree and red house winter city 1924 |
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| Red house 1925 |
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| Mountain forms 1926 |
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| North Shore Lake Superior 1926 |
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| Mountain and lake 1929 |
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| Isolation Peak 1930 |
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| Lake Harbor South Shore Baffin Island Morning 1930 |
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| Mount Lefroy 1930 |
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| Mount Thule, Bylot Island 1930 |
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| Mountains Near Jasper Mendel 1934 |
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| Hanover Abstract 1934-38 |
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| Abstract No. 98 1938 |
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| Abstraction 1938 |
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| Abstract No. 7 1939 |
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| Intimations 1943 |
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| Sketch Painted in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1944 |
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| Abstraction No. 119 1945 |
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| The Spirit of Remote Hills 1957 |
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