Sold for: $52,250

PROVENANCE
Thoreau MacDonald, Ontario
Acquired from the above by his friends William Richard Howard & Cecile Winifred Pearson
By descent within the family to the present Private Collection, Ontario

After receiving an art education in Europe, Lawren Harris “returned from three and a half years in the old world, thrilled with the spirit of ‘young’ Canada.… He was filled with enthusiasm, seeing Canada for the first time through a painter’s eyes.”[1] After being particularly inspired by a show of Scandinavian art he saw in 1913, Harris dedicated his focus to finding a uniquely Canadian approach to painting, one that centred around the northern light and the country’s diverse landscapes. Before he eventually traveled farther afield, in the 1920s, to Lake Superior, and then across the country, Harris’s search for subject matter began in Toronto and in various regions to the north, in the Muskoka, Simcoe and Haliburton areas. Sketches produced during this time are a key part of the artist’s development in celebrating the Canadian context. Works like Tree on a Hillside demonstrate the characteristic boldness and interplay between light and shadow that were the initial steps on the path leading Harris and his companions towards the creation of the Group of Seven and the establishment of a new approach to art in Canada.

We thank Alec Blair, Director/Lead Researcher, Lawren S. Harris Inventory Project, for contributing the above essay.

1. Peggie Harris Knox, “Personal Reminiscences,” released alongside Joan Murray, The Beginning of Vision: The Drawings of Lawren S. Harris (Toronto: Mira Godard Editions, in assoc. with Douglas & McIntyre, 1982), 6.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars