PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Thunder Bay
Sold sale of Important Canadian Art, Sotheby's Canada, November 10, 1987, lot 39
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Ross King, Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, 2010, page 99

Roz NOTE: This could be Kempenfelt Bay, where Harris & his mother had property - Harris is doc'd as being in G. Bay in summer 1911, but this was not an area he was drawn to for painting.

- see Ross King



Lawren Harris’s landscapes painted in the years between 1914 and 1916 are fine examples of Impressionism in Canada, with delicate hues, dappled light and appealing colour harmonies. Much of his attention was given to snow scenes during these years, thus this fine-weather day is a pleasing contrast. Georgian Bay would become a place of great importance in the work of the as yet unformed Group of Seven. Arthur Lismer described it well: “Georgian Bay! Thousands of islands, little and big, some of them mere rocks just breaking the surface of the waters of the Bay—others with great, high rocks tumbled in confused masses and crowned with leaning pines, turned away in ragged disarray from the west wind.....Georgian Bay—the happy isles, all different, but bound together in a common unity of form, colour and design. It is a paradise for painters.” Lismer’s description matches this fine work almost exactly and Harris’s scene is indeed joyous. The tumbled mass of rock, painted in warm tones, contrasts beautifully with the blue water of Georgian Bay and is topped with gnarled pines shaped by the ever-present wind.

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