Lawren Stewart Harris 1885 - 1970

Estate of Howard Harris, Vancouver

Private Collection, Ontario

A.Y. Jackson, A Painter's Country; The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, 1963, p. 48

David Silcox, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, Toronto, 2003, pp. 300-301

 

This painting is in very good condition. Under UV, minr reenforcements fluoresce along the left edge of the white cloud closest to the land and to the right of the rock in the foreground and in the lower right side of the board. There are remnants of old varnish in the lower left section of the board and along the bottom edge. We wish to thank "In Restauro Conservart Inc." for examining this work and their additional condition report is available upon request from Sotheby's.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Although he had been making major paintings for over a decade, Harris gradually discovered and began to exploit the dramatic element of light in his work when he led his friends on painting trips along the north shore of Lake Superior in the mid-1920s.  There, with the wide vistas, arching skies, and ranks of cumulus clouds marching eastward, he saw how the shafts of sunlight could animate a world of mystery and create a sense of power.

Harris himself wrote excitedly about painting here:

We found that, at times, there were skies over the great Lake Superior which, in their singing expansiveness and sublimity, existed nowhere else in Canada.

It was during these years that, in Northrop Frye's words, Harris found

...a point of identity between subject and object, a point at which the created world and the world that is really there become the same thing.

A.Y. Jackson, despite his great love for the picturesque villages of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River, wrote: 

I know of no more impressive scenery in Canada for the landscape painter. There is a sublime order to it, the long curves of the beaches, the sweeping ranges of hills, and headlands that push out into the lake.

In this exceptionally fine panel, Harris depicts a familiar and favourite subject: Pic Island, off-shore, not far from Coldwell, with a mainland hump of granite serving as the foreground and a string of more distant islands or a headland toward the horizon.  A high, strong, almost pure light from the west throws a group of clouds into sharp relief.  The composition is balanced by two thin lines of shimmering water at the horizon, which create a sense of infinite distance and again emphasize the power of the light that falls across the scene.

The remarkable aspect of Harris' paintings of this area, as for his later sketches in the Arctic, is the original invention he brought to each work.  Harris almost never repeats himself, and indeed seems to challenge himself to find some new way to attack each successive picture.  More than that, his rate of success was phenomenal.  Among his colleagues and at every stage of his career, he alone turned in the highest percentage of masterworks, of which this is surely one.