Lawren Stewart Harris 1885 - 1970

Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto

Private Collection, California

Art Gallery of Hamilton, November 1, 1957 - May 1958, no. 2

Harris was, like nearly all great artists, both highly intelligent and a workaholic. When he turned his mind and imagination to the creation of abstract imagery, which he did a short time after his trip to the Arctic in 1930, he did so with an enthusiasm and a determination that were formidable. 

This change of course was a result of his continuous growth and activity as an artist. Like Wassily Kandinsky or Henri Matisse or David Milne, Harris was always searching out fresh ideas,  trying novel ways of expressing them, and testing new techniques. He had been curious about all the developments in contemporary art since he went to Berlin in 1904, and he was probably one of the best informed persons in Canada on the subject. His knowledge allowed him to find merit in nearly all the fluctuating art movements in the first three decades of the 20th century, even though he chose his own path rather than one already trodden by others. Nevertheless, his decision was reluctantly made at first, and only after a two-year period of difficult indecision about the direction he thought he should take.

Indeed, his new life that developed simultaneously with his pursuit of abstraction was largely secluded. First he was in Hanover, New Hampshire, a small college town, and then in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where there was, at least, a small, vigorous art scene for support. However, Harris was not in a major metropolitan centre, as he had been for most of his life. Although still a very social being, he withdrew somewhat, following the recent trauma of his divorce and remarriage, which caused him to leave Toronto. He would also have been affected by the disbanding of the Group of Seven, of which he had been the unelected leader, and by his relocation from Canada, where he had been a staunch nationalist.

This painting has all the hallmarks of Harris's mature sorties into the realm of abstraction, an area he never left thereafter. The colours reflect the landscape of New Mexico, the composition is poised in its balance and near-symmetry, the contrasts of different geometric forms present a dramatic tension, and subtle shifts in texture animate the surface of the canvas. Although Harris was to paint abstract works for thirty years, longer than he had the landscapes and urbanscapes of Canada, those done in the 1930s are generally conceded as being among his finest.