Lawren Stewart Harris 1885 - 1970

Private Collection, Montréal

The number of oil sketches that Harris made in the High Arctic, during his 1930 trip aboard the Beothic supply ship with A. Y. Jackson, are not known precisely, but thirty of them were shown at the National Gallery in Ottawa in the fall after his return. How many more were done is a matter of speculation, but the number is likely small, although Jackson, who was often given to hyperbole, wrote that ‘Harris had made enough studies to keep himself busy painting canvases for the next two years.’

These works are much rarer, even, than sketches by Tom Thomson. The obvious reason is the small number of them; this is number twenty-two. Some of the paintings are not, strictly speaking of the Canadian Arctic, since the Beothic stopped in at small ports on the Greenland coast and also sailed along the Greenland coast in Davis Strait on the way to Ellesmere Island, the most northerly land mass in Canada. The rarity in numbers is given added force by the keen competition among collectors to acquire one (or more) of these paintings, which are considered by many to be the pinnacle of Harris’s achievement.

The paintings themselves are essential markers along Harris’s psychic pilgrimage. Harris had already determined that the character and spirit of Canada was defined by its ‘northern-ness.’ North, at first, was Lake Simcoe, then Algonquin Park, then Algoma. The further north Harris went, the closer he felt he was getting to the spiritual heart of Canada. When he was confronted with the wind-swept, snow-laden tundra, the treeless terrain of rock and ice, deep fjords and precipitous mountains, he felt that he had found a visual image or ‘national portrait’ to match his concept, his idea of Canada’s northern soul. This confluence of spirit, idea, and image reached its apogee with the great ice fields, the mammoth glaciers, and the castle-sized icebergs that took Harris to the very core of his beliefs. And in this epiphany, Harris had not only reached his personal grail, he had seen into the future and realized the country that Canada was going to become.  

This particular work has the frigid, raw power and awesome presence that mark many of the panels from this crucial trip. Intelligently thought out, boldly painted, and expertly composed, this painting speaks eloquently to the changes that were evolving in Harris’s thinking and his expression. Over a period of nearly two months (August and September), the Beothic made its way to a number of Danish and Canadian settlements, and provided Harris and Jackson the opportunity not simply to sketch and paint, but to absorb the pure air and savage beauty of that incredible part of the world. For Harris particularly it was a transforming experience, one with a force and character that drew from him his most heroic and enduring work.