Lake Superior (I.D. 463)

Collection of Bess Harris, wife of the artist, Vancouver Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto Private Collection, Vancouver

The Canadian Forum, Volume 8 (April 1928), page 609 for an ink drawing of the subject titled "On the North Shore", reproduced Paul Duval, Group of Seven Drawings, Toronto, 1965, plate 31 for an ink drawing of the subject titled "On The North Shore", reproduced Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto, 1966, page 16 Joan Murray and Robert Fulford, The Beginning of Vision: The Drawings of Lawren Harris, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1982, page 26; page 91 (plate 16), reproduced (as “Lake Superior” I.D. 469 c. 1925); also reproduced on front dust jacket Jeremy Adamson, “Lawren Stewart Harris: Towards an Art of the Spiritual”, Canadian Art: The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008, pages 78-79; page 78 (plate 11) for the canvas of the subject titled "Lake Superior", reproduced Paul Duval, Harris, Canada, 2011, page 177 for the ink drawing of the subject titled "On The North Shore"; page 228 for the oil sketch of the subject titled "Lake Superior Sketch XLVII"; and page 229 for the canvas of this subject titled "Lake Superior", reproduced Ian A.C. Desjardin, Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, New York, 2011, page 187 (plate 110) for the oil sketch of the subject titled "Lake Superior Sketch", reproduced Steve Martin, Cynthia Burlington, Andrew Hunter and Karen E. Quinn, The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015, page 35 for the canvas of the subject titled "Lake Superior", reproduced

Lawren Harris made numerous drawings as he sketched along the north shore of Lake Superior but few were so skillfully elaborated in a subsequent ink drawing (“On The North Shore”), oil sketch (“Lake Superior Sketch XLVII”, Private Collection) and canvas (“Lake Superior”, Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario). The cloud-laden sky, pierced by four light shafts that illuminate the rounded islands and calm waters, the foreground rocks and low horizon all remain key compositional elements from this initial drawing through to the painter’s final and celebrated canvas. Visiting Lawren Harris’ Toronto studio on December 13, 1927, her birthday, Emily Carr witnessed Harris at work on the canvas, recalling in her diary: “A splendid birthday… I went to Mr. Harris’ studio. It’s so big and quiet and grey and very restful. He was painting and I hated to feel I was stopping him, but he wouldn’t hear of my going away for a bit. He said he had got to a good place to stop. He was working on a big canvas – rock forms in deep purples with three large rocks in the middle distance. The sky was wonderful – swirly ripples with exciting rhythms running through them. The right corner was in brilliant light and from under the cloud shafts of strong sun pierced down on the rocks in straight wide beams that made a glowing pool of pure light on the water that lay flat and still. Behind, was a deep, rich blue distance. To the right the shafts of light turned to paler green-blue. On the other side a blinding blue played richly with the purple rocks. Under the left side of the rippling, swirling grey cloud forms the water lay flat in blue-grey wonderfulness. The foreground was unfinished but would be dark rocks. There was a wonderful feeling of space.” The canvas has been exhibited extensively since its completion, its title varying from “A Fantasy” (in the February 1928 Group of Seven Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto), to “Lake Superior Fantasy” (a title which A.Y. Jackson recalled during preparation for Harris’ 1948 retrospective) to its present “Lake Superior”. Describing the canvas, Jeremy Adamson writes: “‘Lake Superior’ is a landscape composition that deliberately gives form to Harris’s Theosophical beliefs. Based on a 1925 sketchbook drawing and a small oil-on-board study, it depicts crepuscular bands of sunlight – so-called ‘God’s rays’ – breaking out from a dramatic pattern of clouds over the lake, illuminating the waters and several purple-toned islands. An unnatural composition in appearance, it was doubtless based on real experience, for such crepuscular rays are commonplace phenomena.” Joan Murray noted the importance of pencil sketching to Harris, the artist often carrying oil painting materials along with a pad of paper on his sketching trips. Murray quotes Harris’ fellow artist and close friend, Yvonne McKague Housser in discussion of the artist’s process in graphite: “His drawings are a key which open the door to what he was thinking and painting…The drawings were important as an introduction, to clarify his mind before he started a painting.” While dated 1925 by the artist’s wife, Bess Harris, this drawing was most probably drawn in October 1927 when Harris and Arthur Lismer sketched on the north shore of Lake Superior. Having exhibited with the Société Anonyme in 1926, Harris was responsible for the presentation of the society’s exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto in April 1927. The most important exhibition of contemporary European and American art shown in North America since the Armory Show in 1913, the work shown in the Société Anonyme exhibition was an enormous stimulus to Harris’ own art as evidenced in the dramatic composition and increased abstraction of the natural elements. Originally part of the collection of Bess Harris, this drawing was intended to be included in a collection of Lawren Harris’ work to be donated to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The donation never occurred, the drawing passing from the collection of Mira Godard Gallery through private collections to this first offering at auction. The original label, signed by Bess, remains on the reverse of the framing, noting “Lawren Harris Collection of Sketches and Drawings (Selected by Bess Harris).” The light impression of handwriting is visible, mainly on the left side of the composition (although present throughout), a short letter or note appearing to have been composed on a sheet laid on top of the drawing while it was turned clockwise. The writing appears to be in the hand of the artist but is not clearly legible. We extend our thanks to the Estate of Lawren Harris for assistance in researching this artwork and to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art with the National Gallery of Canada and author of “The Group of Seven - Art for a Nation”, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for his contributions to the preceding essay.