Near Métis, Quebec by Lawren Stewart Harris

Provenance:
Private Collection
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Jeremy Adamson, “Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930”, Toronto, 1978, page 118
“A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979
Paul Duval, “Lawren Harris: Where the Universe Sings”, Toronto, 2011, page 26
Hartland W. Price, “Lawren Harris du Groupe des Sept : sur les traces d’un tableau”, Magazine Gaspésie, 55(2), 2018, pages 37–39.

In 1910 Lawren Harris arrived back in Toronto after completing his artistic training in Berlin and travelling in the Middle East. His first studio was located above Giles grocery store, north of Bloor and Yonge Streets. He now saw his hometown with a new perspective. Harris’ interest in the poorer areas of the city gained him a reputation as a socialist painter. His colourful “house portraits” were considered out of the ordinary and even controversial at the time. Paul Duval writes that “[Harris] had been fascinated with drawing houses since his teenage years when he first showed an interest in becoming an artist. “I suppose I just liked the shapes, the architecture of different houses and their colour,” Harris later recalled of his early fascination with the subject.

From 1910 to 1918, Harris painted the buildings and streets of Toronto. In 1913, an exhibition of modern Scandinavian painting at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo had a profound effect upon him, due to its bold expression of the raw northern landscape. After this, the artist began to broaden his subject matter to include the landscape that surrounded the urban and suburban houses. The early 1920s, arguably the most important years of Harris’ career, brought much critical success and changes to his artistic output. He became the driving force behind the Group of Seven. A.Y. Jackson claimed: “Without Harris there would have been no Group of Seven. He provided the stimulus; it was he who encouraged us always to take the bolder course, to find new trails.” By 1918 Lawren Harris had travelled to the Algoma region in the company of MacDonald and Johnston. In 1920 they held their famous inaugural exhibition at the Art Museum of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario). Harris wrote “The group of seven artists whose pictures are here exhibited have for several years held a like vision concerning art in Canada. They are all imbued with the idea that an art must grow and flower in the land before the country will be a real home for its people...”

“Near Métis, Quebec” was painted circa 1921, during this key period in Harris’ life as a groundbreaking artist. The lush green setting of this charming oil on panel features two buildings with red roofs surrounded by fir trees, a grassy lawn and a wooded hill in the background. It was only a year later that the painter began to exclude any houses from his compositions, as he turned his interest toward the barren landscapes of the North Shore of Lake Superior. Jeremy Adamson writes that “In 1922 the artist exhibited eleven urban subjects in a variety of exhibitions but the following year the number was reduced to only
two works. ... It was not until 1925-26 that Harris returned to the theme of houses, creating a series of disparate works that bear a closer relationship to the pictorial issues of the landscapes painted during that period than the city scenes of 1918-23.”

The regional county municipality of La Mitis, where villages such as Grand-Métis and Métis-sur-mer are found, is situated in the Bas- Saint-Laurent Region of Quebec on the Gaspé Peninsula. The names “Métis” and “Mitis” are said to come from a Mi’kmaq word meaning “meeting place”, which refers to the area’s location, where the Saint- Lawrence River meets the Mitis River. The region is historically known as a destination for upper-class cottage-goers across Ontario and anglophone Quebec. It is thus fitting that Lawren Harris was aware of Métis and vacationed there during his life. “Near Métis, Quebec” presents a rare subject for Harris, as there is very little documentation of Harris’ time spent in the area. It is remarkable to learn that during a highly active period for the artist, while taking sketching trips to Lake Superior and exhibiting in Toronto following the formation of the Group of Seven, Harris found the time to travel 1,200 kilometers east to vacation in the Gaspé.

In a letter from Harris to a then-popular Métis hotel, Hôtel Boule Rock, dating from March 6, 1922, it is written: “Dear Sir, My family consists of my wife and self, two children and nurse. We desire to spend the summer at Métis. Have you any houses for rent or do you know of any close enough to the Boule Rock so that we can get our meals there. Will you kindly give me what information you can with prices[?] Some years ago we spent the summer in Mrs. Godfrey’s house. Yours truly, Lawren Harris.”

There is also evidence of the artist’s presence in the area even earlier: in the archives of “The Globe and Mail”, dated June 22, 1915, “The Social Events” section mentions that Lawren Harris is in Métis. Furthermore, in the 1978 exhibition catalogue for the AGO’s show entitled, “Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906-1930”, Jeremy Adamson, states “Harris’ Métis Beach oil studies [...] depict small cottages and houses set against the green background of the river shore.” While Adamson likely implies that there were numerous studies created, they appear to be virtually unknown to the public. “Near Métis, Quebec” is a rare and important painting in Lawren Harris’ body of work. It offers a glimpse into the little-known vacations in Quebec that the artist took with his young family during some of the prime years of his career.