Interior of Newfoundland (Hills-Newfoundland) (1921)

Laing Galleries, Toronto (Acquired 21 November 1960 for $400) The Estate of Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton, Montreal Heffel Fine Art, auction, Toronto, 22 November 2012, lot 153 Private Collection

Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton, “Personal Art Collection Catalogue”, reproduced

The maritime provinces were appealing to Lawren Harris, who had a deep respect for nature and was eager to explore the wilderness beyond his native Toronto. It is known that as early as 1908, Lawren Harris began making regular sketching trips to different locales throughout eastern Canada. In the early spring of 1921, the artist went on a sketching trip to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Just as he had been doing in Toronto, Harris painted many houses, particularly of the working class. The artist's Newfoundland subjects were more varied, depicting both the settlements and the sweeping landscape. Harris found a warmth to the small communities he encountered on his trip. The people of Newfoundland have a strong social structure, surviving on fishing and sealing within the vast and harsh environment of the province. Their setting is dramatic, as reflected in the expansive and serene atmosphere of this oil. Harris’s Newfoundland paintings are rare, as he did not return to the province on another extensive painting trip. Harris used some of the scenes from this trip to illustrate his only book of poetry, “Contrasts”, published in 1922. During the summer of 1930, Harris went to Métis, Quebec, followed by Sydney, Nova Scotia. Together with A.Y. Jackson, Harris embarked on the ship Beothic, which left from Sydney sailing to Newfoundland, Labrador and then along the Canadian Arctic coast until reaching Greenland. The ship left on August 1st and returned only on September 27; the two artists returned with many sketches and renewed inspiration. “Interior of Newfoundland (Hills‒Newfoundland)” depicts the expansive hills of Newfoundland in a patchwork of warm greens. The mossy land is contrasted with the rich purple in the rocky horizon line and pastel blue sky. This oil sketch possesses strong aspects of Harris’ continued stylization of the Canadian wilderness toward his eventual arrival in abstraction. His early compositions of winter scenes were more decorative and impressionistic, followed by the cleaner lines of his mountainscapes and Arctic peaks, which then followed a logical development to embrace abstraction. Harris was the only member of the Group of Seven to align himself with European and American forms of Modernism. He had always been deeply interested in developments in modern art. Although he studied in Europe and was solidly based in its painting traditions, Harris felt that the realities of the Canadian landscape required something different—something less academic than the British style and more substantial than that of the French impressionists. Around 1915, he took an interest in modern Scandinavian artists such as Gustav Fjestad, who combined realism with a strong sense of design. In 1926, Harris represented Canada in the International Exhibition of Modern Art organized by the Société Anonyme (of which he was a member) and shown at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. He was also instrumental in bringing the show to Toronto in 1927.