Lake Superior Sketch no. 3, circa 1926

The Artist, Vancouver Gwethalyn Graham, Montreal Frank Benish, Sudbury, circa 1978 Christopher Varley, Toronto Acquired by the present Private Collection, December 1994

“Annual Group of Seven Dinner featuring works of art by Lawren S. Harris”, York Club, Toronto, 18 February 1998 “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 30 October 2015‒25 September 2016 as Barren Land, Lake Superior “Collectors' Treasures: Annual Loan Exhibition”, Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, 19 October‒2 November 2019, no. 18

[Fred Jacob], ‘Ontario Painters Doing Vital Work’, “Mail and Empire” (Toronto), 17 March 1924 Doris Mills, “The paintings of Lawren Harris compiled by Mrs. Gordon Mills”, July‒December 1936, Library and Archives of the National Gallery of Canada as “Lake Superior Sketches, Number 3”, with drawing by Hans Jensen Naomi Jackson Groves, ‘Foreword’, in “A.Y.'s Canada Drawings by A.Y. Jackson”, Toronto/Vancouver, 1968 Ian Thom, et al., “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver/London, 2015, reproduced page 131, caption page 201, as “Barren Land, Lake Superior”

The exploration of Canada’s many landscapes saw the artist members of the Group of Seven paint on Georgian Bay and in Algonquin Park and Algoma. Following their regular practice, they painted their canvases in their Toronto studios from oil sketches realized in front of the motifs. Lawren Harris first painted on the north shore of Lake Superior in the fall of 1921, when he spent a few days at Rossport with A.Y. Jackson. The two artists would return to the north shore almost every autumn for the next seven years, exploring the region’s many dramatic features. Harris’ first paintings of the north shore focused on the rocky hills overlooking the lake and around Port Coldwell. But the bare stumps of fire‒devastated trees overlooking Lake Superior were a repeated attraction for Harris and first appeared in his canvas “Above Lake Superior” (Art Gallery of Ontario, acc. 1335), the hit of the 1924 Ontario Society of Artists exhibition. The oil sketch for that canvas (Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario) is on a panel 10 1⁄2 x 13 3⁄4 inches (26.7 x 35 cm) and was probably painted in 1923. However, in 1925, to better encompass his expanding vision of the lake’s vast spaces, Harris began painting on panels approximately 12 x 15 inches (30.5 x 38.1 cm), the dimensions of this oil sketch. At the same time Harris painted, he also drew, though the relationship of his drawings to his oil sketches is not always clear. Were drawings done when weather didn’t permit painting? Did the drawing in the Dalhousie Art Gallery precede the oil sketch and was the sketch painted in his studio? These tree stumps are clearly defined in the drawing, though the clouds are more stylized and hover closer to the horizon in the sketch, the centre hump of land is higher and more prominent and the island at the right fills the horizon centre right. Jackson’s drawings were made in front of the motif after painting the oil sketch “to catch what he has termed an ‘alternative line for later decision,” as Naomi Groves has observed, or to note variant colours or changes of light. While Harris’ paintings undoubtedly came out of his response to the light and forms in the landscape before him, they are more intellectual constructs than Jackson’s immediate responses to the particularities of his subjects. The fleeting effects of light were of less interest to Harris. The artists made numerous oil sketches but only a few were selected to be worked up into a canvas. This oil sketch was developed into a canvas generically titled “Lake Superior” (private collection). The tree stumps remain faithful to the drawing and sketch, but the silhouettes of the foreground forms, the island at the right and the clouds are closer to the drawing. It is more likely the drawing was done after the oil sketch, preparatory to the canvas. The overall tonality of the canvas differs from the small oil but the most dramatic change is in the treatment of light. Shafts of light illuminate the clouds, water and trunks, creating a remarkably different effect from the sketch, an effect characteristic of Harris’ major Lake Superior canvases of the late 1920s. We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at 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 contributing the preceding essay.