numbered 146 upon the “Lawren Harris LSH Holdings Ltd.” stamp on the reverse
30 × 44 in (76.2 × 111.8 cm)
Auction Estimate:$30,000 - $40,000
Sale date:December 6, 2023
Price Realized
$31,200
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Estate of the Artist
Heffel Fine Art, auction, Vancouver, 14 November 2002, lot 7
Private Collection, Ontario
Following the disbanding of the Group of Seven in 1933, Lawren Harris’ career took a somewhat unexpected turn toward abstract art in 1934, when he moved to New Hampshire. As artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College, the artist moved progressively from figuration to abstraction. A few years later he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group in 1939. This international movement was inspired by Kandinsky and richly infused by American Transcendentalist writers, such as Emerson and Whitman, and by the syncretic beliefs of Theosophy, which had long informed Harris’s personal beliefs. These colourful abstract paintings, including “Abstract 146”, form an interesting body of work that was unique and even controversial in Canadian art at the time. Harris also stopped signing and dating his paintings at this time, to ensure that they were judged on their own merit rather than the artist’s name or date of execution.
