Entrance, Quidi Vidi: Newfoundland Sketch II, 1921

Collection of the Artist Private Collection Christie’s, auction, Montreal, 24 October 1974, lot 95 Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal Private Collection

"Small Pictures Exhibition by Members of the Ontario Society of Artists", Art Gallery of Toronto, 20 October 1923, no. 59 as "Newfoundland Sketch II" at $60 "Lawren Harris Paintings 1910-1948", Art Gallery of Toronto, October- November 1948, no. 117 as "Entrance to Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland" (Collection of the Artist) "Lawren Harris Retrospective Exhibition of His Painting, 1910-1948", Vancouver Art Gallery, 1-20 March 1948, possibly one of the sketches nos. 71-90

"The Paintings of Lawren Harris Compiled by Mrs. Gordon Mills July-December 1936", Miscellaneous Sketches Group 5, no. 32 as "Newfoundland Sketch"

Steep cliffs rise from the water that laps at the shore on the right, the foreground rocks providing the artist’s viewpoint. One immediately thinks of Lawren Harris’ paintings of Port Coldwell on Lake Superior, most notably the exceptional "Entrance to Coldwell Harbour, Lake Superior" of the late twenties donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2022. Yet this is not a Lake Superior subject, but an oil sketch painted in Newfoundland in the spring of 1921, months before Harris first painted on Lake Superior. This sketch is one of approximately fifteen oil sketches Harris painted in Newfoundland that spring, a body of work of great interest, though little studied. In the early spring of 1921, Harris travelled to Halifax, his interest possibly stimulated by conversations with Arthur Lismer who taught in Halifax from 1916 to 1919 and by the paintings of A.Y. Jackson who painted in and around Halifax from February to April 1919. From this trip came two exceptional canvases, "Black Court, Halifax" (National Gallery of Canada) and "Elevator Court, Halifax" (Art Gallery of Ontario) depicting frame tenement buildings on Barrington Street east of Cornwallis Street. Interestingly no oil sketches or drawings of Halifax by Harris have been identified and no canvases appear to have resulted from his Newfoundland sketches. Harris didn’t travel far in Newfoundland as all his paintings depict the village and port of Quidi Vidi, within walking distance and north of Signal Hill in Saint John’s. His sketches focus on the houses and fishing stages around the harbour or the undulating landscapes of the nearby hills. The most dramatic sketches focus on the Gut or entrance to Quidi Vidi Harbour as in this work here. The cliffs are crowned by green grass as in the more distanced view depicted in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection sketch, "Newfoundland Coast" (1968.16.2). In "Newfoundland Coast" (sold at Sotheby’s Ritchies’s, Toronto, 31 May 2004, lot 86) the foreground rocks play a greater role as they do in "Entrance to Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland" (sold at Heffel Fine Art Auction House, 27 May 2015, lot 116) in which Harris cropped the top of the cliff. In "Entrance, Quidi Vidi: Newfoundland Sketch II" each of the boulders on the top of the cliff and the curving vertical form centre right take on an abstract quality, one further enhanced in the later canvas "Entrance to Coldwell Harbour". The rich colouring and emphatic brushwork of this oil sketch define it as a precursor of one of Harris’ most famous body of work, his Lake Superior canvases, and a major work among his understudied Newfoundland paintings. 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 contributing the preceding essay.