PROVENANCE
Estate of Randolf MacDonald, Toronto
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 15, 2013, lot 157
Private Collection, British Columbia

In 1921, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson embarked on their first trip to the north shore of Lake Superior, heading north to explore its potential at the tail end of a sketching trip to Algoma. What was revealed to them was another new opportunity to expand the visual language of Canadian art used in expressing an appreciation for the land. An austere and rugged landscape, the North Shore would become integral to Harris’s artistic evolution and would quickly replace Algoma as a site of collective focus for many of the artists in the Group of Seven.

After spending their first visit mostly in and around the fishing village of Rossport, in the autumns of 1922 and 1923, Harris and Jackson explored the area between Marathon and the Coldwell Peninsula (present-day Neys Provincial Park), appreciating the region’s abundance of expansive and inspiring subjects. During at least one of these trips, the artists spent significant time around the now abandoned Port Munro, where they were especially keen on gaining elevation in order to paint the dramatic hills and shoreline from a height. A simple hand-drawn map of the area, done in pencil by Harris on the back on another Lake Superior sketch (Entrance, Coldwell Bay, Lake Superior, sold by Heffel in November 2022), shows the path of the railway through the area and includes rough indications of all the bays and hills, which the two artists would go on to explore.

This specific sketch depicts the view south towards the town of Marathon from a peninsula located between Sturdee and Beatty Coves. In this composition, we find the edge of Blondin Island on the left, and Peninsula Hill (outside Marathon) in the distance on the right. The focus of the picture, however, is the dead trees, standing starkly in the centre of the work, their slender and weathered forms accompanying the audience in observance of the barren and far-reaching landscape. Tree forms such as these are a critically important subject in Harris’s Lake Superior paintings. Found in many of his most recognizable works, they are immediately associated with the peak of his landscape period, when he was able to realize his visions of essential forms, stripped of any excess detail, conveying the underlying truth of nature.

The impact of Harris’s Lake Superior ventures was profound in terms of both Harris’s own artistic development and the influence they had on his fellow artists that viewed these new forms of expression and freedom back in Toronto. Anne Savage, member of the Beaver Hall Group, who was working out of Jackson’s space in the Studio Building in 1925, recounted her reactions to visiting Harris’s studio and seeing such works, remarking:

He showed me panels of Lake Superior with huge black stems of trees and a definite feeling of dignity and control. There was nothing out of place. I remember thinking isn’t this extraordinary and couldn’t analyze it. But after I came back I realized he was abstracting his subject. He was on his way to just shooting off into this world of nothing but light and air.[1]

A century later, the impact of these works still resonates. Sketches such as Lake Superior (Blondin Island and Peninsula Hill) capture brilliant moments when Harris was discovering and honing his tools of simplification and selection that so successfully convey the power and majesty of this wild part of the country.

We thank Alec Blair, Director/Lead Researcher, Lawren S. Harris Inventory Project, for contributing the above essay.

1. Undated letter from Anne Savage to Arthur Calvin, quoted in Anne McDougall, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter (Montreal: Harvest House, 1977), 44.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars