This bold, dramatic sketch is full of contrast and colour, depicting the interplay of light and shadow on scraggly trees and moss-covered boulders in front of a steep rock face. Swiftly executed with assured brush-strokes and using rich colours, it demonstrates the vision that Lawren Harris had for a Canadian school of art, where the particular and diverse characteristics of this country’s environments were revealed to the audience and celebrated. For Harris, achieving this vision demanded time spent observing and painting out of doors in front of the subject. He wrote, “This land is different in its air, moods, and spirit from Europe and the Old Country. It invokes a response which throws aside all preconceived ideas and rule-of-thumb reactions. It has to be seen, lived with, and painted with complete devotion to its own life and spirit before it yields its secrets.”[1]

In the years leading up to the 1920 founding of the Group of Seven, Harris began embarking on sketching trips to northern Ontario, often accompanied by artists who would later form this now legendary group. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact subject and location for this work, possibly it derives from one of the earlier trips to Algoma, as suggested by the first owner, fellow artist Carl Schaefer, on the verso. Harris visited Algoma in both spring and fall on a number of trips between 1919 and 1922, and though autumn journeys were more frequent, the colouring and tone of this picture suggests it was done in the spring or summer. Stylistically, an alignment with the work that Harris did in Algonquin Park in the spring of 1916, when he visited the area with Tom Thomson, provides another option for the subject.

Regardless of the specific location, the work is clearly executed with passion and vigour, displaying the excitement Harris found in depicting new and interesting Canadian subjects. This enthusiasm helped bolster the creative evolution of the Group of Seven and influenced younger artists, including the aforementioned Schaefer, himself a successful artist, who acquired this work directly from Harris in 1933. He spoke of the influence Harris had on his work: “The Group of Seven in the 1920s were going full steam and they rubbed off on me, but I must say I was influenced not from a technical point of view but another point of view, of broadness, design, a new conception of our country.… I brought my things back and showed them to Lawren Harris and [J.E.H.] Macdonald and Alec Jackson and they were very pleased.”[2]

In 1936, Schaefer joined the Canadian Group of Painters, which had formed in 1933 as an outgrowth and expansion of the Group of Seven; the latter’s direct and simple nomenclature had become unwieldy and confusing when their trajectory shifted towards expansion to incorporate a wider membership. The mission of the new group was to continue to expand and broaden the scope of Canadian art—an effort that had started to build momentum at the time this panel was painted, in the years between 1914 and 1919. Given Harris’s leadership in this movement, fine works such as Algoma would have been inspirational and valued treasures for artists like Schaefer, and it is fitting that they continue to be held in such high regard by collectors today.

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

1. Quoted in Lawren Harris, ed. Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove (Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), 48.

2. Quoted in Margaret Gray, Margaret Rand and Lois Steen, Carl Schaefer (Toronto: Gage Publishing, 1977), 11.