Sold for: $43,250

PROVENANCE
Estate of the Artist
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 25, 2006, Lot 168
Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Dennis Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas: The Later Works of Lawren S. Harris, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1985, reproduced page 86, listed as Lake Superior Sketch.

EXHIBITED
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Atma Buddhi Manas: The Later Works of Lawren S. Harris, 1985, catalogue #46, exhibited as Lake Superior Sketch.

In the Atma Buddhi Manas exhibition catalogue Reid comments that this work is "An unfinished sketch of the early twenties (probably Lake Superior), partially reworked in the mid-forties."

Alec Blair, Director of the Lawren Harris Inventory project, states that this work began instead as a New Hampshire sketch. Along with the larger size of the board being consistent with other works in New Hampshire, a corresponding pencil sketch showing the same cloud forms (and preliminary foreground hills), entitled "White Mountains, New Hampshire (From Sugar Loaf), Book 3 – 6” was sold by Heffel in April 2008 and is dated 1935. Harris likely began this painting, based on the pencil sketch, in the mid 30's while living in New Hampshire and re-worked it in the latter part of the decade as his abstract phase took hold. It is a rare example of an unfinished Harris painting, and demonstrates the artist’s thought process in the midst of a radical artistic transformation.

This lot includes a copy of the Atma Buddhi Manas catalogue by Dennis Reid and published by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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