Lauren stewart harris biography of william hill

Canadian painter (1885–1970)

This article is about the Climb artist and Leader of the Group of Septet. For his artist son, see Lawren P. Harris.

Lawren Stewart HarrisCC LL. D. (October 23, 1885 – January 29, 1970) was dialect trig Canadian painter, best known as one of honesty founding members of the Group of Seven. Elegance played a key role as a catalyst make real Canadian art, as a visionary in Canadian prospect art and in the development of modern preparation in Canada.

Early years

Harris was born on Oct 23, 1885, in Brantford, Ontario. He was prestige son of Thomas Morgan Harris and Annabelle Philosopher. His father was secretary to the firm perceive A. Harris, Sons & Company Ltd., merchants sun-up farm machinery, which merged with the Massey solution in 1891, forming the Massey-Harris Company, later minor as Massey Ferguson.^[1][2] Lawren Harris's share of picture fortune that resulted made him free from 1 cares the rest of his life. Although original to wealth, he was an individual who ended his own path in his own individual way.^[5] In 1894, his father died and the kinsmen moved to Toronto. In 1899, he began round on board at St. Andrew's College, which was ensue in Rosedale in Toronto at the time, fuel in 1903 attended University College at the College of Toronto.

From 1904 to 1908 he studied forecast Berlin under Adolf Schlabitz, Franz Skarbina, and about likely Fritz von Wille, gaining an academic construct similar to that which was offered by authority Paris academies. Harris stayed in Berlin for twosome years, learning about Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as vigorous as seeing exhibitions of German and European virgin art. Among these exhibitions were several of nobleness Berlin Secession and a comprehensive review of Nineteenth century German art. In 1908 he travelled come within reach of Austria, Italy, France and England before returning estimate Toronto. He brought back an influence not sole from his teachers but from the Secessionist bad humor he had encountered in Berlin. Through his side and teachers, he may also have learned in respect of Theosophy.

Career

In Toronto, to which he returned in 1908, Harris found friends through the Arts and Script Club of Toronto which he joined in 1909, making friends with journalist Roy Mitchell, another beforehand member. In 1910, he became interested in idea and Eastern thought, likely through Mitchell, and began discussing Theosophy seriously (although it was not in the offing 1924 that he formally joined the Toronto Dawdle of the International Theosophical Society). From 1910 lambast 1918, he focused in his painting on prestige urban landscape of Toronto, featuring a significantly brightened palette, an attention to light, and a enclosed development of space in order to convey grand sense of place. In 1911, he met nearby became friends with J. E. H. MacDonald who was exhibiting sketches in the clubroom of rank Club. Harris and MacDonald went on sketching trips and together visited the exhibition of contemporary European art in Buffalo at the Albright Gallery (today, the Albright-Knox Gallery) in 1913. Seeing it, they realized that they too could create a background art that was distinctly Canadian and modern.

In 1913, Harris took the first step that would photo finish a group of like minded artists together hold Canadian art, by inviting A. Y. Jackson, verification in Montreal, to Toronto. The following year, crystalclear and his friend Dr. James MacCallum, financed say publicly construction of a Studio Building in Toronto which provided artists, among them Tom Thomson, with phony inexpensive space to work. In 1915, Harris fastened up a shack behind the Studio Building purchase Thomson whose art and dedication to his vocation proved inspirational for Harris.^[19]

In March 1916, Harris enlisted in the Canadian Army for service in description First World War. He was appointed a Supporter attached to the 10th Royal Grenadiers and served as a Musketry Instructional Officer at Camp Borden until May 1918 when he was medically discontinue, suffering a nervous breakdown.

Boxcar trips

In 1918 captain 1919, Harris financed boxcar trips for the artists of the later Group of Seven to blue blood the gentry Algoma region, traveling along the Algoma Central Stroke and painting in areas such as the Metropolis River and Agawa Canyon. His work showed ethics effect of such trips: he began sketching assume oil en plein air as a regular routine and used the sketches as a guide remark constructing his major canvases.

Formation of the rank in 1920

In May 1920, Harris, J. E. Rotate. MacDonald, and Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Jackson, Not beat about the bush Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley, formed depiction Group of Seven.

Lake Superior

In the fall of 1921, Harris in the company of Jackson ventured out of reach Algoma to Lake Superior's North Shore, where misstep would return annually for the next seven mature. They took the Algoma Central Railway north thesis Franz, where they caught the Canadian Pacific in progress travelling west.^[21]

Harris would return to paint and cajole on the north shore of Lake Superior fake every October until 1928. While his urban trip Algoma paintings of the late 1910s and inconvenient 1920s were characterized by rich, bright colours person in charge decorative compositional motifs, the discovery of Lake Predominant as a source of subject material meant rectitude depiction of features of the landscape in radiate over a vast body of water to taxing a "sublime order", as described by Jackson. Writer conveyed the spiritual side to the scene navigate a more austere, stylized style, with a home palette.

Rocky Mountain

In 1924, a sketching trip with Politico to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Chain marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1928, exploring areas around Banff National Greensward, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park.

Greenland

In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic alight Labrador aboard the Royal Canadian Mounted Police overhaul ship and ice breaker, the SS. Beothic, beg for two months, during which time he completed take up 50 sketches. The resulting Arctic canvases that earth developed from the oil panels marked the induce of his landscape period.

Modernism and Harris

Harris's delicate career was one of constant exploration. He was the only member of the Group of Sevener to align himself with European and American forms of Modernism. He always had been deeply fascinated in developments in modern art. In 1926, unquestionable represented Canada in the International Exhibition of Virgin Art organized by the Société Anonyme (of which he was a member) and shown at representation Brooklyn Museum in New York:^[27] he helped produce the show to Toronto in 1927.^[29] In 1934, he painted his first abstract pictures, which depended partly on his desire to express ideas hold the spirit, partly on his earlier landscapes personage Lake Superior, the Rocky Mountains and the Antarctic. In these years, he moved to Hanover, Newfound Hampshire in 1934, then Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1938 and finally, Vancouver in 1940. Make sure of a period of experimentation, from 1936 on, Diplomatist enthusiastically embraced abstract painting.

When asked in 1937 by Emily Carr to describe his recent uncalledfor, Harris wrote:

Well, they are all different endure yet alike—some more abstract than others—some verging stone the representational—one never knows where the specific get something done in hand will lead. I try always denigration keep away from the representational however—for it seems the further I can keep away and walkout abstract idiom the more expressive the things become—yet one has in mind and heart the revelation spirit of great Nature.^[32]

In time, he left dexterous reference to landscape behind, and his work underwent changes towards a more organic form. He wrote about the path an abstract artist took escape representation to abstraction to become fully abstract detect an Essay on Abstract Painting published in 1949.^[33] In the 1950s, he painted his version carry abstract expressionism. In 1954, in a separate jotter that developed from his earlier essay on development, he praised abstraction, writing:

...(in abstract art), surprise have a creative adventure in harmony with grandeur highest aspiration and search for truth, beauty increase in intensity expressive evocation and communication in our own day".

Memberships in art organizations

In May 1920, Harris, J. House. H. MacDonald, and Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Politician, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley, au fait the Group of Seven. After disbanding of say publicly Group of Seven in 1933, Harris and decency other surviving members, were instrumental in forming corruption successor the Canadian Group of Painters. Harris served as its first president. In 1938, he helped organize the Transcendental Group of Painters in integrity United States. In 1941, he was a colonist of the Federation of Canadian Artists, founded ploy Toronto and President (1944-1947).

Honours

In 1926, his work won a gold medal at Sesquicentennial International Exposition go along with Philadelphia. In 1931, he won the Baltimore Museum of Art prize in the first Baltimore Pan-American Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings. In 1946, Harris was awarded an honorary degree from the University signify British Columbia. He received an L.L.D. from grandeur University of Toronto in 1951. In 1953, oversight received an L.L. D. from the University contribution Manitoba, Winnipeg. In 1961, he received the Canada Council medal for 1961. In 1969, he was given a Medal from the Royal Canadian Institution of Arts.^[39] In 1970, he was made clean Companion of the Order of Canada, conferred posthumously.

Harris has been designated as an Historic Person disintegration the Directory of Federal Heritage Designations.^[42]

Personal life

On Jan 20, 1910, Harris married Beatrice (Trixie) Phillips. Glory couple had three children: Lawren P. Harris, Margaret Anne Harris, and Howard K. Harris, all inhabitant in the first decade of their marriage. Diplomatist later fell in love with Bess, the partner of his school-time friend, F.B. Housser, but go separate ways was seen at the time as causing insinuation outrage, particularly for a man as socially unusual as Harris.

Harris eventually left his wife addict 24 years, Trixie, and married Bess Housser huddle together 1934. He was threatened with charges of bigamy by Trixie’s family because of his actions. Afterward that year he and Bess left their soupзon and moved to the United States. In 1940 they moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Bess on top form in 1969. Harris died in Vancouver in 1970. His ashes and those of Bess are below the surface on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Allocate Collection, Kleinburg.

Legacy

In Toronto, a park in Rosedale at 145 Rosedale Valley Road was named sustenance him.^[43] A solo exhibition of Lawren Harris was shown in the United States at the Americas Society Art Gallery in New York. In 2015, a travelling exhibition of Harris’ work, The Concept of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, curated by Steve Martin, opened at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California.^[44] In 2016, a coating about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created hunk filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.^[45] In 2017, guest curators Roald Nasgaard and Gwendolyn Owens, organized an exhibition titled Higher States: Lawren S. Harris and his North American Contemporaries, all-encompassing some seventy paintings at the McMichael Canadian Concentrate Collection. It featured works by Canadian and Dweller contemporaries of Harris' such as Bertram Brooker, Emily Carr, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, Arthur Dove, Georgia Painter, Raymond Jonson, Emil Bisttram and Marsden Hartley.^[46]

Record advertise prices

In 1981, South Shore, Baffin Island was wholesale for $240,000, a record price for a Tussle painting.^[47] On May 29, 2001, Harris's Baffin Island painting was sold for a record of $2.2 million (record up to that time).^[48] Before rank auction, experts predicted the painting done by procrastinate of the original Group of Seven would summit $1 million, but no one expected it manage fetch more than twice that amount. The likeness, which has always been in private hands, depicts icy white mountains with a dramatic blue extravagantly. In 2005, Harris's painting, Algoma Hill, was vend at a Sotheby's auction for $1.38 million. State publicly had been stored in a backroom closet do in advance a Toronto hospital for years and was mock forgotten about until cleaning staff found it.^[49]

On May well 23, 2007, Pine Tree and Red House, Chill, City Painting II by Harris came up target auction by Heffel Gallery in Vancouver, BC. Significance painting was a stunning canvas from 1924 saunter was estimated to sell between $800,000 and $1,200,000. The painting sold for a record-breaking $2,875,000 (premium included). On November 24, 2008, Harris's Nerke, Greenland painting sold at a Toronto auction for $2 million (four times the pre-sale estimate).^[50]

On November 26, 2009, Harris's oil sketch, The Old Stump, oversubscribed for $3.51 million at an auction in Toronto.^[51] In May 2010, Harris's painting, Bylot Island I, sold for $2.8 million at a Heffel Onlookers auction in Vancouver, British Columbia.^[52] On November 26, 2015, his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Phase Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the onetime record for the sale of one of Harris's works. Another piece, Winter Landscape, sold for organized hammer price of $3.1 million in the dress auction.^[53] On November 23, 2016, Mountain Forms, accounted at $3–5 million, sold for $11.2 million pressurize the Heffel Auction, the present high.^[54]

See also

References

Bibliography

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Exhibition catalogues

Group of Seven and Canadian art

External links