Sold for: $34,250

PROVENANCE
The Collection of Fred Helson, Ontario
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

This gestural, small-format oil sketch by Lawren Harris was very likely produced on a sketching trip to the Laurentian region of Quebec with J.E.H MacDonald in October of 1913. Two years earlier, Harris had met MacDonald after viewing his recent paintings of Toronto’s High Park, works very much like lot 219 in this sale. Together, they began to explore how best to express the resonance of the Canadian landscape in paint. Their conviction was galvanized by their viewing of contemporary Nordic landscape paintings in Buffalo in January of 1913, and put into practice on a sketching trip to the Laurentians later that year.

The proposed circa date for this work is supported by Harris’ Laurentian Monadnock in Autumn, sold by Heffel in May of 2020. Notably comparable in subject and palette, it was owned by Harris friend and fellow artist Doris Mills, who noted the work as being from the 1913 trip. When Harris left Toronto for New Hampshire in 1934, the thorough documentation undertaken by Mills of his many works that remined stands as an irreplaceable scholarly source.

We thank Alec Blair, Director/Lead Researcher, Lawren S. Harris Inventory Project, for assisting in the research of this lot.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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