ALC BCSFA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG
1885 - 1970
Canadian
Houses, Winter, Houses Group No. XXI
oil on board, circa 1920
signed and on verso signed, titled and signed on the artist's label, and inscribed with the Doris Mills inventory #3/21, "80-2 H" and with the Art Emporium inventory ST#A616
10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in, 26.7 x 34.9 cm
Estimate: $150,000 - $250,000 CAD
Preview at: Heffel Toronto – 13 Hazelton Ave
PROVENANCE
The Art Emporium, Vancouver, 1976
Private Collection, Toronto
By descent to a Private Collection, Toronto
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 24, 2007, lot 150
Private Collection, California
A.K. Prakash & Associates Inc., Toronto
The Collection of Torben V. Kristiansen, Vancouver
LITERATURE
Doris Mills, L.S. Harris Inventory, 1936, Houses, Group 3, catalogue #21, location noted as the Studio Building
In this evocative painting, Lawren Harris has captured the quiet atmospherics at play as daylight fades in winter, with low light casting soft pastels across snow behind a row of colourful houses in one of southern Ontario’s rapidly growing residential areas. Painted around 1920, when the Group of Seven formed and Harris was at a pinnacle of artistic creativity, Houses, Winter, Houses Group No. XXI showcases Harris’s evolving style. It hints at a shifting focus towards the effects of light and exploration of depth and space that would come to full realization in his Lake Superior works during the twenties.
Harris’s interest in painting urban areas set him apart from his companions in the Group of Seven, and in this period he exhibited more of these works than any other subject. Five of the seven canvases in the 1919 Ontario Society of Artists show depicted urban scenes, as well as five of the 11 canvases in the inaugural Group of Seven show in May of 1920. This interest in the urban subject can be traced to his art education in Germany, where he studied between 1904 and 1907. According to his daughter Peggie Knox, Harris "returned from three and a half years in the old world, thrilled with the spirit of “young” Canada. It all looked fresh, new and vital to him after the centuries-old cities of Europe and Asia. He was filled with enthusiasm, seeing Canada for the first time through a painter’s eyes. He began sketching houses on the streets of downtown Toronto, continuing the kind of subjects he had been doing in Germany—but with what a difference. These houses were not the ancient timbered European dwellings, these were alive. They had an aura you could feel, each had its own special character."[1]
While his explorations began downtown in areas like St. John’s Ward, Harris soon ranged farther afield, also painting scenes from the developing outskirts of the city. In particular, this included the neighbourhoods of Earlscourt and Lambton, likely contenders for the subject of this panel. Like the Ward, these suburbs were significantly different from the more privileged neighbourhoods in which Harris had grown up and lived. His attention to them speaks to a persistent fascination he had with capturing a broader human experience, and an element of social consciousness that manifested in a desire to document and celebrate a range of urban contexts.
In contrast to the immediacy and constrained depth of many of Harris’s depictions of downtown subjects, Houses, Winter is spacious, allowing for a more expansive vision of the city. The composition provides ample distance for the viewer to enter and explore the scene, and this breathing room helps the work radiate a sense of calm, giving an opportunity to observe the serenity of the subject from a peaceful distance. This tranquility is amplified by the assuredness in the painting’s execution, both in its direct and refined structure, and in the limited but harmonious colour palette. The mirroring of the sky and the foreground snow, with their almost otherworldly glow, works to elevate the scene from the commonplace into the ethereal. Here, Harris reveals the beauty in the world around us and fosters an appreciation for the fact that the spectacular can be found within the mundane, and that through the exploration of the specific and everyday, an artist can convey elements of the universal and eternal.
We thank Alec Blair, Director/Lead Researcher, Lawren S. Harris Inventory Project, for contributing the above essay.
1. Peggie Harris Knox, “Personal Reminiscences,” released alongside The Beginning of Vision: The Drawings of Lawren S. Harris, by Joan Murray and Robert Fulford (Toronto: Mira Godard Gallery, in assoc. with Douglas & McIntyre, 1982).
For the biography on Torben V. Kristiansen in PDF format, please click here.
Estimate: $150,000 - $250,000 CAD
All prices are in Canadian Dollars
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