Sold for: $253,250

PROVENANCE
John Garrigues, Los Angeles
By descent to a Private Collection, Nevada
Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 22, 2017, lot 123
Private Collection, Vancouver

Lawren Harris left Toronto and moved to New Hampshire in 1934. His uncle taught at Dartmouth College, and Harris soon became artist-in-residence there. Within weeks of his arrival, Harris explored the nearby White Mountains, producing a sketchbook of graphite studies of the area. In 2009, Heffel sold a drawing for this painting, and its title, White Mountains, New Hampshire (from Sugar Loaf), identifies this view. After his powerful work in the Rockies, it is not surprising that Harris would have been drawn to these rugged mountains in the Appalachians. In contrast to the power and solidity of the mountain forms, the sky glows with transcendent rays of light, which to Harris’s theosophist beliefs, denoted a palpable spirituality. This is a rare and stunning mountain subject from this period, before Harris evolved into abstraction and moved to Santa Fe in 1938.

The first collector of this work, John Garrigues, was an important figure in theosophy – he was an author and was the editor of Theosophy magazine. The White Lodge that Harris mentions in the inscription refers to a hierarchy of enlightened higher beings at the pinnacle of this movement.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars