Lawren Stewart Harris
Lake Superior Sketch
circa 1927
oil on panel
30.2 x 38.0 cm
Edmonton Art Gallery
© 2003, Margaret H. Knox

Lawren Harris became widely known for his paintings of the north shore of Lake Superior. The stark beauty of its landscape paralleled the direction in which his paintings were moving. In the early 1920s, Harris used boldly stylized forms of trees and hills to express spiritual values. His depictions of Lake Superior from the late 1920s were even more distilled, as seen in this sketch from around 1927. Here, he uses a composition that is strikingly similar to that of his earlier Athabasca Valley, Jasper Park, in which a lone tree starkly stands out against a serene, almost ominous landscape, conveying a sense of isolation. By the time he painted Lake Superior Sketch, the reduction of form in Harris’s work was verging on abstraction.