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Lawren Stewart Harris 1885 - 1970 Canadian oil on canvas Houses A07F-E05133-002 30 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches 77.5 x 82.5 centimeters signed and dated 1913 Literature:Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris, Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906 - 1930, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1978, pages 25 and 37, reproduced page 39 Provenance:Roberts Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto Exhibited:Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906 - 1930, January 14 - February 26, 1978 When one thinks of the work of the Group of Seven, one normally thinks of landscapes of the Canadian wilderness - the Algoma region of Ontario, the north shore of Lake Superior or the Rocky Mountains - not the streets of Toronto. For Lawren Harris however, the streets of Toronto (and a few other towns) were an important source of subject matter during the period 1909 - 1926. Beginning in 1909 (with a series of drawings of Toronto streetscapes), the years before World War I saw Harris produce a significant group of paintings of the urban environment. Most of these works share a similar basic structure: a relatively undeveloped foreground, a screen of trees and, behind these trees, a row of houses. The earliest works such as Old Houses, Wellington Street, 1910 and Houses, Richmond Street, 1911 (both in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario) do not pay particular attention to the street life. Houses, like Corner Store, 1912 (Art Gallery of Ontario) and Hurdy Gurdy, 1913 (Art Gallery of Hamilton) is, as Adamson has observed, interesting because of the increased importance of the street life (in this case a horse-drawn cart). In each case, Harris has placed this narrative element which Adamson describes as providing the "psychological focus for the picture," on the right side of the composition. In each case, there is an important emphasis on the shadows cast by the trees which form a rich pattern on the facades. Houses is a somewhat more ambitious endeavour than Corner Store in two ways. Firstly, like Hurdy Gurdy, it employs a somewhat more challenging palette of colour and secondly, the cart in this instance is clearly moving within the space of the painting. The lighter pastel colours - pinks and blues - mean that the contrasts of light and shade on the facades are more subtle, not as obvious as in the earlier work. Harris's lighter palette may have been influenced by the work of the Swedish artist Gustav Fjaestad which he had seen in an exhibition in Buffalo in January of that year. The movement of the cart provides the work with a greater sense of dynamism, something that he had achieved in Hurdy Gurdy through the pattern of falling leaves. The pictorial problems that Harris has presented himself in Houses are also quite different - the light is treated much more subtly. Here it is both brighter and colder and therefore the dappled effect of light and shadow is more delicately cast across the whole surface. The second challenge is a large expanse of sky against which he must silhouette the three large and two smaller trees. He has convincingly situated these elements within both the landscape and the formal dynamics of the composition as a whole. We believe them as three-dimensional elements but also as punctuation marks in the horizontal movement of the canvas from right to left, a progression that is highlighted by the movement of the cart and concentration of the sunlight on the area of the work which encompasses that movement. The two smaller trees act as framing devices for the composition on either side, effectively concentrating our attention on the main action of the work. A quiet but compelling composition, Houses offers us an important glimpse into the life and history of Toronto in the early years of the twentieth century. It is also a superb example of Harris's urban landscapes. As Adamson has observed, these works show Harris in a somewhat different light from his wilderness subjects. The scenes are treated "from an emotional point of view" and "were regarded by many people as among his most attractive works." They also are a unique contribution to the early development of modernist painting in Canada. E800000-1200000