Estimated Price:

CAD400,000 - CAD500,000

Realised Price:

CAD600,000

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction house has NOT verified this price result.

LAWREN STEWART HARRIS MOUNTAIN, CONSOLATION LAKE, oil on board 12 ins x 15 ins; 30 cms x 37.5 cms Provenance: Bess Harris Collection. Howard K. Harris Estate. Family of the artist. Literature: Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove, Lawren Harris, Toronto, 1969, page 62. Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris, Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1978, pages 167-184 (Chapter entitled Rocky Mountain Landscapes, 1924-30). Peter Larisey, Light for a Cold Land: Lawren Harris's work and life - an interpretation, Toronto, 1993, page 110 and Plate 30, reproduced in colour. Note: Painted circa 1927. Bess Harris and Colgrove quote Lawren Harris: "When I first saw the mountains, travelled through them, I was most discouraged. Nowhere did they measure up to the advertising folders, or to the conception these had formed in my mind's eye. But, after I became better acquainted with the mountains, camped and tramped and lived among them, I found a power and a majesty and a wealth of experience at nature's summit which no travel -folder ever expressed." The Rockies have always held a special interest for artists, a sentiment which might be explained in a commentary by W.A. Langton (Willisons Monthly, I, 6, July 1927, unpaginated press clipping, Reference Library, Art Gallery of Ontario) on F.B. Housser's A Canadian Art Movement: There is a gigantic romance in the making of mountains which appeals to the poet within us...The artist comes first in an account of the mountains, and there is nothing more worthy of the devotion of Canadian art than the Rocky Mountains of Canada - not to build themes of design upon them, but to interpret their actual appearance, so that others can see the scene the artist saw. Consolation Lake is located in Banff National Park and was discovered by Walter Wilcox, the first man to visit the shores in 1899. The mountain depicted is most likely Mt. Quadra in the Wemchemka Pass area. This work combines every element of grandeur and beauty characteristic of the Canadian Rockies - vertical cliffs and glaciers, a water surface and avalanche scree slopes.