Lawren Harris, “Lake Superior Sketch, VI”

Elemental and precise, Lake Superior Sketch, VI is a powerful work from the height of Lawren S. Harris’ landscape career.

Painted in the late 1920s, the brooding serenity of the piece captures the artist’s carefully honed ability to translate the majesty of one of Canada’s grandest landscapes onto his sketching panels. A calm is exuded as clouds pass over a silent and deep body of water, with the dark and distant horizon suggesting the foreboding possibility of more ominous weather to come. There is a carefully calibrated minimalism to the composition, and an interplay between the lake and sky that brings a unity, with the cloud forms mimicked by the patterns on the surface of the water.

The result, as with other of Harris’ monumental Lake Superior works, draws the viewer into a heightened and dramatic world, inviting reflection and a renewed appreciation. In Lake Superior Sketch, VI, Harris has been able to pull the landscape, built on ancient, Precambrian shield, into the modern artistic realm, distilling a universal essence that he felt could resonate with the underlying truth he sought on a spiritual and personal level.

In the period between 1915 and 1930, Harris’ landscape work evolved rapidly, often catalyzed by his shifting subject matter. In 1921, Harris discovered a new opportunity imbued with an expansive and powerful sensibility – the north shore of Lake Superior. It would become the site of many of his most transformational and important works, and he would return to it almost annually until the end of the 1920s, always in the Fall, to explore the recently burnt-over headlands and their varied vistas looking out over the massive lake. From meditative calm to violent storm, the energy of Lake Superior pushed Harris’ work into new territory, expanding the boundaries of Canadian artistic expression.

While Harris’ style is unmistakably his own, it continued to develop and change throughout his career as he became increasingly engaged with the development of abstraction and international modernism. Lake Superior Sketch VI, a bold and commanding work, was painted in the years between 1925 and 1928, a period where Harris began to transcend his ambitions of fostering a distinctly Canadian approach to art and integrate with wider, international modernist approaches. In 1926, he was the sole Canadian representative in The International Exhibition of Modern Art in Brooklyn, New York, arranged by Société Anonyme. While Harris’ artistic ambitions had expanded to a larger audience, at the core was still the mission of depicting his home country, highlighted in his exhibition catalogue biography: “Rightly or wrongly Lawren Harris feels that a people can be united only through its creations and therefore they must create their own artistic idioms before they can become articulate as a people and commence to live in profound reality.”[1]

The austere and dignified simplicity of Lake Superior Sketch VI’s composition is a prime example of the novel work that Harris was originating in Canada, where modern art sensibilities manifested through highly local and grounded subjects. His approach to painting was deeply connected to time spend in these environments, a process he felt advanced his development, writing: “One can almost guarantee that two months in our North country of direct experience in creative living in art will bring about a very marked change in the attitude of any creative individual.”[2] Painted at one of his favoured sketching sites near Port Coldwell, Harris uses his familiarity with the region to distill its essence to its most critical elements.

For this composition, we view the perspective looking south from atop Premier Mountain, the highest hill in the area, which Harris and his fellow artists referred to colloquially as ‘Old Bill’. One the right side of the picture, the edge of Foster Island overlaps with Sullivan Island beyond. The two create a path into the expanse of the inland sea, with several smaller islands excluded from the composition in an act of artistic liberty. This vantage point produced a series of important Harris sketches in the late 1920s, all of them showcasing slightly different methods of selection. From this collection of panels, he also created at least four major canvases: Lake Superior III (Thomson Collection at Art Gallery of Ontario), Lake Superior No. IV (Art Gallery of Ontario), Lake Superior (National Gallery of Canada) and Clouds, Lake Superior(Winnipeg Art Gallery). Through his selections, and their varying atmospheric and temporal conditions, they each provoke distinct and unique responses, while remaining quintessentially Harris, illuminating the viewer with his pared down and distilled perspective.

At this point in his career, Harris was confident in his works being presented without artifice or elaboration, instead allowing them to speak directly for themselves to the audience, open to their interpretation and response. Therefore, this work, like many others, was not given a title by the artist, but instead is referred to by the number assigned by Doris Mills in a 1936 Inventory of works Harris left in his studio in Toronto when he moved to the United States.

[1] Katherine Dreier, International Exhibition of Modern Art arranged by the Societe Anonyme for the Brooklyn Museum. November – December 1926. p. 7.
[2] Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove, editors, Lawren Harris, 1969, p. 48.

Contributed by Alec Blair. Blair is the director of the Lawren S. Harris Inventory Project, working with the estate of the artist to put together a catalogue of the artist’s works. He is based in Vancouver, BC.

About the auction:

Showcasing a curated selection of outstanding Canadian and international artworks, our Major Spring Auction of Canadian and International Art features important pieces by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, David Milne, Alfred Joseph Casson, Walter Joseph Phillips, Jack Bush, and E.J. Hughes. Highlights from the international selection include works by Jules Olitski, Karel Appel, Rudolf Ernst, and Edward Seago.

Please contact us for more information.

Bid online May 14 –  May 28, 2026.

On view at our Toronto gallery:

 Wednesday, May 20 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Thursday, May 21 from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
 Friday, May 22 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Saturday, May 23 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Sunday, May 24 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Monday, May 25 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Tuesday, May 26 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Wednesday, May 27 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm

Or by appointment.