Lawren Harris
1885 - 1970

Lawren Harris was born in Brantford, Ontario. Harris’s first subject after returning to Canada in 1908 from studying in Europe was a series of portraits of houses in what was known as “the Ward”, an area around University Avenue & College Street, where much of Toronto’s immigrant population lived at the turn of the century.  He was the driving force behind the Group of Seven and as A.Y. Jackson claimed there would have been no Group without Harris. 

In 1921, Harris made his first trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior and his search for a deeper spiritual meaning eventually took him to the stark landscapes of the far north and from then on he strove to capture the spiritual essence of the bold landforms of the Rockies and the Arctic.  Harris left Canada and lived in Mexico for a short period, returning to Canada in 1940 and settling in Vancouver for the remainder of his lifetime.