Winter comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone, 1935, Lawren Harris |
One snow day is perfect: a surprise, a gift from nature, a
moment out of time. More than that, and it gets tiresome, the kids start
squabbling, and everyone feels housebound.
Our visit from the so-called Polar
Vortex this week was perfectly timed. This is an old friend gussied up with a new name.
In my youth, we just said the arctic air was dipping down from Canada. In Winter comes from the Arctic to the
Temperate Zone, above, Lawren Harris painted exactly that phenomenon.
As a native of Brantford, Ontario he would have been very familiar with it.
Winter Landscape with Pink House, 1918, Lawren Harris |
Lawren Harris was the scion of a family of wealthy
industrialists—after mergers and acquisitions, his family business comes down
to us as part of the Massey Ferguson Company. Because of this, he could be the
silent supporter of his other Group of Seven painters. With Dr. James
MacCallum, he financed the group’s studio building in Toronto.
Pine Tree and Red house, Winter City, 1924, Lawren Harris |
But Harris was no wealthy dilettante. Of the Group of Seven,
he traveled the farthest in his search to represent the Great White North, from
an Art Nouveau-inspired realism in the teens and twenties to complete
abstraction at the end of his career.
Let me know if
you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any
time. Click here for
more information on my Maine workshops!
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