LAWREN HARRIS
One of Canada’s most well-known artists, a founder of the infamous Group of Seven, stayed at The Ojibway Hotel in 1930. Though an ‘eyewitness’ saw Lawren Harris heading out to sketch in the mornings (see The Group of Seven at Pointe au Baril/Lawren Harris on this site) no sketches or paintings have ever been confirmed to be done during his stay. Researcher Alec Blair, who is assisting the Harris family to create a catalogue raisonné of all the artist’s work, recently contacted me with some possibilities. He believes these artworks were done when Harris stayed at The Ojibway. Can we assist him in identifying locations? Have a look below and please let me know! nancylang9@gmail.com
Harris in the Arctic, August 1930. He had stayed at the Ojibway in July.
Georgian Bay 1931
Calling all kayaking and canoeing sleuths to find the location of this beautiful painting.
By 1930, Harris was moving towards abstraction, altering and redesigning the landscape before him. Many islands he painted in Lake Superior in the 20’s were compressed and heightened, to create a more dramatic scene. Harris likely did the same in this studio painting – the whereabouts of the original pencil/oil sketch is not known. Harris embarked in a rowboat in the mornings, so he wouldn’t have gone far. Is this one of the small islands at the end of Empress Channel? Send photos if you spot a suspect!
Anyone who worked at the Ojibway in the early days might remember these buildings, which we believe were behind the main hotel. Harris stayed in Maplewood, so he would have had a good view of the ‘behind the scenes’ activity from his porch. Photographs taken behind the hotel are rare, so we are hoping a former staffer or hotel guest has a photographic memory. Note the ‘red’ notations which describe roof colour and the water tower behind the tree on the right.
Below is a second, more finished, drawing of the same. This sketch is named ‘Behind Nominigan’, a lodge in Algonquin Park. But Alec believes both these drawings were done in 1930, in Georgian Bay. With your detective work, it might be renamed “Behind The Ojibway”.
This pencil sketch of a cabin, with tent pitched nearby, looks like many channels near the Ojibway.
Researcher Alec Blair recently spotted a print of the same view in an early 30’s Canadian Forum issue, which identifies the location as Georgian Bay. The same print is called Trapper’s Cabin in later publications. It is unlikely that the cabin remains as it looked back then, but as we all know, the rocks never change. Can you find them?
