Lawren Harris was a Canadian artist and influential member of the Group of Seven, an art movement that helped establish Canadian art as a distinct genre. Born in Brantford, Ontario in 1885 to a wealthy family, Harris was able to focus on his artistic pursuits without financial concerns.
He studied art in Berlin before returning to Canada and settling in Toronto in 1908. It was there that he became a catalyst for the creation of the Group of Seven. His role as a visionary in Canadian landscape art had a profound influence on generations of artists, including Jock Macdonald who was inspired to paint abstractly.
Harris financed boxcar trips for the Group of Seven artists to explore and paint the landscapes of northern Ontario’s Algoma region. He married Beatrice (Trixie), with whom he had three children. Throughout his life, he devoted himself entirely to his passion for landscape painting until his death at age 84 while living in Vancouver where he is buried on the grounds at the McMichael art gallery.
Today, Lawren Harris remains an iconic figure within Canadian art history and continues to inspire artists across generations.
