“We were told, quite seriously, that there never would be a Canadian artist because we had no art tradition.”
–Lawren Harris
Lawren Harris was born in Brantford, Ontario on October 23, 1885. He is best known as a member of the Group of Seven who pioneered a distinctly Canadian painting style. His landscape paintings were rich in the colour of Toronto, Georgian Bay and Algoma. He also painted the Canadian Rockies. During the 1920’s his work became more abstract, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian Arctic. He became so popular that he stopped signing and dating his work so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist.