Project Description
Mount Thule on Bylot Island
South shore of Bylot Island, Nunavut
1930, Lawren Harris
oil on canvas
Vancouver Art Gallery, Women’s Auxillary 49.6
THE ART
No other single artist is more synonymous with Canadian landscape art than Lawren S. Harris. For Harris, his natural subjects acted as catalysts; through them he hoped to arouse the spiritual and national potential in us all.
He believed that “an Art must grow and flower in the land before the country would be a real home for people”.
In Mount Thule on Bylot Island we see the journey water takes from mountain peak, to glacier and to the ocean, only to return to the peak as snow. This serves as a metaphor for the cyclical spiritual journey he suggests we all go through.
Harris’s arctic subjects were the pinnacle of his search for pure landscape and used to communicate spiritual truths. The elements of the Arctic landscape were already distilled in a way that appealed to Harris – it seems he was destined to paint the Arctic.
Harris’s choice of colors stem from his spiritual beliefs and the reality of what he was representing. He believed colors possessed the power to communicate on a spiritual level. Blue illustrates faith and white illustrates spiritual truth, the epitome of existence.
In the sky we see a shift from faith to truth as we move across the painting, suggesting that if one has faith, by natural process one can attain truth.
Harris’s style is unique and instantly recognizable. He removes the specificity from a scene and leaves only the essentials, the purity that lies behind the clutter of detail.
He smoothes his subjects with gentle color gradients, light and shadow, making the surfaces appear serene and pure.
Lawren Harris
