Lawren Harris (1885 - 1970). Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as a leading member of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art and as a visionary in Canadian landscape art. Lawren Stewart Harris was born on October 23, 1885 in Brantford, Ontario. He was the son of Thomas Morgan Harris and Annabelle Stewart. His father was secretary to the firm of A. Harris, Sons & Company Ltd., merchants of farm machinery, which merged with the Massey firm in 1891, forming the Massey-Harris Company, later known as Massey Ferguson. Lawren Harris's share of the fortune that resulted made him free from financial cares the rest of his life. Although born to wealth, he was an individual who made his own path in his own individual way. In 1894, his father died and the family moved to Toronto. In 1899, he began to board at St. Andrew's College, which was located in Rosedale in Toronto at the time, then in 1903 attended University College at the University of Toronto. From 1904 to 1908 he studied in Berlin, taught by Adolf Schlabitz and Franz Skarbina, gaining an academic foundation similar to that which was offered by the Paris academies. Harris stayed in Berlin for three years, learning about Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as well as seeing exhibitions of German and European modern art. Among these exhibitions were several of the Berlin Secession and a comprehensive review of 19th century German art. In 1908 he travelled to Austria, Italy, France and England before returning to Toronto. He brought back an influence not only from his teachers but from the Secessionist movement he had encountered in Berlin. Through his reading and teachers, he may also have learned about Theosophy. In Toronto, to which he returned in 1908, Harris found friends through the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto which he joined in 1909, making friends with journalist Roy Mitchell, another early member. In 1910, he became interested in philosophy and Eastern thought, likely through Mitchell, and began discussing Theosophy seriously. From 1910 to 1918, he focused in his painting on the urban landscape of Toronto, featuring a significantly brightened palette, an attention to light, and a layered development of space in order to convey a sense of place. In 1911, he met and became friends with J. E. H. MacDonald who was exhibiting sketches in the clubroom of the Club. Harris and MacDonald went on sketching trips and together visited the exhibition of contemporary Scandinavian art in Buffalo at the Albright Gallery in 1913. Seeing it, they realized that they too could create a landscape art that was distinctly Canadian and modern. In 1913, Harris took the first step that would cement a group of like minded artists together in Canadian art, by inviting A. Y. Jackson, then in Montreal, to Toronto. The following year, he and his friend Dr. James MacCallum, financed the construction of a Studio Building in Toronto which provided artists, among them Tom Thomson, with an inexpensive space to work. In 1915, Harris fixed up a shack behind the Studio Building for Thomson whose art and dedication to his career proved inspirational for Harris. In 1918 and 1919, Harris financed boxcar trips for the artists of the later Group of Seven to the Algoma region, traveling along the Algoma Central Railway and painting in areas such as the Montreal River and Agawa Canyon. His work showed the effect of such trips: he began sketching in oil en plein air as a regular practice and used the sketches as a guide in constructing his major canvases. In May 1920, Harris, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley, formed the Group of Seven. In the fall of 1921, Harris ventured beyond Algoma to Lake Superior's North Shore, where he would return annually for the next seven years. While his urban and Algoma paintings of the late 1910s and early 1920s were characterized by rich, bright colours and decorative compositional motifs, the discovery of Lake Superior as a source of subject material meant the depiction of what Jackson called a sublime order. Harris conveyed the spiritual side to the scene through a more austere, simplified style, with a limited palette. In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1928, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park.