Provenance:

Dominion Gallery, Montreal.
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal.
Private Collection, Nova Scotia.
Private Collection, Ontario.

Literature:

Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove, “Lawren Harris”, Toronto, 1969, page 62.
Joan Murray, “The Beginning of Vision, The Drawings of Lawren S. Harris”, Toronto, 1982, page 98.
Lisa Christensen, “A Hiker’s Guide to the Rocky Mountain Art of Lawren Harris”, Calgary, 2000, page vii, for a related pen and ink drawing entitled “Mount Sampson, Maligne Lake, Jasper”, illustrated. Also page 7 for the drawing “Maligne Lake, Jasper Park, Alberta, 1924” from the 1925 portfolio, illustrated. See also page 48 for an extensive description of the Maligne Lake topography.

Note:

Painted in 1924.

“When I first saw the mountains, travelled through them, I was most discouraged. Nowhere did they measure up to the advertising folders, or to the conception these had formed in my mind’s eye. But, after I became better acquainted with the mountains, camped and tramped and lived among them, I found a power and majesty and a wealth of experience at nature’s summit which no travel-folder ever expressed.”
Lawren Harris

In the late summer of 1924, Harris took his first trip to the Rocky Mountains, probably under the advice of J.E.H. MacDonald who had visited earlier that summer. Accompanying Harris was his family and fellow Group of Seven member, A.Y. Jackson. This inaugural trip was clearly significant for Harris as almost every year between 1924 and 1929, Harris would spend months at a time sketching in the Rocky Mountains.

This work was most likely the source for the pen and ink drawing “Mount Sampson, Maligne Lake, Jasper Park, circa 1924”, which was included in the 1925 Group of Seven exhibition. A portfolio of lithographs based on the pen and ink drawings was available for purchase at the 1925 show.