ESPLANADE RANGE PAINTED BY LAWREN HARRIS

LAWREN HARRIS (1885-1970)
Esplanade Range   (2,301 m - 7,549 ft)

Canada

In Athabaska at Jasper, oil on canvas, 1924
 

The mountains
Esplanade Range includes, from right to left, in the painting above :  Gargoyle mountain, Esplanade mountain, Chetamin, The Palisades. 
Esplanade Mountain (2,301 m - 7,549 ft)  is a mountain summit located in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. The peak is situated 20 kilometres north of the municipality of Jasper, in the Athabasca Valley and is visible from Highway 16 and the Canadian. Its nearest higher peak is Cliff Mountain, 5.0 km (3.1 mi) to the west. Esplanade Mountain was named in 1916 by Morrison P. Bridgland for its long, flat top resembling an esplanade. Bridgland (1878-1948) was a Dominion Land Surveyor who named many peaks in Jasper Park and the Canadian Rockies. The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1956 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.

Gargoyle Mountain (2,693m - 8,835 ft)  is a mountain summit located in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. The peak is situated 23 kilometres north of the municipality of Jasper, and is a prominent landmark in the Athabasca Valley visible from Highway 16 and the Canadian. Its nearest higher peak is Cliff Mountain, 5.5 km (3.4 mi) to the west.  Gargoyle Mountain was named in 1916 by Morrison P. Bridgland for the fact a stream heads at the mountain, like a gargoyle or spout.  Bridgland (1878-1948) was a Dominion Land Surveyor who named many peaks in Jasper Park and the Canadian Rockies.  The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1956 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.


The painter  
Lawren Stewart Harris, (1885–1970) was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
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 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.
The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.
From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.
On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.
Source:
- Lawren S. Harris biography in  National Gallery of Canada notice