Lawren S. Harris at Lake O’Hara
Harris first visited Canada’s Rocky Mountains in 1924, accompanied by fellow artist (and Group of Seven member) A.Y. Jackson. After spending the summer in Jasper Park in 1924, Harris would return on several more painting trips to the Rockies in the 1920s, and continue to visit the area long after he had moved on from landscape painting into abstraction. He made at least two visits to the Lake O’Hara area in the 1920s during his landscape period. From these visits
The trail to Lake Oesa
To the east of Lake O’Hara, one of the favourite sketching spots of artists has been the trail to Lake Oesa, including the lakes and waterfall along the way. W.J. Philips, J.E.H. MacDonald and Peter and Catherine Whyte all depicted the falls departing.
Mountain Sketch XXXII
Mount Odaray from Trail to Lake Oesa
Certainly having a pencil sketch for a work gives critical insight into the process and choices that the artist makes. We can see from Sketch 9-XX that the location for this vantage point is from the piles of rocks. In the oil sketch, Harris has removed the foreground boulders, and greatly lowered and simplified the land on the right - possibly after his initial inclusion of it, as it looks like a higher
Sketching at Lake Oesa
Conclusion - Transition to abstraction
The sheer abundance of overwhelming and awe-inspiring material in the Lake O’Hara region allows one to understand how Harris shifted into abstraction.
Still inspired by the same thing, he moved to representation the culmination of a range of Mountain experiences into single paintings, instead of being beholden to try and capture particular moments and vistas, which surely were too numerous and abundant to capture in places as grand as this.