Patrician Bohemianism

There is a revealing photograph on the back cover of James King’s Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris, por- traying the unofficial leader of the Ontario-based Group of Seven. Dressed in a smartly tailored three-piece suit, sporting a fashionable moustache and with immaculately coiffed hair, Lawren Harris does not conform to our perception of the strug- gling artist. If the paint brush, the easel and canvas, and the table displaying the somber colours of his low-keyed palette were removed, Harris might be mistaken for a board member of the Massey-Harris farm machinery firm of which he was one of the principal heirs.

I am not suggesting that the possession of ample means is a hindrance to artistic success. Money certainly helped in giving Lawren Harris a good education. After the family moved from Brantford, Ontario, where he was born in 1885, to Toronto ten years later, the boy was enrolled in St. Andrew’s College in the city’s long-established...