canadianart1930.gallery.ca
Interviewee: Lawren P. Harris
Interviewer: Charles Hill
Interview Date: 13 September 1973
Transcriber: Ruth Ke�les, Nina Berkhout
Transcription Date: 31 March 2008
Transcription Editors: Nina Berkhout, Marcia Rodriguez, Charles Hill, Cyndie Campbell,
Amanda Graham and Marie-Louise Labelle
Archival Reference: Canadian Painting in the Thirties Exhibition Records, National Gallery of
Canada Fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives
CHARLES HILL INTERVIEW WITH L.P. HARRIS
September 13th, 1973
So really, except for holidays when I was at school and things of that nature, my contact with him was not
great at all, simply because we were separated this way, although my a�achment for he [sic] as a person and
his work is just, of course, tremendous. It always has been.
L.P. Harris in conversation with Charles Hill, September 13th, 1973
Lawren Phillips Harris (1910 – 1994) was the son of Group of Seven member Lawren Stewart
Harris, and a member of the Canadian Group of Painters. In particular, he was known for his
portrait paintings and war art. In conversation with Charles Hill, Harris provides details about
his father the artist, and about his father’s role in his own development as a young painter. Harris
a�ests to the academic training he received at the Central Technical School in Toronto, and the
school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Upon his return to Toronto during the Depression, he
recalls painting the poor and unemployed, in exchange for food or a li�le money. Harris speaks
openly about his parents’ separation, explaining how he took on his father’s role as landlord
of the Studio Building, a�er his father moved away from Toronto. Describing his father’s as
well as his own evolution from representational painting to abstraction, Harris interweaves
memories of trips with his father in the Rockies, and L.S. Harris’s fondness for kite flying, into
the discussion. As a member of the Canadian Group of Painters, the artist discusses the shi� in
the Group’s ideologies, and its gradual expansion into a bilingual, national organization. A�er
serving as an official war artist during the Second World War, Harris returned to Canada and
pursued a lengthy career as a painter and a teacher. Although his work differed in style and
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technique from that of his father’s, throughout the interview Harris reveals his admiration for
L.S. Harris not only as an artist, but also as a father.
[Start of Clip 1]
HILL:
Perhaps I’ll just backtrack a bit, and I don’t know if you can help me with this
sort of thing. I’m going to be interweaving questions about your father, questions
about yourself, and then more general questions about the Group or relationships
between different artists and interests of different artists. First of all, your father
exhibited with the Société Anonyme.
HARRIS:
That’s right.
HILL:
Do you know how he got in touch with them, or how they got in touch with
him?
HARRIS:
No. I don’t know whether he’s returned it, but I have had that book which I got
from him and I lent it to Peter Larisey—and I don’t think he’s returned it. No, I
can’t tell you. He did go to New York on one or two occasions. He also went to
Philadelphia once to try and see the Barnes Collection, and whether—what was
that woman’s name, Dreisser?
HILL:
Katherine Dreier.
HARRIS:
Dreier. Yes, I think he corresponded with her, you know. I don’t know how that
happened. Knowing my father as well as I do, I would be darned sure she approached him. He wouldn’t write to anybody and say, “Would you be interested
in my art?” I’m sure.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
He was very reticent in this respect, and I’m sure that—now whether the one in
that book, I think—now this is only a faulty memory, it may be accurate and it may
not. I think the one reproduced in the book—it isn’t Elevator Court—but I think it’s
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the one that Charles Band bought of all the shacks in Glace Bay. Now maybe that’s
not right.
HILL:
It is.
HARRIS:
Well, that’s the one that was reproduced in this book. I’m wondering—this is again
a guess. I don’t know when that Grand Trunk won the prize in Philadelphia. It may
have been a�er that; somehow Katherine Dreier saw this work and may have contacted him. That’s a guess.
HILL:
Yeah. Grand Trunk won a prize in Baltimore.
HARRIS:
Baltimore. Yeah.
HILL:
I suspect, well, in fact I know this one—I might ask about which I already know
the answer if that’s okay with you.
HARRIS:
That’s all right. Sure.
HILL:
Because I’m sort of interested to know if you heard other things about it, or in
fact if you could expand on what I already know. Katherine Dreier saw Ontario
Hill Town—the one that now belongs to University College—at the Philadelphia
Sesquicentennial in ‘26. And she wrote him and asked—because I was down at
Yale and saw the correspondence. Did he ever talk about any of his involvement
with the Société Anonyme? What he thought they were doing? The artists they
included?
HARRIS:
Well, not that I know of because I was very seldom at home. All my life I was at
boarding schools and at boys’ camps and then I went down to Boston for two
years and came back to Toronto, and within a year my mother and father separated, you see. And then very shortly a�er that I married. And so my actual association with him—I think this is a good thing as well as a bad thing—has been very,
very sparse. Our meetings, you see. And then I end up here a�er the war and he
way out in Vancouver, and again we would see each other—well, when he was a
Trustee of the National Gallery, not every time—neither of us could afford it—but
about twice a year I would meet him in O�awa and have a visit. And then usually
3
I would go out to Vancouver in May or a�er the university would close and have
a visit of perhaps three or four days, and that was about it.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS.
So really, except for holidays when I was at school and things of that nature, my
contact with him was not great at all, simply because we were separated this way,
although my a�achment for he [sic] as a person and his work is just, of course,
tremendous. It always has been. So I can’t—to answer your question in that kind
of way, no, I can’t answer that. I just don’t know. I think my first knowledge of it
came when this book came out and he was, I think, the only Canadian involved.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
And we have the book. But I think Peter Larisey now still has it.
HILL:
I’ve seen it and it’s also in reprint now.
HARRIS:
Yeah.
HILL:
Did you know how he met Nicholas Roerich?
HARRIS:
No. Is that of the Roerich Museum?
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
No, no. I can’t shed any light on that at all.
HILL:
In the late twenties, in 1930, he went to France and he met Marcel Duchamp there.
Do you remember that? Do you know anything about that?
HARRIS:
He went to Germany.
HILL:
When he was very young.
HARRIS:
Oh yes, but he went—
HILL:
He went to Germany at one point?
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HARRIS:
Yes. He and my mother went and it could have been—I don’t ever remember him
going abroad except that one trip. And they went to Germany, and he told me
that he had not spoken German for a great many years, that it rather quickly came
back. When he went, I was at Pickering College. So I be�er do some figuring. My
guess would have been 1929. ’28 or ’29, how close is that?
HILL:
Thirty.
HARRIS:
Well that’s probably very accurate but he, you know, he may have gone to France,
but I didn’t know that. I know they went to Germany.
HILL:
Why did they specifically go to Germany?
HARRIS:
Because he had been there as a student and he liked it very much, and he went
back and I think he took my mother. This was before they separated. I don’t think
he particularly went, as far as I can recall, to see anything specific. He just went
because he just wanted to go back to Germany.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
And it’s likely that he went to France, but I don’t know.
HILL:
Did he retain any interest in German culture, German art, as a result of his early
studies in Germany?
HARRIS:
I would say no. He was there only a short time. I mean, today you go to an art
school and generally speaking it’s a four-year stint. Well, I don’t—
HILL:
He was there three winters.
HARRIS:
Yeah. But he was with an uncle who was head of the German Department at Dartmouth College and when he le� Canada a�er separating, this is where he went,
into Hanover. Peter Larisey has been down there.
HILL:
Right. Well, you didn’t hear, you said earlier, much—you don’t know whether the
Group has had much public acceptance by 1930?
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HARRIS:
I couldn’t gauge it. I was too young. I wasn’t into art seriously, you know, and I
couldn’t, I wouldn’t—I don’t know.
HILL:
The question concerning the Group’s expansion was primarily about the Group
of Seven rather than the Canadian Group. In 1930, ’31, they brought Holgate into
the Group. So it became a Group of Eight by that point, and then in December ’31
there was a Group of Seven exhibition and Jackson announced, you know, this is
the end of the Group. We’ve decided we have to expand. Yet in 1932 they bring
in FitzGerald. Why do you think that they sort of hesitated to in fact dissolve the
Group of Seven?
HARRIS:
I couldn’t answer that. I’m sorry I’m not much help to you. I admire very much
FitzGerald’s work, but I just can’t see him as a member of the Group. You know, I
mean, I like his work. I don’t know why they would hesitate; I just don’t know.
HILL:
I get this impression that the original expansion seems to have been partly geographic. They had Varley in Vancouver so they brought in Holgate to bring in
Montreal, FitzGerald, the West. But there seemed to be a hesitation before making
the decision to disband the Group and form another Group.
HARRIS:
Well, I don’t know.
HILL:
What do you think was the reason—immediate impetus—for forming the Canadian Group?
HARRIS:
I think it was because they had invited more people than the ones you just mentioned, you see. There are quite a number of them and they invited them to participate in their exhibitions, and it was no longer the Group of Seven and I think—for
instance, Carl Schaefer was definitely one of them. I can’t—Jock Macdonald was
another. There were quite a few of them, actually. Rody Kenny Courtice, Yvonne
McKague Housser, Isabel McLaughlin, Rody Kenny Courtice, both the Peppers,
Kay and George Pepper. They had been invited to show with them, you see, and
I think that is why they decided, well, we’ll hold together. We’re no longer the
Group of Seven; we’re the Canadian Group of Painters. And then I think they really made a real effort to have the Group membership go from coast to coast. Jack
6
Humphrey was the lone Maritime representative, and then of course out West
they had Binning, and I don’t know about when Shadbolt, if he did—
HILL:
Later.
HARRIS:
Yes, as I say when I look it up, I joined in ’36, but there were many others who
joined before or were brought in before I was.
HILL:
Do you think the death of J.E.H. MacDonald in December ‘32 had anything to do
with, say, well, this is the final—the Group of Seven is over?
HARRIS:
Well, it could be. He was the first to go wasn’t he?
HILL:
Yes.
HARRIS:
So it could be, you see. It’s not like some of these groups that—they have a limited
number and when one goes, then they’re replaced by another. I don’t think they
ever had anything formal like that.
HILL:
Well, they had tried to keep it. I mean vaguely, it seems. Johnston went first, actually. So then they were down to six and then they brought it up to seven, and then
I guess it became eight then nine, no, back to seven, eight, nine, right. I think in the
end there were nine. In 1932 there was the RCA a�ack on the National Gallery. Do
you know when that started to ferment?
HARRIS:
Well, I think what happened there, and I’ve heard this since—what I’m saying to
you is not first-hand knowledge; it’s hearsay and it could be certainly wrong. But I
think that the Academy—and I’m now a member so it’s nothing against them—but
at that time they were really the power in art, right. Before the ascent of the Group
of Seven or their recognition, and they felt that they were the ones that should
always be consulted. Well—oh, his wife’s still living; what was the Director, Eric
Arthur?
HILL:
Eric Brown.
HARRIS:
Eric Brown. He started to send Group of Seven works abroad and the Academy
took a very dim view of this. They didn’t feel this work should even be recog7
nized, and they were the ones whose work should be going abroad. And I think
this is what caused a lot of the trouble. The Academy was losing its control and
the National Gallery was starting to get some type of control, and they were the
ones—I suppose they probably were the first institution to actually recognize the
Group as such. Other individuals like Massey himself and a number of individuals did, but I’m talking about an organization. I think really they were the first,
and I think that—from what limited experience I’ve had—that if you belong to a
certain group it’s usually a bit of a faction, and if something else starts to rise up,
to protect yourself the instinct is to knock it down. And I think this was—I don’t
know how this jives or what you know yourself, but I think this is what caused
this trouble.
HILL:
Do you think it was aggravated at all by the Depression? Lismer suggested in an
article that, certainly with portrait artists, a lack of commissions because of the Depression aggravated the situation. I mean, is it something that was brewing since
Wembley in ’24 and came to a head in ’32?
HARRIS:
I don’t really know. Actually, I suppose that Varley was the only one who was doing portrait commissions. My father—I don’t think my father ever did a portrait
commission—one, only one. A lot of the portraits he did were of his own choosing.
HILL:
Now the suggestion was that previously the patrons of artists had been—or certain portrait artists anyway—had been private individuals, and it remained only
that the state was fine because of the crash. So therefore that maybe they were trying to get at the Gallery, to try and control the purchases of the Gallery.
HARRIS:
I can’t tell you what the acquisition budget of the Gallery was in those days, but I’ll
bet my bo�om dollar it was awfully small.
HILL:
It was nil in ’32 (laughs).
HARRIS:
I don’t know the answer to that one.
HILL:
Well, when did you start studying painting?
8
HARRIS:
Well, I guess 1930 or ’29. It’s whenever the Depression was. I only went down to
Boston for two years.
HILL:
Why did you go to Boston?
HARRIS:
Well, it wasn’t my choice. First of all my father felt that—and he was absolutely
right—that the only art I knew was what was in Toronto because that’s the only
place I’d ever been. And I thought, naturally, that the Group of Seven was all there
really was. And I did go down to the art school, and one thing happened in looking through it that I didn’t like. I won’t go into that. And so I said I didn’t want
to go there, and my grandmother decided she’d foot the bill. And she was a very
ardent Christian Scientist and Boston is the home of the mother church. So she
thought it would be wonderful if I went to Boston. And then my father had been
out West painting, and there was a man, a young chap there by the name of Peter
Whyte, who drove yellow Packard convertibles for the Brewster Company, and
these were sightseeing tours. And he was an art student at Boston at the Museum
School. And he heard my father was there and asked if he would look at his work.
And my father did look at his work and asked where he had studied. And he
knew that within a year or so that I would perhaps want to go to an art school,
although that choice was mine and not his. And he had very high praise for this
Boston Museum School. So I expect that’s the reason I went.
HILL:
What specifically did he like about the Boston School?
HARRIS:
Who, Peter Whyte?
HILL:
Or your father?
HARRIS:
I don’t think he knew anything about it whatsoever, anymore than I did. It was
just felt that perhaps I should get out of Toronto and go someplace else, and I think
just circumstances kind of made it Boston.
HILL:
What sort of training did you receive at Boston?
HARRIS:
Very, very academic. I got there at a very poor time because they brought in two
very starchy Englishmen who had been at the Slade School, and these poor ducks
9
were terribly overworked. They were doing the job of about four others. It was a
very academic training. A lot of cast drawing and things of this nature, and I think
I got a pre�y good grounding, but I felt that if I stayed much longer, I would be
grounded. In other words, there would be no way out of this, you know. There
was very li�le freedom of expression or anything like that, and a�er two years I’d
had enough. And so I decided that I thought I would like to try and go out on my
own, and I shared a studio with Gordon Webber in Toronto. And we got models,
and I used to pick up old codgers from the welfare places and the hostels and I
painted them, these wonderful old Rembrandt-like people. And my father used
to come down about twice a week and give me a critique. He didn’t actually teach
me. I don’t know, it’s a terrible thing to say being here, but I don’t know if you really can teach art. But he would come down and just, you know, discuss whatever
it was I was doing with me. And then when he le�, then I was really on my own,
and I think this was fine. I didn’t at the moment; I was kind of le� high and dry,
but I think it was a good thing. Then I moved into the Studio Building to run that
and collect the rents and pay the heat and all the rest of it, and—
HILL:
You were only two years at the Boston School?
HARRIS:
Yeah. That consisted of my formal training, and then I did go to the Central Tech at
night for a period of time. I was doing life drawing under Bob Ross, whose work I
greatly admired, his line. I wasn’t an ardent a�endant, you know; I’d go one week
and maybe not again for two or maybe three in a row. You know, it was just one
of these things. This was a non-credit course and I just went, partially because I
couldn’t afford models.
HILL:
Well, you were continually working with the figure. Why would that particularly
be of more interest when you were raised in such a landscape environment?
HARRIS:
Well, I have just finished—if I can dig it out you can take it down to the inn for
the night. I have given—I hate doing it—but I have given talks on my own work,
which I don’t like. Sometimes associated with an exhibition of my work, and if
not, then I show slides beginning with the very early work right up to the present.
And I have to do this again next month and I read the thing over. And I deleted
10
quite a bit of it and changed a few bits and pieces and it’s just been re-typed. And
a lot of these questions you’re now asking me are in that. If you want to read it, I
can get it for you and you can take it down to the inn. There’s only—she’s made
one extra copy because the Gallery wants one. But my original idea was to be a
landscape painter because this is all I knew. Well then, down at the art school I got
quite a dose of figure work and I began to feel that this was quite important, and
that’s why I got back into that. And then a�er awhile I also felt it was kind of a
lonely activity, just all by yourself in the room, and most of the people in the studio
building were landscape people. And Charlie Comfort was there and A.Y. and the
Peppers, and Macdonald and Julia Biriukova, and I can’t think who else.
HILL:
Julia Biriukova was doing figure work.
HARRIS:
Yes.
HILL:
She was doing portraits.
HARRIS:
Yes, well, she and Thoreau didn’t enter into this, but we had a li�le weekly life
session. I think it cost us all of twenty-five cents for two hours and we all chipped
in and old A.Y. was up there drawing away too. But every time the model had—
(unintelligible), the smoke pouring up his face and drawing away and as soon as
the model would have a li�le rest, he would pull out his li�le notebook like this,
and sit down like that. (Hill laughs.) Nobody could ever see what he was doing
at all. And Charlie Comfort, drawing great swirls, and everybody would come
and admire, and it didn’t ma�er if the model was this wide, Charlie’s always were
exactly the same, beautiful figures. And the last time I was at Charlie’s apartment
in Hull—just, oh, less than a year ago, last July it was—here were two of these
figure drawings hanging on the wall. And I can’t remember who the models were
now, but anyway that’s when they were done. And so then I started to go out with
Schaefer and Pepper and Will—no, not Will Ogilvie, Comfort. We went up to Palgrave sketching. We finally found a li�le old hotel up there that a maiden lady ran.
She was an excellent cook, and we used to go up, say, on a Monday and come back
on a Friday. Just go out morning and a�ernoon. I can even remember Comfort out
11
on the veranda painting a night scene of this li�le tiny village, and so then I got
interested in landscape work again.
HILL:
About what year was that? Do you have any idea?
HARRIS:
Yeah, wait a minute. The war was ’39. Well, I would say I started landscape work
about ’36. Maybe ’35, but I’d say ’36.
HILL:
But a�er that time you had been painting figure work. In format, some of your figures—the ones I’ve seen reproductions of—have followed to a certain extent the
format of Yvonne Housser. Do you know her one, Girl with Mulleins. Large figures
with background landscapes. Or you have one in the Fredericton Gallery with just
simply bits of foliage, a black woman.
HARRIS:
Oh, that cactus thing. Right.
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
I think that’s the only one that ever had a background that I can recall.
HILL:
Yes, the others are plain.
HARRIS:
Yeah. I used to have some li�le cactus plants in the studio, and I’d just kind of—I
had some sketches of these things. I just put them in to relieve the monotony of the
wall.
HILL:
You were one of the few persons in all the people interested in this exhibition who
continued to exhibit with the RCA all through the thirties. Why did you retain
your interest or continue to exhibit with the RCA when most of the people you
were associating with didn’t?
HARRIS:
Well, a lot of them did. I was made a member of the RCA in ’47, and actually this
happened when I was still in the army, but the thing didn’t come through till ’47.
And one of the things I think that prompted this—and I had nothing to do with
it—they did ask, I don’t know if it was the National Gallery—they wanted some
war art in the exhibitions. And they borrowed some war art, and they borrowed,
12
I guess, a couple of mine. But I did not really exhibit very much with them, actually.
HILL:
During the thirties you did, didn’t you?
HARRIS:
I don’t really know. I was in the OSA before the Academy.
HILL:
You exhibited with the RCA in ’36—no, ’37. Then in ’39 at the World’s Fair you
exhibited with the RCA.
HARRIS:
Did I? World’s Fair where?
HILL:
New York.
HARRIS:
Jeez. I didn’t know that.
HILL:
Your work, Amos.
HARRIS:
Oh yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. That was a—
HILL:
I mean, it seems—in view of the conflict that had taken place between the RCA
and Jackson resigning, the Canadian Group’s opposition—or there seems to be an
apparent division between the CGP and the RCA at that time—yet you continued
to exhibit with the RCA.
HARRIS:
Well, I think partially at that time, you see, I was doing these figure paintings.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
And I was invited to, you know, exhibit with the Group. You had to be with the
Academy. You just took your chances and sent your work and it was juried in or
out.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
And I think it possibly could have been ambition. You know, when you’re starting
off the students o�en say, “Now, where can I exhibit?” I mean it’s just something
they always want to do, you know, and I supposed I wanted to exhibit. I myself
didn’t find any conflict, really. You ask here about the three groups. Well, I felt that
13
the Canadian Group was the more progressive or the more radical element, and
the Academy the more conservative and the OSA, it was just in between. Quite a
few people belonged to all three, you know, and I know if they—I never felt any
conflict myself. Maybe others certainly must have.
HILL:
Well, the OSA to a certain extent declined in importance or in—I should say, in
importance during the thirties from what it had been in the twenties. Or even during the First World War before, when all the Group of Seven had been exhibiting
with the OSA and this was to a certain extent a much more active art association.
Do you agree that during the thirties it seems to have lost its primary role?
HARRIS:
Yes, because I think that—I think the Canadian Group of Painters and the Group
of Seven itself merged. And I think that a�er a period of time, not necessarily with
the artists but with other people, it came to be quite important. I think it was with
a lot of younger artists particularly, not the older ones. I mean, some of the—you
know the ones that are so entrenched in the Academy at the time—the official portrait painter and the calendar artist that did the sheep and stuff like that. I mean,
they thought that the Canadian Group was just for the birds. They thought their
work was terrible. But I myself, I never found any real, you know, conflict there.
HILL:
The Society of Painters in Water Colour became fairly important during the thirties, didn’t it?
HARRIS:
Yes. I wasn’t with watercolours myself, although I saw their exhibitions and also
the graphic people. I never participated in—oh, I think once or twice I sent some of
these li�le line figure drawings to the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, but never
once in my life did I exhibit with the Painters in Water Colour, because I didn’t do
any watercolour paintings.
HILL:
But a lot more people were doing watercolour in the thirties than ever before.
HARRIS:
Yes, I think so and I think that the type of watercolour they were doing—I was
just showing one of the students. I don’t know where it is now—the Comfort catalogue—
HILL:
It’s right here.
14
HARRIS:
Well, how very, very strong watercolours can be painted. And most people thought,
you know, that watercolour was kind of an art that the old ladies used to paint,
similar to painting on china and so on. And I think that Burchfield had a lot to do
with it. A lot of the artists—well, Charlie Goldhammer and a number of them felt
that Charles Burchfield was very important. And of course he was just across the
line in Buffalo, and they became familiar with his work. And I think that watercolour became really a very strong medium; there was nothing wishy-washy about
it, as people sometimes felt that everything was totally keyed together. And these
first-year students are now doing some watercolour, and I wanted to show them
these ones of Comfort’s. I’m not teaching them that course, but you know, how
strong the watercolour can be.
HILL:
Do you think there was an economic reason for some of the revival of watercolour,
the fact that some of the people just couldn’t afford canvas and oils?
HARRIS:
I don’t know what the answer to that would be. I don’t know; I never thought of it
in those terms. It’s possible, but I don’t know.
HILL:
Was Charles Comfort very interested in Burchfield?
HARRIS:
I don’t know.
HILL:
Schaefer?
HARRIS:
Oh yes, Schaefer was. I went with Goldhammer and a friend of ours by the name
of Mulligan who taught mathematics at Pickering College. That’s where I got to
know him. Then he taught at the Central Tech for years—
[End of Clip 1]
[Start of Clip 2]
HARRIS:
—and we went to—the three of us drove to Cleveland to see—I think it must have
been the van Gogh exhibition, although I’m not positive. And on the way back we
went—Goldhammer knew Burchfield, or if he didn’t he had arranged that we go
there, and we did drop in to see him and his work. But no, Schaefer wasn’t with
us on that trip. I don’t know whether Schaefer did or not. I don’t really—I would
15
suspect that any person that’s interested in watercolour in that period would certainly have recognized Burchfield.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
I mean, there are other pieces. The Ashcan School too, that were watercolour painters, you know. But I don’t know why Burchfield a�racted them unless—the only
thing I can think of, and it’s only my personal view, is that there was great strength
in his work and also great imagination.
HILL:
Right. Was there much interest in American art? Well, break it down specifically.
Let’s say in the Regionalist Movement: Benton, Curry, Grant Wood?
HARRIS:
Well, at one time I thought Grant Wood was the greatest. Now I look at his work
and I just do not know why, you know. Oh, one time I just thought he was terrific and when I started to do landscape work and was figurative all right, very
figurative. When I was before nature I must admit that I just tried to reproduce it.
But anytime I worked from the sketches, I could paint right away, and the work
became, I don’t know, I use the word for lack of a be�er one, “formalized realism.”
And it started to look like Grant Wood. Not the figures, but the landscape, and
quite o�en I would think of these rolling hills of grey. To me, they just looked like
big, thick rugs placed over the contours, you know. I don’t know; I think there’s
one in this, maybe two. Yeah, there are two in here. There’s one.
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
That’s the kind of thing I mean. There’s still another one. That’s a sketch, that one.
But there’s the nude. Well, that’s one of the old boys, but I did the most nut-headed
thing. I had a show when I first came here and I had about six of these portraits.
They were about thirty by thirty-six and one was thirty by forty. They were cluttering up the place and I lost interest in this kind of thing. I did a lot of commissioned portraiture, and the studio was ge�ing smaller and smaller and one day
I took about six of these things down and burnt them up with the garbage. And
ever since then I really, you know—this is the only one that I have le�—this li�le
fellow.
16
HILL:
Which one is that? What’s that one? Is that Septuagenarian?
HARRIS:
Yeah, Octogenarian or something.
HILL:
Do you know where the one called Amos is?
HARRIS:
Yeah, in the dump.
HILL:
Presiding Elder?
HARRIS:
It’s in the dump too.
HILL:
Jerry?
HARRIS:
Yeah, the whole bunch of them.
HILL:
Howard?
HARRIS:
Where did you get all these from?
HILL:
Exhibition lists.
HARRIS:
Howard? I don’t remember that.
HILL:
Then there’s one—what is the one in the New Brunswick—in the Fredericton Gallery called?
HARRIS:
Well, it was—it’s just called—well, here. It’s called Négresse. I think, you know, you
change titles. I think I paraphrased it as Nude now. This one—
HILL:
Bermuda Native, is that the same one?
HARRIS:
No, no. That was a—I went through a whole coloured orchestra and I had been to
Bermuda. We were there on our honeymoon and I painted this style—the wall I
painted—(unintelligible), you know, he wasn’t Bermuda at all. But you know they
have these lovely pastel colours, the pinks and the blues. Well, this is what the
background I worked into the thing as if it was—
HILL:
Do you know where that is now?
HARRIS:
It’s finito.
17
HILL:
Coloured Girl (34:15??), is that the one?
HARRIS:
No. Oh, wait a minute. Somebody bought that one. I think I may have a record of
that. Somebody in London, Ontario, bought it. That was a—no, there’s one of—
have you got anything there called Elfreda or something like that?
HILL:
I’ll read out all the titles I have here: Green Coat—
HARRIS:
Well, I got that in the next room. That’s the first one I ever exhibited in my life.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
Do you want to see it?
HILL:
Yeah. Bermuda Native.
HARRIS:
Well, that’s destroyed.
HILL:
Indian Boy with Paddle.
HARRIS:
Now wait a minute. I think that book’s at the house. Do you ever remember hearing of a John Lyle? He was a great architect and he was on the board of the Art
Gallery of Toronto. He had two daughters. One of them is Mrs. George Harris that
lives in Toronto, and the other one who married Sandy Somerville, the golfer, and
lives in London, Ontario. Well, one of the two owns that li�le thing. And it’s just a
picture of a boy with his back to you, just holding a paddle. I think that maybe—I
don’t know if that book’s in here or not. Do you want one of those things?
HILL:
Yeah, I would love one. Thanks very much. Your interest in Grant Wood—also,
were you interested in Precisionists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Sheeler?
HARRIS:
Oh, yeah. I was very keen on their work, very. I had—one of the first art books
I bought was on Sheeler. I was very keen on Georgia O’Keeffe. What happened
was that just before the war—well, if you read this thing I’m giving you to take
down tonight, it’s mentioned in there. Just before the war began, I started to break
away from what I call “representationalism,” and elements of abstraction started
to come in. Well now these were new to me. They weren’t new but they were to
me because I had never handled them before. And I was very pleased in hindsight,
18
looking back, because a lot of people today will just pick on the last thing and start
imitating it. But I honestly truly believe that, like my father, that the way I went, it
was an honest evolution. There was nothing contrived or forced or trying to jump
on the bandwagon at all, and that sketch I showed you of the barn, that may have
been, I think, the first indication where I started to move. It’s very slight I’ll admit,
but this kept on going and I did one or two works that were based on nature that
were really quite abstract. They were sketches. I think I have one le� and in those
days, nothing was photographed in colour, you know. It was all black and white
things, and then—I’m just wasting your time telling you, because it’s all in that
article. When I was finally made a war artist, we had to go right back to Realism
with a vengeance. And the more I did, the more I realize that this isn’t the way I
wanted to work. I found it terribly confining. And then a�er the war I couldn’t get
out. They kept us all in for six or eight months in O�awa, and in the evenings I
did—I can still show you one or two of them if you want to see them—non-figurative drawings. And they were very immaculately done with pencil and shading
and so forth. And then we went to New York City, and I went to the Guggenheim
Museum of Non-Objective Painting, it was then called, and it wasn’t until I went
there that I realized what I was doing. It was non-objective. I had never even heard
that word, but then I started to see these Kandinskys, and the Mondrians, and the
Bauers, and the Hilla Rebays and all this stuff, which I didn’t even really know
existed. It was terrible.
HILL:
You hadn’t heard about them through your father at all?
HARRIS:
No. Well, I had Mondrian and Kandinsky but none of the others. Well, I don’t
think Bauer was, you know, as I say, this was a�er the war. I had been away overseas for over four years and then my father was living in the States until he had
to come back to Canada, and they se�led in—because of my grandmother—on
the West Coast, because of the climate for her. And then when I came back, I came
down here and he was still there.
HILL:
Right.
19
HARRIS:
And so it’s only when we got together on visits, and none of these ever were more
than five days. I mean, it wasn’t a great long stay at all. It was just brief, and he
used to talk theosophy quite a bit. But I didn’t realize until I saw these things what
I was doing.
HILL:
Were you interested in theosophy or Christian science or any of these things?
HARRIS:
No, not really. No, not really. My real—my god is nature, you know. I think that
when I look back—well, canoe trips in Algonquin Park and Temagami. I remember those, and I never, never will forget them. And I love the Rockies; I just love
the mountains. I’m driving along a highway, but I mean up and my father introduced me to that. Also to the park—we took a canoe trip once together and I was
at boys’ camps; I was a camper and then on staff. The canoe trips—I really thought
that was something. I just loved that, and quite frequently my wife and I would
drive up a back dirt road and park the car and walk through these lumber trails
through the woods. We were up there last week and we saw the first Canada jays
I’ve ever seen in these parts. We have blue jays all over the place, but these were
Canada jays. I didn’t even know what they were until this. But, well, I went to the
Christian Science Church because of my grandmother. She conducted the Sunday
school, the big one on St. George Street in Toronto, and I was in the preparatory
school of Upper Canada College in those days. And I used to go down in my Eton
suit with John Southam from O�awa, of the Southam Press people. But no, I don’t
think I—
HILL:
Were the Southams Christian Science too?
HARRIS:
Yeah, oh yes. Very much so.
HILL:
Backtracking a bit, a�er your father went on that Arctic trip with A.Y. Jackson,
he doesn’t seem to have made any major trips except this trip to Gaspé, which I
gather was in ’32. You don’t remember that trip?
HARRIS:
No, I don’t.
HILL:
Was he working solely on Arctic works or was he pulling out older works and repainting them during this period before he le� for the States?
20
HARRIS:
I don’t really know about this pulling out older works and re-working them. I
know he’s done this on one or two occasions. I can remember the last time he was
in Sackville here he looked at one of his paintings, which he has now given my
daughter in Calgary, and he wanted to touch up a li�le bit. He always wanted
to make corrections, and we used to have a terrible time trying to stop him from
doing this. And I know my stepmother did too, because she was afraid toward
the la�er part that he would ruin something, you know, because he had lost the
control. But if he did, they would be the mountain ones. When he first started to
do—well, they weren’t—they were abstracts. They were based on something and
the first inkling I ever—the first thing I saw of these works was one summer—I’d
have to ask my wife the date, I forget. Well, our daughter would be perhaps two
years old in that time. They were at a place called Prouts Neck. My grandmother
had been there, in Maine, and she was staying at this big Black Point Inn and they
had a li�le top of a house somewhere, and he was doing—Bess was painting seashell things and he was working on abstract shapes at that period of time. And
some of them were very definitely—I made a mistake. They were non-objectives;
he had used circles. He had a canvas once at the house, which I returned. It looked
like almost the top of a grand piano, and there was a great big ball floating. And
this was before he’d gone to New Mexico and got in with the Transcendentalist
Group, Emil Bis�ram. He became very interested in him. And one time they went
down to visit Frank Lloyd Wright.
HILL:
Oh, really? I didn’t know that.
HARRIS:
Oh, he thought it was just incredible. I mean this man apparently had a court, you
know. All these students stood up when they came in, and he just was like a—it
was really fantastic. And he and his wife would walk in, and dad said that he, you
know, treats people in a very cavalier fashion, you know. Almost like as if he was
royalty or something.
HILL:
It comes out in his writings.
HARRIS:
Yeah.
21
HILL:
Well, at that time, do you think he was thinking of working in a non-objective
manner? Before he le� for the States?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
There seems to be a gap between ’30 and ’34.
HARRIS:
Well, he had—there was a period of time where he—you know, because of the conflict within the family, well, I don’t think he did very much. He was very unse�led
in his own, you know, in himself. I think that one of the things he tried to do, and
I can’t pin this down—where this fit in—but I can remember him telling me that,
you know, “I paint Mount Robson; I paint Mount So-and-So; I paint Moraine Lake;
I paint Emerald Lake,” he said. “Now I’m going to paint mountains. No names,
just, I want to do something that will epitomize my feeling for all mountains.” No
specific, you know, nothing topographical—and this is only a guess on my part
and I don’t say it’s in any way authentic—but I think the Isolation Peak was the one
that broke that out. See, he had isolated this thing, and I think from then on he
wasn’t interested in painting specific facades or whatever you want to call them,
topographical things of mountains. He wanted to do works that had the feeling
and the monumentality and the grandeur. Everything he felt about the mountain
form, you see, which was for all mountains, not any specific one. I think that some
of this happened in his Arctic sketches, but to a lesser degree because I feel that
with the Arctic ones, he was only up there a very short period of time, whereas in
the mountains, he had been there—well, I don’t know. Five summers, four summers—well, a number anyway. And I think he was very much more familiar with
the mountains than he was the Arctic, because it was just like a quick trip and that
was it. And I’m sure that it was the mountains that pushed him into—toward—
non-representationalism. Not the Arctic.
HILL:
Do you think he was less impressed with the Arctic?
HARRIS:
No, I don’t. I think he was very impressed with it, very. But you see, essentially
Jackson went twice; he only went once. Well, they were away, as far as I can recall,
six to eight weeks. But they didn’t get up—it took a long time to get up and a long
22
time back. In other words, he was actually right in the Arctic for a very limited
period of time and I would think that, you know, it’s like a person going down
to Mexico and becoming a Mexican painter in a week or something, you know. I
think it would take a long while to absorb it and so forth, and I would—my own
guess would definitely be that it was the mountain periods that, you know, made
the biggest evolutionary change. Prompted this change into non-representational,
rather than the Arctic.
HILL:
Right. At that time he painted a series. I think it was three different works and
they’re all called Mountain Forms. And I think this certainly leads to that sort of
thing, whereas he never seems to have done such a generalized concept of “mountain-ness” or “iceberg-ness,” yet he never did that with the icebergs?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
I suspect that you’re probably right. But also, perhaps, there’s this feeling of rising, this feeling of—I get the impression that his interest or fascination with the
mountains is partly this sort of other-worldliness, of just being above everything
and rising up.
HARRIS:
He used to climb well up, and I can remember when we went to Lake O’Hara. The
only way you could go was walk or on horseback. Well, he hated horses. I mean,
he didn’t hate them, but he walked; he liked walking and he climbed. He didn’t
very o�en climb with a guide either. He did it on his own.
HILL:
Do you think this also sort of goes with—apparently, when he was in New Hampshire, he did a lot of kite flying?
HARRIS:
Mhm. He’s always done that. Even when I was a kid, he was always building
kites.
HILL:
Really?
HARRIS:
Yeah. More for himself than for his children, I guess, because he liked this, you
know. Oh yes, I can remember now; I forgot about it, but I can remember that this
is something he always liked doing.
23
HILL:
Do you think this was also sort of this feeling of escape, this feeling of—
HARRIS:
I think a lot of it had to do with, possibly, with theosophy, his feelings there. I don’t
know. It’s just too bad you couldn’t have spoken with my stepmother because she
understood all these things and she had, you know, immediate contact with him.
They were very, very close together and they had a marvellous, just a beautiful
rapport. She knew him be�er than anybody because, as I say, I rarely saw him, you
know. There were great separations.
HILL:
Well, his interest in theosophy, what were the main tenets? That were very difficult—
HARRIS:
Well, reincarnation, I guess, was the big one. And he always felt that you had
problems to solve when you came in to this earth, this world, and if some of these
remained unsolved satisfactorily, when you were reincarnated again later on,
you’d never come back as a dog or a cow or something. It would always be in human form. Then you would again have to face some of these problems you hadn’t
solved. I mean, he’s told me this, and he believes this and he has a number of
books. I have one or two of them for my son, who’s is very interested in this. He’s
travelling all over the world and he’s very interested in Buddhism and things of
this nature. And the last time he went to Vancouver, my father unfortunately was
not well. But he and my father talked and they understood one another, although
I think my son’s way beyond him now. I mean, in his thoughts and beliefs, which
I don’t understand. I’m not opposed in any way to them and I think these are very
personal things. And if this is the type of life he wants and his beliefs, that’s fine.
And this is how my father was, and he told me—I hope someday you’ll destroy all
this tape—but he told me, you know, he said, “Now I’m going to tell you anything.
Anything you want to know, you come to me.” And he was really almost more
of a best friend than a father, although I never called him anything but “dad.” I
never called him, you know, anything else. I had tremendous respect for him and I
learned a great deal from him in how to handle my own children, in a kind of what
I call—well, it never was strict. Neither was he; he never was this way at all. He
was terribly understanding and very sympathetic. He realized that, you know, we
24
all make mistakes. It’s the only way you learn, and he never was really exercised if
you’d made mistakes, sometimes rather serious ones.
HILL:
Around this time, do you think there’s a change in his theosophic interests, or did
he sort of—I mean, according to theosophy, you’re always a student.
HARRIS:
Yeah.
HILL:
But do you feel that there was an expansion of his interests into other realms? He
was reading Madame Blavatsky quite early. Were there new people he was discovering?
HARRIS:
I can’t answer that, and he never would talk about these things. I gather he did a
bit to Emily Carr. I don’t quite understand that; I read that in your book. She apparently felt that he had something beyond painting. He had beliefs, and that if
she could get some of these and could believe them, they would assist her. And
she finally found that she couldn’t, that they, you know, weren’t that meaningful.
He gave her books, I think.
HILL:
Yes.
HARRIS:
And she rejected these and didn’t know what this would do to him. Well, it did
nothing, you know. I got this from her book, not from him and I can understand it,
you know. I mean, he wouldn’t care. He was a very tolerant person and a very understanding, a very human, and a very gentle person, and a very reticent person,
really. He was never boastful; he always thought the best of people. I won’t tell you
who it is—the man’s not living now—but I’ve only once heard him be, let’s say,
rough about somebody. And I think he had good reason for it. He said, “Oh well,
I don’t think I want to discuss him.” And you knew that well, that was it. Perhaps
he couldn’t feel he could say pleasant things, so he would say nothing, and very
seldom—well, I don’t think he ever blew his stack as you would say. I never saw
him get really exercised. He always thought that if you would help somebody
it’ll bring out the best in the person. Well, sometimes that was badly proven on a
number of occasions this way. I can remember one artist who lived for years in the
Studio and never paid a nickel’s rent, and finally it got to the place that I was the
25
one who had to—well dad, you know, gosh it was fantastic. I mean dad would try
to get him commissions and he would turn them down: “Oh, I don’t want to paint
those people.” So finally my dad said, “Well, we can’t do this any longer,” and this
was years later and of course Williamson probably just detested my father. Never
thinking how many years he’d been there for free.
HILL:
Right. What was the change? When did you start taking care of the Studio Building?
HARRIS:
When he le� Toronto. The war began in ’39. I’d say ’37, maybe ’36.
HILL:
He le� around ’34.
HARRIS:
’34. Well, that’s it. I had a studio at that time on Carlton Street. Right on the corner
of Carlton and Yonge Street, and I moved out into the smallest one in the building.
I can’t remember who had it before I did, and I had very nominal rent and I had to
collect the rents.
HILL:
Who was in the building when you moved in?
HARRIS:
Well, A.Y. and right above me was J.W.B. and Williamson. Way up in the top,
Charlie Comfort finally took his studio, and then the one that my father had fixed
up for himself—at one time he thought he’d live in it—the Peppers took that, and
moved in to live. And the big one, which had been J.E.H. MacDonald’s, underneath on the main floor, Julia Biriukova and her sister lived in one part, and the
back part, that’s where Thoreau Macdonald was. But he just came down by the
day. And then Keith McIverwas out in the back, and A.Y. used to have his breakfast with him and so on.
HILL:
Behind the formation of the Canadian Group, do you think your father was a key
figure in that? In ge�ing the Canadian Group going?
HARRIS:
Well, I think he was their first president.
HILL:
Yeah.
26
HARRIS:
Yes, I think he was. I think that he would be the one. I’m not saying others wouldn’t
do this, but I’d think that he’d be one of the first to start inviting others in. This is
how he was.
HILL:
Yet there was in the formation of the Group the concept that it was going to be the
Canadian Group of Painters, and it retained in some of its manifestos or public
statements a very nationalistic concept. Was there opposition to that, even within
the Group?
HARRIS:
No, not that I’m aware of.
HILL:
The Group also retained this sort of Group of Seven orientation in the incorporation, which happened April ’36. All the members, all the people who are in the
le�ers of incorporation, were members of the Group of Seven. Do you feel that this
maintained this Group of Seven concept, the Canadian Group did?
HARRIS:
Well, I think that—I don’t really remember this that well—but I would think that
at the time, it would be dominated by the Group of Seven members. They had
been the ones to invite new other people in here, and I don’t think they meant to
do this, but I think that it could have been partially out of respect by other people.
But I think eventually it started to lessen because they themselves started to break
up. Lismer went to Montreal, I don’t know where Varley went, and my father le�
Canada for the States. And some of the work was—it was being exhibited just
before the war, and certainly a�erwards. It was not all landscape work at all, nor
figure work. Non-representational forms were starting to creep in and, as I say, the
group only broke up, what, two years ago? And I hadn’t seen any of this exhibition
since the war because I had been down here. And it was the only exhibition my
father used to send to. He’d always sent a work and I think they just took it regardless of what it was. But I always used to exhibit with them. It was the one group
that I always made a point of exhibiting, and sometimes they were rejected. So I
have not seen a Group show other than the catalogues since the war. As a ma�er
of fact, I haven’t seen one since 1939, but I think that the la�er ones were—I would
say the non-representational form predominated. That’s a guess because I haven’t
seen them, just from—
27
HILL:
Well, in the early years there was a change in character of the Group, even in
the thirties. Still life, more figure work, your father’s non-representational work.
There was a change. Did you hear Jackson make any comments about this change
in character in the Canadian Group?
HARRIS:
Yeah, I don’t think he was all that—well, no. I can’t say I heard him make comments about the Group, but I’ve heard both he and Lismer make comments about
work that wasn’t Group of Sevenish. You know, that went on beyond that, and
Lismer was really quite bi�er about it and I gather when he was in Montreal, he’d
sent work to—
[End of Clip 2]
[Start of Clip 3]
HARRIS:
—one or two exhibitions that hadn’t been accepted. And he was very, very embittered and he thought the Group should blow up. He thought it should disband. I
remember him telling me that. He was—
HILL:
In the thirties, do you remember?
HARRIS:
Oh no, no. This was way a�er. No, no, not then.
HILL:
Yet Jackson maintained a very strong concentration. He above all the others, from
what I can gather, maintained a strong emphasis on the Group of Seven. This was,
you know, the be-all and the end- all, and all these people were breaking down
this great creation that had been a unified Canadian art movement.
HARRIS:
I don’t think the Group was all that unified; I mean, the Group of Seven was all
that unified. I think they got along exceedingly well together. There was a lot of
bantering and, you know, fun and games and kidding one another, and some of
Lismer’s cartoons were marvellous. You know, poking fun at them. I can remember one of he and my father out with the cups holding pencils for sale and A.Y.
just sold a painting and he’s walking along counting all his money. (Hill laughs.)
Things of that nature, but, well, the last time I saw A.Y. was two Thanksgivings
ago when he was at Kleinburg, and I thought it was just pathetic, just pathetic. My
28
wife and I were both just disgusted. We were kind of forced into going there, and
had a lot of pressure by Bob to go to this place. My father’s buried there and so on.
So we did. But oh boy, that was terrible.
HILL:
That’s really sad. Do you think that your father’s—I don’t know, this may be a bit
personal—but your father decided that he would leave your mother, and do you
remember whether he went straight to New Hampshire or did he go to Reno? Did
he get divorced in Reno?
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
And then he went straight to New Hampshire, did he? What was the effect of this
on the Group members? Was there some breaking down of unity even within the
Canadian Group because of this?
HARRIS:
Well, I’ll answer to this, but what are you going to do with it?
HILL:
Well, no, I’m just thinking more in the concept of—it’s not for publication on that
level. I’m thinking more of—there was some talk that in the Canadian Group, the
Group of Seven, I’m thinking more again of Jackson.
HARRIS:
Well, he was the only one I know of. He wasn’t understanding of it at all at that
time.
HILL:
Right, yeah.
HARRIS:
And I heard this from my stepmother, not from dad, but apparently he was the
only one who—there may have been others—but this was the only one I had been
told.
HILL:
Well, do you think his departure had an effect on the Canadian Group?
HARRIS:
Well, in what way? Do you mean by breaking them up at all?
HILL:
Breaking them up, yeah.
HARRIS:
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t know how because you see, Yvonne
McKague was in this too.
29
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
And they all ended up—they had been for years and years, very, very good friends.
There was no—
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
There was no unpleasantness at all. This is what the three of them wanted, or four
of them wanted. So there was no problem there.
HILL:
Well, I’m thinking again sort of how in the early thirties, even in their first exhibition as the Canadian Group, there’s much more studied and stylistic unity, unity
of a�itude, and yet this starts to break up by the end of the thirties.
HARRIS:
Well, I wouldn’t say it was due to my father’s separation or leaving Canada. I don’t
think so myself. I mean, if it is I had not heard it. Maybe I wouldn’t hear of it if it
had been so anyway.
HILL:
In the first exhibitions of the Group, the Canadian Group, do you feel the Canadian Group still maintained a very strong Toronto orientation?
HARRIS:
Yeah, simply because this was their base of operations. It’s where most of them
were and I think this is one reason they tried to nationalize it from coast to coast,
to break this up. Now, you see, the Academy today – and I’m not that ardent – I’m
on the Council. Why, I don’t know, because I haven’t been to a Council meeting in
my life. I told them when they asked me if I would stand for election, and I said,
“Well, this is ridiculous because I just can’t, you know, do this.” Anyway, I did,
but I’ve never been to a meeting. But they make a great fetish of trying to have
different parts of the country represented, and when Newfoundland came in they
wanted that represented and they got Chris Pra�. He’s the only one there anyway.
You know, the first top-ranking painter. But they had a pre�y big following out
West and partly through the Prairie. I think Allan Jarvis had a lot to do with this
indirectly because I think he was the one who really discovered the art pre�y well
West of Toronto, you know. He gave these chaps from Regina, this Regina Group,
a big send-off and recognized the Vancouver ones and so forth. And I think that—
30
I’m not saying—well, they weren’t all in the Group, but eventually they were before it folded up.
HILL:
But the Canadian Group itself during the thirties still was very much Torontobased?
HARRIS:
Oh yes. Yes. During the thirties, you’re right. I’m thinking post-war when it really
expanded.
HILL:
Did you know Prudence Heward at all during the thirties?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
She was painting black people the same time as you. There’s a comment by Jackson in one of the le�ers that, “Everybody’s painting niggers this year.” Do you
think it was simply a ma�er of accident, that a lot of people were painting black
people?
HARRIS:
Well, I just happened to come across—I’ll tell you who it was. He died last year:
John Alfsen.
HILL:
Yes.
HARRIS:
Well, he had a studio in the same building that I was in, and he wanted to paint
figurative work. It would probably take him months and months and months.
He was a very, very slow, laborious worker, and I remember once going in there.
John was a teacher at the Ontario College of Art. He was a very nice person and he
tried to—he helped me, you know. He’d come in and look at my work. So one day
he said he was ge�ing a model. Well, well, the model happened to be a coloured
person, nursing her baby. And he said, you know, would you like to come in and
perhaps we can divvy this up a bit. So I did. I got my job done rather quickly and
his went on for a long period of time. And then that’s the first coloured person
I ever painted and I thought was really lovely. It was be�er than painting white
people, and so I asked her if she knew of anybody. And that’s when I got onto
this orchestra, and about four of these people all belonged to this orchestra and I
wanted to—they had a girl. That one with the cactus, the girl is one of the orches31
tra people and all those were done—well, not all of them—were done down on
Carlton Street.
HILL:
There were new themes coming up in Canadian art. There was the figurative work,
there was—still-life painting started in the thirties in Canada, really. Was there
much interest in reacting to the Depression, or breaking away from landscape
painting? Were there people who felt that landscape painting was escapist? That
people had to face up to the social problems of the Depression and of the civil war
in Spain?
HARRIS:
Well, if this was so, I myself wasn’t sensitive enough to have really felt it. Because,
I mean, it didn’t—I don’t think it really influenced me.
HILL:
But do you remember any critics sort of thinking in this vein?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Do you feel that there were particular critics who had an influence in developing these new themes in Canadian art? Do you think that Buchanan, or McInnes,
Walter Abell, or Robert Ayre, particularly supported certain facets and changes in
Canadian art at that time?
HARRIS:
Well, all those people I think at the time were really—I would say they were—most
people are against critics, but I think those ones were pre�y good. I think that, I
can’t say that they were always constructive, but you know, I think they were
pre�y good by and large.
HILL:
You wrote an article in 1940 about critics.
HARRIS:
Yeah.
HILL:
Who specifically were you thinking, or not even specifically, what sort of—
HARRIS:
Well, I’m afraid it was dear old Pearl McCarthy. You know, the tea cups kind of
thing. I think that, yeah, that’s what—I just thought of these things a while ago:
“How do you find out all these kinds of things? You know more about me than
I do.” I don’t know really what stimulated that. It was for The Canadian Forum, I
32
think. I don’t know what got me. They were very kind to me and my work. So I
mean, it was nothing personal. The only—I’ll tell you one person who was terribly
incensed with these people was Schaefer. Of course Schaefer goes, you know, till he
really blows. He still does. I’m amazed, you know. Here he had this—they wanted
one of these watercolours of ours for Schaefer’s show and I saw him in Kleinburg.
My gosh, he was ranting and raving about the terrible treatment he—they didn’t
even invite him to come to the opening at Sir George Williams, and he was just—I
don’t think it ma�ers what you do. You’d never be able to please Carl. I don’t know
what stimulated that, actually. Well, some of the ones that you refer to at the time,
I wasn’t aware of. Now Walter Abell, you see, he was down here at Acadia and he
was the founder of Maritime art, which eventually became Canadian art, eh?
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
But at that time, I don’t think—I think it was a�er this that he became influential.
HILL:
He wrote an article, I think it was in ’37, and it was called From Canadian Moderns,
and he wrote it for the Magazine of Art.
HARRIS:
In the States?
HILL:
In the States, and this—I’m thinking specifically, when I’m talking about this breaking away, this breakdown of the Group of Seven theory or movement, and there’s
a big reproduction of Bertram Brooker’s Sound Awakenings. Pegi Nicol was in that.
John Alfsen, I think. Milne was in that. I think there was a FitzGerald. These are
much—I don’t know enough about John Alfsen but certainly Brooker, to a certain
extent FitzGerald, Milne, and Pegi Nicol were much more—they were figurative
a lot more. Certainly some of them were, but also more concentrated on the formalist aspects of art rather than this nationalism, which had been so strong in the
Group of Seven. And Walter Abell and Graham McInnes both sort of concentrate
on this much—also very strongly interested in American art.
HARRIS:
Well, I didn’t—the one that I cared for, at least in his writing, was Graham McInnes.
HILL:
Mhm.
33
HARRIS:
And I wasn’t familiar, really, with Donald Buchanan and Robert—Bob—Ayre until
a�er the war, really. I don’t think I even knew of Abell until a�erwards.
HILL:
The other ones I’ve got down here are all Montrealers. John Lyman started writing
I think around ’34 for The Montrealer, was their critic from I think about ’34 till—or
’36 actually, until about the war. Did you ever hear anything about his writing?
HARRIS:
No. I didn’t even know he did it.
HILL:
Do you ever hear any comments about the reaction to the Canadian Group when
it was shown in Montreal?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Was there much interest in French art? Contemporary French art in Toronto, such
as Picasso, Surrealism?
HARRIS:
This is in the thirties?
HILL:
In the thirties.
HARRIS:
I wouldn’t know.
HILL:
Was there much contact with Buffalo? Did a lot of people go down to Buffalo to see
exhibitions?
HARRIS:
No, I don’t think so. I seem to be—I went to the Albright.
HILL:
Well, that’s what I’m thinking of.
HARRIS:
Yeah. My wife and I, we had friends there. We just went to visit friends and then
they went to the Gallery. It wasn’t a—the only trip that I can think of specifically
making was this one to Cleveland when I went with Charlie Goldhammer and this
other man I mentioned. I think it was a van Gogh show. I won’t swear to that, but
that’s what I think we went to see and I think that’s the only trip I actually made,
except to O�awa when my father was there.
34
HILL:
And that was for the Group of Seven retrospective?
HARRIS:
You’re talking about pre-war?
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
I guess that’s what it was. I know I went up there.
HILL:
There’s a photo of you at the—a group photo of a kind of tea party at the time of
the Group of Seven retrospective in ’36.
HARRIS:
Oh. Well, I guess that’s the only time. You see, Cleveland and Buffalo once and Ottawa once and that was it. Never Montreal.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
Hamilton, yes.
HILL:
Did you see the Italian exhibition at Hamilton in ’39 or ’38?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Did you see—do you remember the Surrealist exhibition at the CNE in ’38?
HARRIS:
Is that the one that had the Dalí in it, The Persistence of Memory?
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
Well, I must have seen it because I saw that—I think that’s the only time I’ve ever
seen that painting in the original, and I was amazed how small it was. So I did see
that. Yes, we always went to the CNE galleries.
HILL:
Was there much interest in that Surrealist exhibition? Were there any artists who
were particularly struck by it?
HARRIS:
Not that I really recall. I know at that time I thought Dalí was pre�y marvellous.
HILL:
Mhm.
35
HARRIS:
Then when I looked at the ones down—you must have seen them—at the Beaverbrook Gallery. You must talk about the Lady Dunn and—those are the late seventies?
HILL:
No, they’ve got those hidden.
HARRIS:
Have they? You saw them though?
HILL:
Yeah, in the racks.
HARRIS:
How those people could have accepted those, realizing that fun was just being
poked at them, you know. I think this is fantastic. They used to have those hanging
right up in main entranceway. You know the great big one with the horse?
HILL:
Yes.
HARRIS:
Well, when you turn that off I’ll tell you what A.Y. said about that one with the
horse. (Hill laughs.)
HILL:
Wasn’t Milne very well known in Toronto in the thirties?
HARRIS:
I wasn’t really conscious of Milne until the very end of the thirties because of
Douglas Duncan. I’d never seen Milne in my life and I didn’t even—yes, I guess I
did know that he had been in Palgrave. But Douglas Duncan had Milnes, you see,
when he started this Picture Loan. He was a bookbinder.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
And we still have one or two of the books for us that he bound and that was my,
I think, one and only introduction to Milne was through the works that Douglas
Duncan had. And I think that Douglas Duncan was the front. I don’t think anybody could get near Milne; they had to do it all through Douglas. Am I correct?
HILL:
Yeah, right. But he had shows at Mellor’s Gallery all through the thirties. Did you
see any of those shows?
HARRIS:
Oh, probably, but I can’t really recall any of them. I don’t think perhaps at that time
that Milne meant as much to me as, let’s say, FitzGerald.
36
HILL:
You were extremely interested in FitzGerald’s work at that time?
HARRIS:
Yes, I was interested in his work. I liked the subtleness and the clarity and the
precision and, you know. You usually are stupid enough to—instead of trying to
admire something you don’t understand, you admire something you do understand. And I get around that one though because, you know, the odd thing one
sees, and I still do—it baffles me, and I say, “Well, let’s give the artist credit for
having the integrity when he did this work, and it’s been through a jury and it’s
hanging on the wall.” Just because I can’t get much from it doesn’t mean there’s
nothing there. So the lack is with me and not the painting. This is nice in theory;
it doesn’t always work, as you know. But I made a point of trying to really study
the works that eluded me rather than the ones that I could just almost immediately accept because I thought, “Well, that’s nice to look at it, but let’s get in a li�le
further in involvement with these things.” And I must say that with FitzGerald
there wasn’t much you didn’t understand, but I was interested in his technique.
And I think that perhaps this is one thing that some artists have over, let’s say, a
critic who was never actively trying to do something. Old A.Y. would say, “Oh, he
knows all about art except how to paint.” You see, the critics really didn’t know
art because they had never tried to do it. But I do feel that once you have tried to
do something, then you have a much be�er understanding of, let’s say, the material element that’s involved and the use of the media, and then you can look and
see how well it’s been executed. Not that—you’ve got to make this great division
between whether it’s an art or a cra�. Sometimes a thing is perhaps technically
very excellent, but it’s, you know, there’s nothing there. Like a person who uses
beautiful language but really doesn’t say anything. On the other hand, you can
get to the other side of the coin where the person is as creative as the devil, but he
hasn’t got the means to bring it into fruition or into a material state where it really
will work. No, I liked—I like Milne’s work today. My gosh, I’m very fond of it. I
was delighted with that last issue of Arts Canada that had Milne’s journal and so
on. No, I like Milne’s work very, very much.
HILL:
Was there much interest in Mexican art during the thirties?
37
HARRIS:
Well, I can only talk, you know, just speaking for myself. Yes, we heard about Orozco and Rivera and a number of others, and then—when did this—I’ve seen—when
did the Riveras that were commissioned by the Ford Motor Company, because
they had Communist tendencies—
HILL:
That was the one at the Rockefeller Center I think.
HARRIS:
Was that the one that they removed and is now in Detroit? In their Art Institute?
HILL:
Yeah. Oh, maybe that’s—no, I was thinking of another one Rivera did at the Rockefeller Center. And they had a portrait of Lenin, and that’s the one they destroyed.
HARRIS:
Well, okay they destroyed it. But there’s another one and I saw it, oh, I’d say ten
years ago. That’s a guess. The last time I was in Detroit, we were—
HILL:
In the Institute of Art?
HARRIS:
Yes, and it came from the Ford Motor Company, and it had Lenin and so on in it
as well. And it’s mounted up on the walls of the Institute.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
Now, I think that was commissioned by the Ford Motor Company and it could be
that they would not—they had to pay for it, but then they wouldn’t accept it to
hang it in wherever it was designed, and gave it to the—I don’t know. But then,
of course, when I went down to visit my father in Hanover, here was this one
by—wasn’t it Orozco—in the library?
HILL:
It was a Siqueiros.
HARRIS:
That’s right, the most terrible thing to put in the library because
it’s nothing
quiet and restful. Did you ever see it?
HILL:
No.
HARRIS:
Oh, it’s a dandy. It’s the one based on the legend of the gods that came across on
the ra� of snakes. These things writhing, of course they’re terribly powerful tonally and in colour and they have all the earthy—even the blues are earthy colours.
38
Of course, the browns, the reds, and the greens predominate, and I think that there
was an impact. Perhaps, you know, you can’t gauge it that way, but perhaps slightly similar to the art of France when they discovered the Japanese prints. And—no,
I think that—and also, I think as I recall I still have a couple of books on Mexican
art, which I’ve had since before the war, and I think a lot came out that way either
in magazines or in book form. Yes, I think it was quite well known. Maybe not at
first-hand because there’s no such thing. There’s no Mexican art in Toronto. Now
there has been some in—there were one or two pieces in exhibitions at the Toronto
Gallery.
HILL:
There was a Charlot Exhibition.
HARRIS:
Is that what it was? Yeah. I think it must have come through magazines and publications, and also the notoriety of some of these Rivera works.
HILL:
Well, were people interested in the political also, political aspect of the Mexican
art? Were many artists, put it another way, involved in any of the politics involved
with the civil war, the Spanish Civil War, Norman Bethune?
HARRIS:
No, not that I know of. But you know it’s another thing when you mention this.
There have been a great many people from Canada—Leonard Brooks of course
lives there, doesn’t he?
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
But a lot of them have gone down there. Gordie MacNamara has, and Fred Ross
from Saint John has. Quite a few have gone and studied in Mexico, at this—what
is it, the something Allende, you know the one I mean. It may be that their courses
are given in English or something. I don’t know. But I’m wondering why they go
there and I think one of the reasons could be that Canada did—I don’t mean that
Canada discovered Mexican art—but Canada became cognizant of Mexican art. I
don’t know why they go there.
HILL:
Later than the States, though. Fred Taylor, I think, was definitely political.
HARRIS:
Yeah.
39
HILL:
Socialist or Communist, he was very much interested from that aspect. Jack Humphrey went down in ’38.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
And I’m not too sure what the reason for that was, why he particularly chose
Mexico, of all the places to go. Gordon Webber went down.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
To Mexico. Was there much interest in English art of the period? Apparently, there’s
a lot—some people commented that Holgate’s large figures in front of landscapes
and Prudence Heward was doing some at the same time—that those are derived
from English painting. Do you remember seeing English exhibitions that were
touring Canada at the time?
HARRIS:
No. I myself became very, very interested in English art a�er the war because I saw
it then, and I—we’ve had Eric Newton here, through the National Gallery, you
know. They brought quite a few English people out, and of course the AlbrightKnox has a very, very good collection of English art. But that is postwar art, or let’s
say it came into prominence a�er the war. Before that, no, I didn’t know anything
about it. Nothing.
HILL:
Were English critics much talked about—Clive Bell or Roger Fry?
HARRIS:
Yeah, yeah. I was introduced to them because my father had their books.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
I started when I got interested in art. I started to look; started reading some of the
books he had, and I still have some of the books you mentioned. Now that’s how I
heard about them. If he hadn’t got the books I probably wouldn’t have known.
HILL:
Was there much interest in German art—Kandinsky?
HARRIS:
Well, you mean for me? Are you asking me?
HILL:
Or any other one, anyone else?
40
HARRIS:
Yeah, Max Beckmann and more than that, the Expressionists. I don’t know about
back in the thirties.
HILL:
Your father was very interested in Kandinsky, wasn’t he?
HARRIS:
Oh, yeah.
HILL:
From what date, do you know?
HARRIS:
No. I think my father was also very interested in music, and he at one time could
play the violin. I don’t think well at all. One of his very close friends was Harry
Adaskin.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
And I asked Harry if he had ever heard my father play the violin and he said,
“No, I hope I never do” (both laugh). I think, if I’m not mistaken, I think one of
the things Kandinsky a�empted—and it’s not for me to say how successful he
was because I don’t know—but I mean he tried to bring art into what you could
consider a universal state, which music enjoyed. And naturally, you can’t do that
with the wri�en word because of translation problems, and I think this is what my
father a�empted when he tried to do paintings that would stand for all models
and not just specific ones. In other words, it had more of a universal value a�ached
to it, and I think that, yes, he was very interested in Kandinsky, and I think that he
shared many of Kandinsky’s beliefs.
HILL:
Do you ever remember an author called Leadbeater who was a theosophist—
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
He talked about the relationship between colour and feeling, and apparently had
had a great deal of influence on Kandinsky.
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Kandinsky at one point was very much interested in theosophy also. He used to
mention Mondrian too. Was your father very familiar with Mondrian’s work at
that time? Had you ever heard of Mondrian before he le� for the States?
41
HARRIS:
No. I discovered Mondrian a�er the war. I discussed them. I discussed, you know,
Mondrian and Kandinsky with my father but it was pre-war—sorry, postwar.
HILL:
Postwar. Had you heard of Kandinsky? Had you heard your father mention Kandinsky?
HARRIS:
No. I can’t say that I actively recall this. We discussed them, yes, a�er, way a�er
1930 but not before.
HILL:
Right. When your father went to the States, he started—do you know why he went
to New Hampshire, specifically?
HARRIS:
It possibly could be because of his uncle, whom he didn’t look upon as an uncle at
all. They were just very close friends. Actually, their age differential wasn’t great
at all, and, as I say, they had taken canoe trips together and they were very much
together. They were in Germany at the same time, and—I don’t know why he went
there. If it was just—he felt that he just had to go somewhere where there was at
least some kind of contact.
HILL:
Did he know Rockwell Kent very well when he was there?
HARRIS:
Well, I can remember two instances when Rockwell Kent was at our house, and
one of them I’ll never forget. He was giving an illustrated lecture at Eaton’s on College Street, and dad got him, and I was introduced to him. I don’t know how old
I was, seventeen or something, and he just reeked of liquor. And dad asked him if
he’d like a drink before dinner and he said, “Of course!”
[End of Clip 3]
[Start of Clip 4]
HARRIS:
(Hill laughs.) So dad said, “Well, perhaps you would like to help yourself.” It was
a tumbler like this, and he poured about that much in with a li�le bit of water and
this was it. And then we had some wine during the meal and then a�er the meal,
he said, “Look,” he said, “I think I’ll just have another one before we go.” And I
thought, “My god, this man’s never going to be able to walk out on that platform,”
and he did, and it wasn’t as big as the first one, but it was a healthy slug. And we
42
were si�ing there and he came up and he gave his lecture. And then a�erwards
a lot of people came back to the house and he started in this way again, and honestly it had no effect whatsoever. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I liked his work.
Oh, I thought his work was just terrific. Dad had these books of Rockwell Kent’s
illustrations and so on. I still have some of them. I thought he was tremendous,
you know. I was very impressed, and finally the Art Gallery of Ontario or Art
Gallery of Toronto bought one of—I remember it was very brown. A landscape of
Rockwell Kent’s and—oh, I thought, I used to think his work was just absolutely
wonderful.
HILL:
Did he know Marsden Hartley when he was down in New Hampshire?
HARRIS:
No, he had—and I have it—he had a book on Marsden Hartley’s work, and I know
that he very much admired him. But that’s all I can say on that. I don’t remember.
I think the only time he met Rockwell Kent was when he came up to Toronto on
these two occasions to lecture, and how dad got kind of, he was asked to, you
know, entertain him and look a�er him. He stayed at a hotel in town; he wasn’t
staying at the house. But this is the only time I think dad knew him.
HILL:
Well, he was living—Rockwell Kent was in Maine?
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
While your father was in New Hampshire.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
The le�er from your stepmother to Doris Speirs where she asks for Rockwell
Kent’s address—they might have known each other then. Well, he started to paint
abstracts, really, only down in New Hampshire. Did he ever paint any landscapes
down there? Do you know?
HARRIS:
No. Not that I know of. Nor do I ever remember seeing any landscapes he painted
in New Mexico. I would doubt, myself, a�er he le� Toronto if he did paint landscapes. I think he worked at a couple that he did earlier, but I don’t remember. I
don’t recall if he ever painted another landscape.
43
HILL:
Well, perhaps we’ll go through some of those photos later. I think the one that
we looked at might have been painted later. Do you think that the break from Toronto—he was in a new atmosphere, that he could really start—do you think this
had given him the impetus to in fact break from representational painting?
HARRIS:
I think it could have had quite a bit to do with it. I would not say that if he had
remained on in Toronto that he wouldn’t have eventually come to this, but maybe
not as quickly. He may have felt kind of isolated.
HILL:
During the Depression, did you know of artists that were severely hit by the Depression; who really had a tough time? Who all of a sudden lost all income?
HARRIS:
No, I can’t say that I did.
HILL:
Well, how did most artists cope with the—
HARRIS:
Well, I wasn’t even there during the time. I was down at school in Boston, and
when I came back, you know, I was pre�y young, and I shared the Studio, as I told
you, with Webber. And while it didn’t really affect me at the time I, you know, was
conscious of it. And that’s one way I got my—these old unemployed men.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
And when I moved up—that was a�er the Depression—up to the Studio Building—there’s a park out there and these old fellows used to get out and get a bo�le
of wine and go out in the park. And you could go out and look them over, and
then approach them and ask if they’d be interested in just si�ing in a chair while
you painted them and, you know, for a dollar they were thrilled. I think Schaefer
had a tough time. I know my father had him do some work for him such as pu�ing
silver leaf all over the ceiling of the new house he had built.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
With Julia Biriukova’s sister, Alexandria, was an architect. I don’t know whether
she was licensed to practise, but she and my father designed this house and then
they had to turn it over to a proper architect to know where the plumbing went,
where the radiators went, and all that kind of stuff, and it was a very—in those
44
days it was very avant-garde, modern house. And it had a large entrance hall in
an oval shape, and for some peculiar reason he thought that the ceiling should
be silver leaf, and Carl did that. I know that helped him; it took him ages to do it,
because you know what silver leaf is.
HILL:
Is that house still standing, do you know?
HARRIS:
Yeah, it’s at 2 Ava Crescent. And a�er my mother and father separated she lived
in it for a short time and, you know, she wanted to get out. It was far too big and
vast. So it was sold.
HILL:
It would be interesting to see it.
HARRIS:
Well, it’s still there. I think it’s an exceedingly nice house inside but I think it’s too
big for the lot. There’s no space. The space is at the back and the front but nothing
on the sides at all. So it’s right cramped up against driveways and it’s on the next
house.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
I think if he’d had a double lot it would have been perfect, but it’s too crowded.
HILL:
Well, a lot of artists went into advertising during the Depression as a way to make
a living. Do you think this had any detrimental effect on the work of some artists?
HARRIS:
Well, the only one that I personally know, as I mentioned the other day—I don’t
know if it was to you or to somebody else—was Comfort. And it seems to me that
in advertising, one of the things is to make an immediate impact. If you turn over
the page, if it isn’t a�ractive you don’t see the ad. Well, you miss the ad. This is
what the man who paid for it wanted. He wants you to read it, and Comfort did a
lot of work. I think one of his most noteworthy ones was the International Nickel
Company ad. Those beautiful pen drawings in scratch form, and they were very
dynamic. You know, lots of oomph to them with pure black and white. And he did
some Salada Tea ads, and I remember one was—one of the models he had—was
in the Volkoff Ballet. If you want to look back and research, you’ll find that one
45
of these ads is about a ballerina, and this is one of the girls we used to get to pose
for us in the Studio Building. And I feel myself that Charlie—I think his work is
technically absolutely brilliant, but I think some of his works are spoiled by this
overly dramatic feeling. For instance, the two things that I could suggest to you:
one of them, he had, I thought, quite a lovely canvas of Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks. It was a pure landscape, and the next time I saw it he had a
great, bloody eagle flying through the whole thing, and I thought it had spoiled it
in my opinion. And then the other ones: he had two small canvases. I would say
they were thirty by thirty-six, or something like that, and it was the famous Bon
Echo Rock of—was it Tovell?
HILL:
I’m not sure, but I know which one you mean.
HARRIS:
You know what I mean, this big rock. There’s a private lake; it’s near Peterborough
some place. I’ve never been there, and he did these two canvases of the rock. They
made it a beautiful pair, and he had sumac in the front, this lovely red sumac. One,
he was painting two nudes in the front, one doing their hair. He would take these
nudes from the life drawings we were drawing and incorporate it into the landscape, and I just thought it, you know, spoiled it. And I can’t help feeling—and
then, in one or two of his works in that calendar there, that catalogue there. Not all
of them, but one or two of them, to me, look very commercial. But he is the only
one that I know of who was really engaged as a commercial artist at that period,
and I think it did do something to his art.
HILL:
Mhm. Well, a lot of other people went into child art programs. Lismer did, of
course, Humphrey, and Jean Paul Lemieux had one for a while. Do you think this
relates to their art at all or was it simply a ma�er—did it stimulate their art?
HARRIS:
I don’t know. I wouldn’t know. I don’t think that Lismer’s work with children—I
could see no way it actually affected his own work, which is very minimal. He
only really did it in the summers. He was so occupied trying to run the art school
in Montreal particularly, and the art centre for the children. That’s where his love
really was. He had very li�le time to do any serious painting. I think he did a lot
of drawing and things of that nature, but no, you know, serious painting, and in
46
the summers he used to go out West to Victoria, Vancouver Island. He’d paint out
there. One summer he was in Cape Breton. That’s where that sketch was done that
we have. But I can’t see anything in his own work that would be influenced by his
contact with his children’s classes.
HILL:
Do you know why he le� the Art Gallery of Toronto?
HARRIS:
This is vague, but I wonder—you would know this with your feeling for dates—
when did he go to South Africa? He was commissioned—
HILL:
’36.
HARRIS:
Yeah, well, now was that a�er he was in Toronto?
HILL:
Well, he was on sabbatical.
HARRIS:
You mean he never went back?
HILL:
He went back for a year. And then he went to New York.
HARRIS:
When did he go to Montreal?
HILL:
He went to New York, then he went to O�awa, then he went to Montreal.
HARRIS:
No. I don’t know why he le�.
HILL:
Was there—the Picture Loan Society, do you know what the sort of immediate
impetus for this was?
HARRIS:
No, not exactly, except that Douglas Duncan really by profession was a bookbinder, and he also knew artists and he also loved art. And I think he had this, perhaps, extra space. It may not have been right at Charles Street at that time. I don’t
know when he came into such close relationship with Milne. But he started the
thing, and a number of us were invited, and we became members. I don’t know; I
think he really pre�y well financed the thing single-handed because I don’t think
enough money was coming in even to pay the rent—and he wasn’t a very good
businessman. And I think he just kind of ran the thing and financed it in a very
kind of casual, free way, you know. I don’t think that—I never remember us all get47
ting together to decide any issues or any program. I think it was very off-handed
and casual.
HILL:
Was there a problem for artists at that time exhibiting or selling works through
dealers?
HARRIS:
Well, I never had anything to do with dealers because I don’t think dealers wanted
anything to do with me, and I was—you asked me yesterday. I was thinking about
your questions, you know, how you could be a member of all three of these major
groups. Well, I think one reason was that it was another opportunity to exhibit,
really, as much as anything. And I think that there’s something to be said for—you
feel be�er when your work is juried. I don’t know if you mentioned it, or if I’m
ge�ing it confused with—but we talked about this show in Hamilton with this
straight invitation. It’s up to the discretion of the director who is asked, and this
new man there now, he just probably took over the same list that Tommy MacDonald had been using for the last number of years. And I don’t think, in my
opinion—I’ve never seen this show. I’ve only seen the catalogue—but I don’t think
that it’s really a very contemporary, progressive exhibition at all. I think it reflects
the taste of Tom MacDonald who began it, you know.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
Coincidentally, his daughter is here.
HILL:
Oh, really.
HARRIS:
Mhm. In her second year.
HILL:
Was there much awareness of the American WPA projects? Was there much interest in petitioning the government to try and do something similar for Canadian
artists?
HARRIS:
I don’t know. I have no experience with that at all. I really don’t know. Nor can I remember seeing anything that was done at a comparable or even a less comparable
way to what was being done in the States. I was aware of it in the States because
they gave a pre�y good publicity, you know. Their works were reproduced quite
48
frequently in papers and magazines and so on, but I don’t know if anything like
that was a�empted in Canada.
HILL:
Did people talk about it?
HARRIS:
Well, you see, you’ve got me because I was just starting up at this period of time
and I wasn’t conscious of these things. Nor was I actually suffering from any of
it the way some others were, so I really don’t know. Oh, I think when we talked
about it, it was kind of critical—not necessarily against—like a critique of the various things we had seen: “What did you think of Benton’s mural?” or so on, that
type of thing.
HILL:
There was an article in the New Frontier by a person called Vivash of Local 71 of the
Artists’ Union of Toronto. Do you know anything about that?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
When your father went to the States, he was in New Hampshire first. He said he
knew the work of Marsden Hartley.
HARRIS:
Yes, and Arthur B. Dove too.
HILL:
Arthur Dove.
HARRIS:
Yeah, he liked their work and he liked Marin.
HILL:
What specifically do you think he liked about their work?
HARRIS:
I know that he had books on these people, but what primarily a�racted him to
them I don’t know.
HILL:
Was he at all interested in dynamic symmetry, Jay Hambridge’s dynamic symmetry?
HARRIS:
Well, perhaps only up to a point. Unlike myself, he was in no way mathematically inclined. Many of his, well, almost more rigid abstracts were still freehand,
whereas I use mechanical devices to get circles and lines. Well, he didn’t.
49
HILL:
Do you think he did—perhaps might have explored dynamic symmetry in some
of his early abstracts? Because apparently he was very familiar with it.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
He talked about it, apparently.
HARRIS:
I wouldn’t know.
HILL:
I guess we have to try and sort of see whether they fall into a dynamic symmetry.
HARRIS:
Well, as I tried to explain to you, see, we were never—we were always separated
geographically.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
And there were only these short visits, and since he le� Toronto that’s how it was.
Even before that I was always at school, boarding schools and camps. So I really
didn’t see very much of him, actually.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
In very small, li�le doses.
HILL:
What made him decide to go to New Mexico? Did he, in fact, when he first went
to Mexico, plan to stay there or was it mainly for a visit?
HARRIS:
Well, I think what happened if I remember correctly, he was down there; that is
true. And then his mother, who was still living in Toronto, became exceedingly ill
and it turned into a mental disorder, and she needed help. She could no longer
cope on her own, and they moved her to New Mexico, but she didn’t like the heat.
It was far too hot for her. She was a big, heavy woman. So they moved her then to
California and I gather—I’ve never been there—but I gather that by the ocean it’s a
li�le cooler. And then they got her a—what do you call it—a lady companion who
looked a�er her. Dad and Bess went back to Santa Fe, and they rented a place there
and he built a studio of their own, adobe style, and he started to work. There was
a group of transcendentalists there. I think Emil Bis�ram was kind of the leader of
50
this, and he got very much concerned and occupied with this. Well, then when the
war broke out, they no longer could get Canadian money out of the country.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
So then they moved. They took my grandmother and they moved to Victoria, and
he didn’t like Vancouver—I mean Vancouver Island, Victoria. He didn’t like it,
so he moved over to Vancouver and he rented a house, which actually belonged
to General Hoffmeister, who commanded the division in Italy. And I was in that
division as a war artist and he summoned me. He wanted to see my work, and
then he told me that, “Did you know your father rents my house?” I didn’t know
it was him. And then my grandmother got to the place where she no longer could
stay at the Empress Hotel because of health. So there was a very nice house across
the street, so he put his mother and this companion in the smaller house and he
bought the large one. And then a�er she died, he remained on until he died in the
house. And that’s the one I showed you the picture of, with the studio on one end
of it and so on. That was just across the street from the original one. It’s right near
the university. At least it’s out on Point Grey, so you can get to the university campus in about ten minutes. It’s very close.
HILL:
Did he ever talk about his experiences in New Mexico, or did you ever hear anything about it?
HARRIS:
No, because, well, he got an American divorce and at that time it wasn’t accepted
in Canada, and there could have been trouble if he had returned to Canada. And
the only time he did was when he had to close up my grandmother’s affairs and
move her down. Then before I went overseas he came back to Toronto to see me.
HILL:
He never wrote you from New Mexico?
HARRIS:
Oh yes, oh yeah. But he never said very much about, you know, his work and so
on. He loved it there. He just loved it. I think he would have stayed there indefinitely if he had been able to, you know. He liked it.
HILL:
What particularly did he like there?
51
HARRIS:
I think he liked the climate very much, and the clarity of the light. I think he just
found it a very conducive place to work.
HILL:
Was he an original member of the Transcendental Group or did that already exist
when he arrived?
HARRIS:
I don’t know. I don’t know that.
HILL:
Do you think—did his contact with the artists in New Mexico and Santa Fe and
Taos, did that change his art at all?
HARRIS:
Well, I think it’s bound to. I can’t tell you how, except before he went there he
was working on either almost full abstractions, and I think when he got there he
may have gone right over to these. You showed me a picture of one. Where was
it, in the McMichael book? You know, the circles and the rigid thing. I think a lot
of those were done down there, and I think that it may have been—this is only a
guess on my part—because in that time, I don’t think he was painting big major
works. I think he was ge�ing into the thing and working more or less on the small
formats.
HILL:
But he exhibited large works with the Canadian Group of Painters in the ’37 exhibition, large abstracts.
HARRIS:
Well, he must have done—
HILL:
Like that one in the McMichael work that I’ve seen a photograph of, an installation shot in which the large work from that was exhibited. I don’t know where the
large work is now.
HARRIS:
I don’t either. I think maybe—this is again a guess—I think that one of the things
that may have happened down in New Mexico was when he first started to break
out of—when he started to become rather non-figurative, it was always based on
something. And I think maybe down there it was based then on imagination, and
then forms and shapes rather than necessarily on nature. So perhaps you could
call those works, up to a point anyway, non-objectives. Whereas before that, I don’t
52
think they were. I think they were more abstract-derived from his experience with
nature, particularly mountain and perhaps from the Arctic forms.
HILL:
Those things of the Riven Earth, referred to as Riven Earth. The spheres sort of cut
off—
HARRIS:
Mhm. Yeah, that’s right. Well, those are the ones that I consider really—regardless
of what the titles may be—I consider them really more non-objective and abstract.
You know, I think he had ideas but I think he was more interested at that time, up
to a point anyway, with new shapes that didn’t necessarily rely on nature. They
may have relied on the cosmos or some of his religious ideas or something of that
nature, but not necessarily on nature as such. Whereas some of the more abstract
works, you could almost sense the mountain forms in them. The triangle of peaks
and things, and in these works, you see, he was using other shapes entirely. The
sphere was one; he used that a lot.
HILL:
What do you think the sphere—
HARRIS:
Well, that enters into Buddhism a great deal, the mandala, the sphere. I don’t understand these things. I’ve never really gone into them. My son certainly has, and I
think, you know, I think it may consciously or unconsciously have to do with that.
I don’t know. That’s only a guess. Or it may be just working with more or less pure
geometric form, because some of them—I don’t necessarily suggest that a cube
was used. But maybe a ramification of a cube could have been used and a cylinder, you know, so he may have gone back to basics. You see, he was living down
there and I never saw this stuff until it came up. And I really did see it when, a�er
the war, it was all in Vancouver, and that’s when I saw it. Well, that was anywhere
from six to ten years a�er it had been done, a lot of them.
HILL:
Right. Had you seen some of them at the Canadian Group show?
HARRIS:
Yeah, but only about two at a time.
HILL:
Yeah, right.
HARRIS:
This was the only place where he exhibited.
53
HILL:
You were teaching in the late thirties. You taught at Trinity, didn’t you? Was that
for one year only?
HARRIS:
Well, it wasn’t even that because then I went on active service and I had to quit. I
went to that school at one period. No, my first teaching assignment was at Northern Vocational School. I was very—I had great admiration for Panton. I liked his
work enormously, and he seemed to like what I did, and he asked me one day if I
would ever consider teaching. We were expecting our first child at that time and
I was receiving help from my family, particularly my grandmother, and I felt that
my work wasn’t selling. And so the only job I could get, well, I had a night class
and then I was—what do you call it—on call, if anyone got sick. And he tried
to talk me into going down to Hamilton because the only way I could get on a
full-time basis was to take this teacher’s course, and I didn’t want to do this. So
that was that, and then Carl Schaefer was the art master at TCS [Trinity College
School], and he got a—what was it—a Guggenheim?
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
And so he took the year off and I was given his job for the year.
HILL:
I didn’t know Carl Schaefer was teaching at TCS.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
And then you went into the army?
HARRIS:
Well, then I was already in the regiment, but this was the second regiment. The
first one had been mobilized, and it was a motorcycle regiment. Well, it was converted over to a tank regiment and they needed, I don’t know, four hundred more
men and eighteen officers or something, and so these were taken from the second
regiment and I went in on that lot. And I told the headmaster, Ketchum at the time,
I said, “You know, when the regiment goes on active service here, I will be leaving.” And this happened right a�er Christmas, I guess. I had a class all Saturday
morning. I’d motor down. We had to go the armouries two nights a week; one of
them was Friday. I had to then drive down a�er that. It was about eleven at night,
54
in uniform, and then take a suitcase with my civvies and change, and go to class
the next morning at eighty thirty. Of course, I was younger then. It wasn’t so bad.
HILL:
During the thirties, different developments were happening in Montreal. John Lyman was writing about contemporary French art. He thought this was, you know,
the be-all and end-all. He was quite opposed to all this nationalistic concept of the
Group of Seven. Were you aware at all of what was happening in Montreal?
HARRIS:
No, not in the slightest.
HILL:
Did you hear anything about the Eastern Group?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
When the Contemporary Arts Society was formed, did you hear anything about
that?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Did you ever hear Jackson talking about John Lyman?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
There was an exhibition then, the—when the war broke out, do you remember
what sort of effect it had on artists? Were there some artists particularly affected
by the outbreak of war?
HARRIS:
I can’t—I don’t know.
HILL:
Carl Schaefer?
HARRIS:
Well, at that time he was down in the States. He was on his Guggenheim painting
barns through New England, I think.
HILL:
Well, you’ve mentioned that because of—
HARRIS:
He was very much opposed to the war.
HILL:
In what way?
55
HARRIS:
Well, I think that he’s of German extraction and that must mean something. I don’t
know. I know that I received a terrible le�er from him—
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
Walking out on the job to join the services. I got this terrible le�er from him. I don’t
know how he found out. Maybe I told him, I don’t know, but he was very—he
thought that this was a—
[End of Clip 4]
[Start of Clip 5]
HARRIS:
—terrible thing to have gone and let him down. And I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t care
less about that when I’m in there. I told the headmaster that if the war was on, you
see.” That it was just—nothing was really happening at that stage of the game. He
was only, well, he—I think he was very opposed to it.
HILL:
This was December 1940 you joined?
HARRIS:
No, it was—I would make a guess at February ’41, and then we got overseas in
October the same year. It was pre�y much of a rush. I was in the regiment before
that but it wasn’t the regiment that—The regiment itself, before I joined it, went on
active service, and then I joined what they called the second regiment, the reserve
regiment. And we trained two nights a week in the armouries in Toronto, you see,
and then when we went on active service they had them out guarding the Welland
canal and stuff like that. Then it was moved to the exhibition ground, and it was
a motorcycle regiment, as I told you. Well, then they converted this to tank and
that’s when they had to increase its size. And that’s when I was on active service
with it.
HILL:
Right. In 1941, did you go to the Kingston Conference?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Did you hear much about it at the time?
HARRIS:
In ’41?
56
HILL:
Yeah.
HARRIS:
No, I was in the army then.
HILL:
But you were still in Canada?
HARRIS:
Yeah. I was in the army, and as soon as that happened that was the end of the art
and everything else. I closed up the Studio and the whole works, and I’ll tell you
who eventually went in there. Wyndham Lewis, and they had one hell of a time
ge�ing him out.
HILL:
Oh, right. Why is that?
HARRIS:
Well, he didn’t pay any rent and he was anti-everything and causing trouble. I
never met the man. I didn’t let him in. But there was a chap by the name of Lowrie
Warrener, and he was in the basement, the outside entrance. I don’t know what
this room had been. There was another artist in there before him that dad let, and
he had catalogued my father’s works. He drew li�le black-and- white pen drawings of everything and catalogued them.
HILL:
Do you know where those are?
HARRIS:
They were sent eventually down to my father, because all the work was stored
there, and then the best of it was moved to the Art Gallery of Toronto and—
HILL:
It wasn’t Doris Speirs who did that, is it?
HARRIS:
What, the catalogue? No, this chap was, as I remember—I can’t recall his name—
he was Scandinavian and he was unemployed and I don’t know how or where dad
picked him up. But he was in this basement room by the time I moved in there,
you see, and he got his rent free and a pi�ance for doing this catalogue. And the
idea was that this was sent down to my father and if I told him that so-and-so
wanted a certain picture, then he could look it up in this thing and see which one it
was, and whether it was a sketch or a—then say, yes, he could have it for so much,
or else send it to this exhibition. This was the idea.
HILL:
Mhm.
57
HARRIS:
But I was only in there about two years before the war, you see. I can’t remember
how long I was actually in that studio, but it wasn’t very long. It was about two or
three years.
HILL:
You suggested that you moved in when your father went to New Hampshire,
which was ’34. You went to TCS so you—no, you went into the army in ’41.
HARRIS:
Well, I didn’t go right away. It wasn’t immediate. He had to come up, you know,
to se�le up certain things, and as I say, I can’t recall the dates. But I wasn’t in there
very long. Maybe it was longer than I suggested but I can’t remember how long.
So that’s what happened with this catalogue. It was sent down to him. Doris McCarthy or Speirs, she—I don’t think she had anything to do with it, as far as I
know.
HILL:
She made a list of all the works at the AGT, at the Art Gallery of Toronto.
HARRIS:
Oh, she may have done that.
HILL:
So I thought maybe she had also done—
HARRIS:
No, she didn’t. We had a lot of trouble there because occasionally I had to go down
and get out a work. Baldwin, you know, didn’t like this at all. He practically said,
“You’ve got to get this stuff out of here,” you know. So then when they decided to
move to Vancouver, they came to Toronto and they got all these works packed up
and they moved out to Vancouver.
HILL:
Mhm. Well, I guess you were out of the country then, so I don’t know if you ever
heard anything about it: in 1942, there was an exhibition of contemporary painting in Canada at Andover—Andover, Massachuse�s at the Addison Gallery. You
never heard anything about it?
HARRIS:
No.
HILL:
Did Jackson—did you feel that there was any sort of development in his art or in
his interests and involvements during the thirties?
58
HARRIS:
Well, I just don’t know how much I should say. No, I just felt that A.Y. was what I
call, in a bit of a rut. He just kept on repeating himself. And he was in the Studio
Building at this time, and he’d come back with his sketches, and I never could see
any difference one year from another. They all were the same. And he’d put the
black thread, and grid them off, and put them on the canvases, and he had two or
three going at once, you know. Some I liked; I just couldn’t see any development
really, and towards the end I actually thought they were deteriorating. I don’t
mean when he got surreal; I don’t mean that. I know what it was, what struck me
so forcibly. I had painted McCurry’s portrait for the National Gallery and I had
to go up and finish it off. I did it mainly from a photograph. I went up and made
notes and things of this nature, and then I painted it here and then shipped it up
there and it was up. And this is when they were in the old building, and I had
gone out to see A.Y. in Manotick at his studio and he was, you know, working on
these things, which I didn’t personally find very impressive. But in the Gallery
on the main floor there was a great big, very colourful Jackson that I hadn’t seen
before. And I didn’t really at the beginning know that it was Jackson’s, and when
I found out whose it was, I just felt, my gosh, how far he’s sunk. Because this one,
I thought, was just a dandy and miles superior to these ones I saw that were just
underway at Manotick, or one or two that had been finished. I couldn’t, you know,
with the exception of my father—maybe I didn’t see enough or I wasn’t sensitive enough—but I could see with Lismer and Jackson—and those were the two I
knew the best—I just couldn’t see any development, personally, at all.
HILL:
I think that the only development, perhaps, in Lismer is his continual focusing
up.
HARRIS:
Mhm.
HILL:
From the broad panorama, just continually ge�ing closer until you get those Cape
Breton works, which are really still lifes with the landscape backgrounds.
HARRIS:
But I just couldn’t—but of course, I wasn’t that familiar with—I never met Varley
until they had that big—what’s that—the Canadian Society for Education Through
59
Art dinner in Toronto. And I was asked to go and represent my father, and Varley
was there and that’s the first time I’d ever met Varley. And he was exceedingly
nice, and Lismer was sick. He couldn’t go. Jackson was there, and Casson.
HILL:
Do you feel that Varley really was pre�y well cut off from the Group all during the
thirties?
HARRIS:
Well, I never—yeah, I think he was—I don’t think, for instance, he went on these
sketching ventures nearly as frequently as others had done and I think he—he
wasn’t always—it more or less centered in Toronto, you see. I have very high regard for his work, but I just never felt he was an active member of the Group,
partially because I never saw him whereas you’d see the others.
HILL:
Mhm. During the thirties, Bertram Brooker changed. He was first of all working in
the large abstracts such as Sound Awakenings and that sort of thing, then changed
almost completely. Le� that behind and started—well, there’s more non-objectives, and then he went into still lifes, nudes, and then abstracted landscapes. Do
you know what caused this reversal?
HARRIS:
No. He and my father were very good friends. They played tennis together. My
father had a couple of his works in the house and he had very high regard for
Brooker, very. No, I don’t know why he reverted back to—well, if you want, semiabstraction. I don’t know.
HILL:
What sort of—what works—did your father still have those when he died?
HARRIS:
No, I don’t know. I think my sister may have one. He also had two very lovely
things by Thoreau MacDonald. One was of a loon rising out of the water with its
wings, and my sister has that. And I can’t remember what the other Thoreau MacDonald was, nor where it is.
HILL:
Do you know what—if he had any other works of other Canadian artists, or nonCanadian?
HARRIS:
Well, he had two drawings of Bis�ram’s. I have one. They’re hanging in the hallway in Vancouver. They’re pencil drawings. No, there were three of them. He
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had those, and he had that Plaske� hanging in the living room in, as I told you,
a hideous frame. And he had a Gordon Smith, but I don’t think he had it displayed. Then my stepmother had—she very much liked Alistair Bell’s work, and
I have four or five of these. What are they, woodcuts, linocuts, woodcuts? She
liked Alistair and drawings. She liked Alistair Bell’s work. So did my father but he
didn’t—and they had one, which I’ve got by young Harry Adaskin’s brother who
he adopted. There’s a great—I can’t remember what his name is. He’s an artist.
And of course he had quite a number of Tom Thomsons he gave to the Art Gallery
of Ontario or Toronto, and there was a corridor that led to Grange House. Well,
they used to hang along there. There were about six of them. They were beauties,
too; they were very small ones. And then another—he’s had on occasions several
Emily Carrs, but he sold them to buy more from her to help her out. One of them
was that beautiful one of the li�le Indian Church, which he sold to Band.
HILL:
Right.
HARRIS:
With the understanding that it go to the Art Gallery of Toronto when she died, and
with that he bought more Emily Carrs and presented them and, well, he bought
the first major work that Jackson ever sold: The Edge of the Maple Wood. I can remember that hanging in the house. I don’t know where or what happened to it.
HILL:
It’s at the National Gallery.
HARRIS:
He must have given it or else they bought it from him.
HILL:
They bought it from him.
HARRIS:
He wasn’t an avid collector of other people’s work, really. His own house, in a
way—not all of it but a bit of it—almost became an art gallery, and one reason, it
was so big. The living room was very big and he had quite a few of his paintings
there. They were all landscapes at that period of time, and I think it became almost a li�le art gallery, you know. And he entertained a lot and he was kind of the
leader of artist groups that all meet up there, and so forth.
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HILL:
Well, do you think there’s something else that—oh, just one other question. When
did you first start doing your first non-objective work? Had you done any in the
thirties?
HARRIS:
No, I think the first one I did would be in the late—the end of ’46 and ’47. That’s
when I did those drawings I mentioned.
HILL:
Mhm.
HARRIS:
When I was in the army. Before that, there were one or two landscapes. Well, they
weren’t non-objective but they were really being pushed so that—not the one of
the barn, it was beyond that stage. Well, then, that was the end of that. Then the
paintings became those formalized realism things.
HILL:
Well, do you think I’ve le� out anything now? I guess that’s about it.
HARRIS:
Not that I can think of.
HILL:
Okay, thank you.
[End of Clip 5]
[End of Charles Hill Interview with Lawren P. Harris]
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