Log Cabin

During several summers in the 1920s, Lawren Harris travelled to the Rockies. He painted this large canvas from sketches made on his first trip to the Jasper area in 1924, when he was accompanied by A. Y. Jackson. Through the use of pure tones, simplified forms, and powerful compositions, Harris hoped to induce viewers to contemplate the fleeting beauty of the everyday and become aware of the grandeur of the eternal. The skeletons of dead trees standing before the cabin are set off by the blue of the sky, which gradually shades into an ever-deeper ultramarine towards the top of the canvas. The result is a painting that is both an icon of the Canadian north, true to the artist’s aim, and an illustration of the birth of modernism in Canada.