Artist. Lawren Harris was one of the original members of the Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933 that also included of Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley. Born Lawren Stewart Harris in Brantford, Ontario, Canada on October 23, 1885, his parents were wealthy industrialists. He attended Central Technical School in Toronto, Canada and St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Canada. From 1904 to 1908 he studied in Berlin, Germany. Soon after meeting and becoming friends with artist J. E. H. MacDonald in 1911, they together formed the Group of Seven. He helped finance the construction of a studio building in Toronto that provided artists with cheap or free space where they could live and work. In 1918 and 1919, he and MacDonald financed boxcar trips for the artists of the Group of Seven to the Algoma region of Ontario, Canada. Another painting trip after Algoma was to Lake Superior’s North Shore with artist A.Y. Jackson. He became passionate about the North Shore and fascinated by the theosophical concept of nature and returned annually for the next seven years. There he developed the style he is best known for, abstract and simplified. His paintings in the early 1920s were characterized by rich, decorative colors that were applied thick, in painterly impasto. He painted landscapes around Toronto, Georgian Bay and Algoma. In 1924 he made his first trip to the Rockies which became an annual event for the next three years. He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge them on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted. In 1934 he moved to the US and in 1940 he settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he would spend the rest of his life. In 1969 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He died in Vancouver on January 29, 1970 at the age of 84. Since 2000, his paintings “Baffin Island,” “Algoma Hill,”, “Pine Tree and Red House,” “Winter,” “City Painting II,” and “Nerke, Greenland” have sold in prices ranging from $1.38 million to $2.875 million. (bio by: William Bjornstad)  Family links:  Spouse:  Bess Marguerite Larkin Harris (1890 – 1969)* *Calculated relationship