Lawren Harris Sand Lake Algoma 1921 Giclee Canvas Print | Group of Seven Art | Boxcar Expedition | Canadian Wilderness | Rainy September

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On September 25, 1921, A.Y. Jackson sat in camp at Sand Lake writing to Harold Mortimer Lamb through steady rain: "This is a rainy day so I can restrain my desire to wander into the bush. Harris and I are on our annual autumn sketching trip and will be here on Sand Lake for a couple of weeks and then move on to the north shore Lake Superior. It does not promise to be much of an autumn, very little colour and lots of bad weather but we generally end up with a lot of material."

That material included Lawren Harris's Sand Lake, Algoma — a somber, atmospheric oil sketch capturing the muted palette and dark shadows of northern Ontario wilderness under grey September skies. Harris and Jackson had travelled north on the Algoma Central Railway to mile 136¼ at the Sand River, the first train stop north of Agawa Canyon. This was their first visit to Sand Lake, eighty miles further north than their usual Batchawana haunts. It would also be their last Algoma expedition. Within weeks, they would discover Lake Superior's North Shore — landscape so stark and monumental it would dominate Harris's work for the next seven years.

Sand Lake, Algoma captures transition moment. Harris painted from canoe or shoreline, his eye carried across flat water reflecting little of the blue sky toward distant treeline. The composition is deliberately distant and somber — not the rich, bright colours and decorative motifs that characterized his Algoma paintings from 1918 to 1920, but something more austere, more simplified, more aligned with the artistic direction pulling him inexorably north toward colder, barer landscapes.

The rainy weather Jackson complained about permeates the painting. Dark shadows pool beneath sculptural tree forms. The water lies heavy and still, its surface barely animated by light. Distant trees mass together in browns and deep greens — "very little colour" as Jackson noted. This is not autumn at its blazing peak but autumn under cloud cover, autumn waiting for sun that never quite breaks through, autumn rendered in muted earth tones and atmospheric greys.

Harris and Jackson may have painted this view from the same canoe, working side by side as they had countless times since 1919 when Jackson — newly discharged from the army after being wounded at the Battle of Sanctuary Wood — joined the Algoma expeditions. The two sketches sold together at Heffel's 2007 auction provide rare glimpse of the artists working simultaneously at identical location. Jackson's version shows closer view with more animated water broken by white dabs and modulated colour. Harris's pulls back, creating distance, emphasizing the sombre silence of wilderness uninterrupted by human presence.

This marked the culmination of Harris's Algoma period. Between 1918 and 1921, he had organized and financed the legendary boxcar trips that became origin mythology for the Group of Seven. The Algoma Central Railway converted old work gang boxcar into mobile studio: four bunks, wood stove, water tanks, sink, cupboard, two benches, table, and enough room inside for one-man handcar the artists used to explore up and down the tracks, plus canoe for accessing lakes and rivers. Freight trains hauled the boxcar to remote sidings — Agawa Canyon, Batchawana, Montreal Falls, Mongoose Lake — leaving the artists for seven to ten days before returning to transport them to next location.

The expeditions transformed Canadian art. In May 1918, Harris first travelled to Algoma with Dr. James MacCallum, co-financier of Toronto's Studio Building. Captivated by the landscape, he returned in September with MacCallum, J.E.H. MacDonald, and Frank Johnston. In April 1919, they exhibited their Algoma paintings at the Art Museum of Toronto, arranging works in sequence of their travels from Canyon south through Hubert, Batchawana, Montreal River, and Mitchell Lake. September 1919 brought MacDonald, Johnston, and Jackson — beginning annual autumn ritual that would continue through 1921.

May 1920 — one month after the Group of Seven's historic first exhibition — found Harris, MacCallum, Jackson, and Arthur Lismer spending ten days at Mongoose Lake cabin east of Batchawana. September 1920 brought Harris, Jackson, Johnston, and MacDonald back to Batchawana and Montreal Falls. May 1921 saw Jackson, Harris, and Lismer painting the Agawa and Montreal Rivers one final time before September's push northward to Sand Lake.

Sand River represented new territory. Every previous Algoma trip had focused on areas between mile 80 (Batchawana) and mile 131 (Agawa Canyon). Sand Lake sat at mile 136¼ — just five miles further north along the railway, but those five miles carried symbolic weight. The artists were pushing boundaries, seeking fresh subject matter, venturing beyond familiar haunts toward increasingly remote wilderness.

The sketch served as foundation for larger canvas in which Harris enhanced the sculptural forms of trees and opened the stream at focal point, lightening distant trees to bring them visually forward. But he retained the sketch's sombre silence — that quality of profound quiet pervading northern wilderness under grey skies, where water mirrors heavy clouds and distant shorelines dissolve into atmospheric haze.

This painting documents Harris between artistic identities. His Algoma works from 1918-1920 featured rich, decorative colours applied in thick painterly impasto — legacy of the Scandinavian influence he absorbed after visiting Buffalo's Albright Gallery exhibition in January 1914. But by 1921, his palette was simplifying, his forms becoming more sculptural, his compositions moving toward the stark austerity that would define his Lake Superior period.

Sand Lake, Algoma shows Harris discovering preference for distant, open compositions over the dense wood interiors and autumn-bright hillsides that dominated earlier Algoma work. The eye travels unimpeded across water toward horizon. Trees provide sculptural interest without overwhelming the composition. Space opens up. Colour recedes. The painting breathes with emptiness — quality Harris would pursue obsessively once he encountered Lake Superior's vast, unpopulated shores.

Jackson's letter reveals the artists' remarkable productivity despite discouraging conditions. Bad weather, little colour, rainy days — yet they "end up with a lot of material." This work ethic characterized the Group of Seven: paint regardless of weather, find beauty in muted palettes, extract artistic value from conditions other painters might consider unpaintable. The commitment to working en plein air under any circumstances separated them from studio-bound predecessors who painted landscape from imagination or sketchy notation.

September 1921 marked ending and beginning. The Algoma boxcar trips — those legendary expeditions that produced hundreds of oil sketches and dozens of major canvases, that forged the Group of Seven's collective identity, that demonstrated northern Ontario wilderness could sustain ambitious Canadian art — were concluding. But Lake Superior awaited. Within weeks of leaving Sand Lake, Harris and Jackson would catch the Canadian Pacific train west from Franz, travelling along Superior's North Shore until they found landscape so stark, so monumental, so aligned with Harris's evolving aesthetic vision that he would return every October for seven consecutive years.

Sand Lake, Algoma is valediction — farewell to Algoma's dense forests and autumn-bright hillsides, farewell to boxcar expeditions with multiple artists working collaboratively, farewell to rich decorative colours and thick impasto. It anticipates the austere vision Harris would develop along Superior's shores: simplified forms, muted palettes, distant perspectives, profound silence. The rainy September day that frustrated Jackson provided Harris exactly the conditions he needed to paint wilderness as he increasingly wanted to see it — stripped of decoration, reduced to essentials, opened to space and atmosphere and the subtle gradations of grey that would soon dominate his most celebrated works.

This is the last Algoma sketch — painted at the furthest point north Harris would reach along the Algoma Central Railway, created during final expedition before Lake Superior's revelation, documenting moment when one artistic period yielded to another. The painting stands as bridge between Harris's decorative phase and his austere mature style, capturing artist in transition, wilderness under grey skies, and the sombre beauty of northern Ontario landscape that launched the most important movement in Canadian art history.

**WHAT SETS ICHORPRINTS APART:**

✓ Giclee ink pigments ensure 100+ year fade resistance
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✓ Advanced digital reproduction technique captures Harris's atmospheric effects and sculptural tree forms
✓ Investment-grade artwork for serious collectors
✓ All Gallery Mount Prints include Certificate of Reproduction Authenticity and artist biography affixed au verso

**ICHORPRINTS PRODUCT OPTIONS:**

**Gallery Mount** (Image: 12"x16" | Frame Exterior: 19"x23")
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**Float Frame Canvas** (Canvas: 16"x20" | Frame Exterior: 19"x23")
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**Studio Canvas** (16"x20")
- Stretched over premium hardwood bars
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**Loft Poster** (Image: 12"x16" | Paper: 16"x20")
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Bring home the painting from that rainy September day in 1921 — where Lawren Harris's last Algoma sketch captured wilderness transition and artistic evolution on the eve of his Lake Superior revelation.