A Hiker's Guide to the Rocky Mountain Art of Lawren Harris

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

This unusual guide should delight lovers of painting, hiking, and
history. It follows Lisa Christensen’s award-winning A Hiker’s Guide
to Art of the Canadian Rockies, her first mountain-trail guidebook for
art lovers. Christensen, as one might guess, is both a hiker and an art
researcher.

In the 1920s, Lawren Harris, one of the best-known members of the
famous Group of Seven, made many trips into the Rocky Mountains by foot,
horse, canoe, and train. His personal papers reveal the deep impressions
nurtured by the terrain. One reads: “Art is the distillate of life,
the winnowed result of the experience of a people, the record of the
joyous adventure of the creative spirit in us toward a higher world.”
Excerpts from his papers and from those of other Canadian painters and
writers are set opposite each full-page color reproduction.
Christensen’s introduction shows the substantial research that
underlies the book’s highly informative text.

The full-color reproductions of Harris’s paintings are simply
stunning. Many originals are in private collections or archives so that
most readers will be seeing them for the first time. The pleasing format
includes boxed “Trail Info” panels with text in white print on a
black background. A Hiker’s Guide to the Rocky Mountain Art of Lawren
Harris makes an impressive addition to the already substantial body of
published work on Harris and the Group of Seven.