photo #8418341

Canadian painter Lawren Harris was a founding member of the Group of Seven, a collective of landscape painters who valued direct contact with the natural world. In 1930, Lawren travelled to the Canadian Arctic for a sketching trip. Over the course of two months, he made more than 50 sketches, which he would later work into his Arctic series of paintings.Arctic Painting IV from 1931, also known as Sun, Fog and Ice, Smith Sound, shows a sky full of Stratocumulus clouds. These include a tower of stacked disc-shaped forms on the right, known as Stratocumulus lenticularis duplicatus clouds, and the curling cloud features that look like breaking waves in the middle, called Stratocumulus fluctus. Stylised crepuscular rays shine down on the scene from overhead.‘I painted a large number of sketches,’ Harris wrote in 1948 about the trip, which he conducted with fellow painter A Y Jackson, ‘although painting was difficult, as we usually saw the most exciting subjects while steaming through channels or while being bumped by pack ice. On many occasions, we had to take rapid notes. These notes we worked up into sketches, crowded in our small cabin, seated on the edge of our respective bunks with only a porthole to let in the light.’Sun, Fog and Ice, Smith Sound (Arctic Painting IV) (1931) by Canadian painter Lawren Harris. Thank you to Robin Priddy (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 11,995) for suggesting this painting.