Inward Journey - by James King (Paperback)

About the Book

The first complete biography ever published of Group of Seven artist and spokesman Lawren Harris. Lawren Harris (1885-1970) is among the most iconic of Canadian artists.

Book Synopsis

The first complete biography ever published of Group of Seven artist and spokesperson Lawren Harris.

Lawren Harris (1885-1970) is among the most iconic of Canadian artists. Harris was an outspoken defender of modernism and a very private person. Inward Journey offers a gripping and sympathetic account of the artist's public persona as the spokesperson for the Group of Seven and his championship of Canadian art and artists.

Born to great wealth, Harris spent much of his existence selflessly promoting Canadian painting and the interests of his fellow artists. But Harris's personal struggle to become an artist was long and complex, and he was beset by much turmoil throughout his life. When, early in 1930, he achieved a creative peak -- in his mountain and Arctic canvases -- he turned his back on representational art and spent the remainder of his career becoming an abstract painter.

Harris's unhappy first marriage, his flight to New Hampshire and New Mexico, his lifelong interest in theosophy, his sometimes overbearing attitude toward younger artists, and the full magnitude of his inner struggles are all dealt with fully in this sensitive, engaging narrative that captures the complexity of the man behind the mask.

Review Quotes

...an extensively researched, utterly comprehensive overview of Harris' life...Inward Journey is just a beautiful book, an invitation to flip through time and again, and just appreciate the works.

-- "Literary Treats"

...King teases out the artist's 'strangely compounded temperament, ' as one critic called it, with empathy and insight.-- "Canada's History"

King's perspective is much more than the traditional description of an artist's output, parsed for clues pointing to stylistic influences and the development of a personal expressive mode. King does this, but he also lifts his subject's story by telling other truths about this complex, complicated man whose restraint and courage marked him as both an individual and a man of his times.-- "New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal"

About the Author

James King is a distinguished university professor in the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University. King, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is the author of eight biographies and five novels. His biography of Herbert Read, The Last Modern, was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award.