composition called The Drive, at 91 centimetres high by 138 centimetres wide, his largest work to date. It too took the theme of rural labour beloved of Barbizon and Hague School painters but transplanted it from an agricultural landscape of peasant ploughmen and their beasts of burden to a more distinctively Canadian location in the Ontario bush. The limited colour scale revealed less of a departure from the Hague School tradition. With the exception of the brightly dressed lumberjacks, the tone was still muted and dark, with an umber and russet landscape beneath a lowering sky providing the background for the menâs exertions. The way he lit his compositionâdarkened edges giving way to a patch of sunlight in the distant central planeâwas suggestive of the Barbizon-influenced American painter Henry Ward Ranger, known as the leader of the âTonal School of America.â 14
Harris must have painted the work quickly because, despite its size, it was ready for the annual exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, Torontoâs most important art show, which opened in early March.
MOST MIDDLE-CLASS Torontonians wanting to look at paintings or decorate the walls of their homes made their way to the intersection of Yonge and Queen streets. The Robert Simpson Company had a picture gallery on its sixth floor (and Bell-Smithâs Lights of a City Street in its Palm Room), and across the street the T. Eaton Company displayed framed paintings in its windows along Yonge. The publicity for Eatonâs boasted that its upstairs picture gallery had âstacks and stacksâ of paintings. It sold both reproductions of famous works of art and original oils and watercolours of âbeautiful bits of landscape, delightful spots in the woods, lovely women, animals, home scenes, and children at play.â The original works were priced between $10 and $50, often heavily discounted in clearance sales.
Eatonâs even had a Canadian Gallery on its fourth floor to cater to those interested in Canadian scenes and Canadian painters. One artist regularly featured in the Canadian Gallery was C.M. Manly, a teacher at the Central Ontario School of Art and Industrial Design and a former member of the Toronto Art Studentsâ League. His landscapes of Nova Scotia were advertised (in his 1913 exhibition) at between $20 and $125. These prices were not especially cheap in a world where a mohair suit cost $15, a wolf stole $25 and a diamond in a ten-carat gold band $75. But because Toronto had no permanent art museum, the picture galleries in the two department stores probably did more than anything else both to shape and to reflect the general publicâs aesthetic tastes. 15
Another place to see art, though less frequently and in smaller doses, was in the Public Reference Library. Each March, the Ontario Society of Artists staged a public exhibition of painting, drawing and sculpture in the Beaux Artsâstyle building at College and St. George. Founded in 1872, the osa was intended to foster (as the prefatory note to one of its exhibition catalogues stated) âoriginal and native art in the Province of Ontario.â 16 Public attendance at its annual exhibitions was comparatively light, usually in the low thousands over the course of the three-week run (the exhibition was open Mondays through Saturdays). Almost all of the works were for sale, but few members of the public ever bought them, even though many were priced in the same $20â$50 range as those at Simpsons and Eatonâs. Stalwarts of Eatonâs Canadian Gallery such as C.M. Manly (an active osa member) and the French-born Georges Chavignaud regularly appeared at osa exhibitions, though here some of their paintings were offered at the upper end of the scale, with price tags of $300 to $400âthe cost of a fur coat from Simpsons. 17
A more reliable patron for artists exhibiting at the osa was the Government of Ontario. It purchased works
Harris must have painted the work quickly because, despite its size, it was ready for the annual exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, Torontoâs most important art show, which opened in early March.
MOST MIDDLE-CLASS Torontonians wanting to look at paintings or decorate the walls of their homes made their way to the intersection of Yonge and Queen streets. The Robert Simpson Company had a picture gallery on its sixth floor (and Bell-Smithâs Lights of a City Street in its Palm Room), and across the street the T. Eaton Company displayed framed paintings in its windows along Yonge. The publicity for Eatonâs boasted that its upstairs picture gallery had âstacks and stacksâ of paintings. It sold both reproductions of famous works of art and original oils and watercolours of âbeautiful bits of landscape, delightful spots in the woods, lovely women, animals, home scenes, and children at play.â The original works were priced between $10 and $50, often heavily discounted in clearance sales.
Eatonâs even had a Canadian Gallery on its fourth floor to cater to those interested in Canadian scenes and Canadian painters. One artist regularly featured in the Canadian Gallery was C.M. Manly, a teacher at the Central Ontario School of Art and Industrial Design and a former member of the Toronto Art Studentsâ League. His landscapes of Nova Scotia were advertised (in his 1913 exhibition) at between $20 and $125. These prices were not especially cheap in a world where a mohair suit cost $15, a wolf stole $25 and a diamond in a ten-carat gold band $75. But because Toronto had no permanent art museum, the picture galleries in the two department stores probably did more than anything else both to shape and to reflect the general publicâs aesthetic tastes. 15
Another place to see art, though less frequently and in smaller doses, was in the Public Reference Library. Each March, the Ontario Society of Artists staged a public exhibition of painting, drawing and sculpture in the Beaux Artsâstyle building at College and St. George. Founded in 1872, the osa was intended to foster (as the prefatory note to one of its exhibition catalogues stated) âoriginal and native art in the Province of Ontario.â 16 Public attendance at its annual exhibitions was comparatively light, usually in the low thousands over the course of the three-week run (the exhibition was open Mondays through Saturdays). Almost all of the works were for sale, but few members of the public ever bought them, even though many were priced in the same $20â$50 range as those at Simpsons and Eatonâs. Stalwarts of Eatonâs Canadian Gallery such as C.M. Manly (an active osa member) and the French-born Georges Chavignaud regularly appeared at osa exhibitions, though here some of their paintings were offered at the upper end of the scale, with price tags of $300 to $400âthe cost of a fur coat from Simpsons. 17
A more reliable patron for artists exhibiting at the osa was the Government of Ontario. It purchased works
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