In 1918, while recovering from his recent nervous breakdown, Lawren Harris began to focus on a new architectural subject: recently constructed houses in Toronto’s unplanned, blue-collar suburbs. Located just outside city limits, these unregulated settlements were widely known as “shacktowns.” In 1920, one art critic described the artist as the...

A Row of Houses, Wellington Street is Lawren Harris’ first major canvas depicting downtown Toronto housing. Signed and dated “L S H ’10” on the face of the picture, a faint inscription on the back of the original stretcher, retained and now attached to the current one reads “Street Painting...