Happy Cottage

Lowrie Lyle Warrener
Happy Cottage, 1926
oil on canvas
61 x 61 cm
Gift of the Sarnia Women’s Conservation Art Association, 1956.

Lowrie Warrener was born in Sarnia in 1900, and as a teenager worked various jobs to support his family. After attending and exhibition hosted by the Sarnia Women’s Conservation Committee at the Sarnia Carnegie Library in 1920, he became interested in the works of the Group of Seven.

His exposure to the Group’s work and chance meeting with Arthur Lismer contributed to his rugged painting style and subject matter. In 1921 he moved to Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art, and studied sculpture under Emmanuel Hahn, and for a short while, painting under J.E.H. MacDonald. From 1926 through 1928, Warrener managed the Studio Building in Toronto where several Group of Seven artists and their students were in residence. He exhibited works at Ontario Society of Artists exhibitions, and as an invited artist, with the Group of Seven in 1926 and 1928. Throughout his career Warrener was deeply involved in the theatre, designing and painting sets.

Warrener died on 8 February 1983, in Toronto. In 1989, the Sarnia Public Library and Art Museum presented a retrospective exhibition of sixty-one works of art, including paintings and prints, which toured to Oshawa, Windsor, and Calgary.