Alan Klinkhoff Gallery
Modern, Impressionist & 19th Century Art — Spring 2021
th Alan
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery A Tradition of Fine Art Dealers Since 1949
Modern, Impressionist & 19th Century Art — Spring 2021 All works are available for immediate purchase and subject to prior sale.
Montreal 1448 Sherbrooke Street West 1-514-284-9339
Toronto 190 Davenport Road 1-416-233-0339
Klinkhoff.ca info@klinkhoff.ca
Summary Modern, Impressionist & 19th Century Art — Spring 2021 Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family Property of Various Private Collections Property from a Distinguished Toronto Collector David Milne Paintings from a Notable Westmount Collection The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Index Terms & Conditions About Us
Foreword by Alan Klinkhoff
Translation by Cartier & Lelarge and Fabienne E. Parisien
Featuring essays by Mark A. Cheetham, Lisa Christensen, Lucie Dorais, Michèle Grandbois, Charles C. Hill, Alan Klinkhoff, Jonathan Klinkhoff, Craig Klinkhoff, Joan Murray, Anna Orton-Hatzis. Catalogue design by Kristian Kahn
Published by Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Inc. Alan Klinkhoff Helen Klinkhoff Jonathan Klinkhoff Craig Klinkhoff Fabienne E. Parisien Emma Fried Yasmeen Khoury
ISBN 978-1-7751654-6-0 © Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., 2021 and the authors
Printed and bound in Montreal, Canada by Graphiscan
Modern, Impressionist & 19th Century Art — Spring 2021
— Foreword These are extraordinary times. Thanks to the strong influence of Jonathan and Craig, we have invested aggressively in the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery platform in cyberspace. Adversity was avoided. Instead, we continued to offer the opportunity to interested art collectors the pleasure of a visit, albeit virtually, and purchase if they wished to do so. At this time and going forward we are pursuing significant improvements in our presentation with the objectives of making our site easier for visitors to navigate and of increasing our audience among buyers and sellers of important fine art. With the entire collection of Alan Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal & Toronto exhibited at Klinkhoff.ca and with the transparency of prices posted, art collectors can and do visit from the comfort of their homes and home offices. We encourage inquiries not only by email but also by telephone. Insofar as our clients at this very moment include individuals locally in Toronto and Montreal where our storefront galleries are located, elsewhere in Quebec and Ontario, also Nova Scotia, Manitoba and British Columbia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, the United Kingdom, France and Israel, few of these collectors would be coming in the galleries regardless of the pandemic restrictions. FaceTime and Zoom visits are welcome. For art collectors leary of purchasing a work they are seeing only on our site, we must share with you the following; in our recent survey sent to clients, every purchaser who expressed that concern and did buy, said that the work, when received, looked even better than it had on our site. So, fear not! If you like what you see at Klinkhoff.ca, you should
anticipate liking it that much more when it arrives at your door. We reiterate that FaceTime and Zoom are welcome options to a physical visit. Business is busy. “Collectors collect”, as we say. It should not surprise you to read that collectors are housebound. The international art press describes a phenomenon of “Covid collecting” whereby art collectors are increasingly interested in art. Our recent sale of The Montship Collection attracted astute collectors (Klinkhoff.ca/Montship). In a large part The Montship Collection (formerly Montreal Shipping) was curated more than 40 years ago by Walter Klinkhoff Gallery. Alan Klinkhoff Gallery was honoured to find new homes for these fine pictures. We were able to present the various paintings with proper background and research, and with some relating first-hand experiences as well. Harold Beament, Jack Gray, Henry Simpkins, Lorne Bouchard, Bruce LeDain, Robert Pilot, Fred Taylor, Rita Mount, Richard Montpetit, Geoffrey Rock, John Fox, Eric Riordon, Leslie Smith, and others are all excellent artists of their respective generations. This quality of artwork available was evidence that a good picture does not have to cost tens of thousands of dollars to own. The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin continues to have a purchasing audience. In February a connoisseur, a new client to the gallery, acquired the important Emily Carr Haida Totem and very fine Lawren Harris Morning Sun Over Hill, Lake Superior (Lake Superior Sketch XXVII), 1922. Only a couple of weeks prior to sending this catalogue to print, one Saturday afternoon, a neighbour of ours, spending
much of the pandemic at his Laurentian country home, acquired one of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin’s excellent Goodridge Roberts paintings reproduced in our fall catalogues sale. The success of the sales of The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin, Claude Le Sauteur; The World of Laughter, the fall sale of Modern, Impressionist & 19th Century Art and The Montship Collection are examples of our ability to showcase and sell entire collections of fine art to the benefit of all stakeholders. If one is considering selling an entire collection, an estate including fine art of quality, or simply one or two quality pictures, we are able to serve your interests to your advantage and with transparency. Collectors today benefit from the availability of a vetted selection of quality works offered at fair market values and with the opportunity and invitation to inquire and ask us to reconcile our opinions as to market values. We invite your inquiries. Having written the above, we join you in the hopes that soon things will return to some semblance of normalcy. We shall look forward to meeting with you directly when conditions permit. In the interim, we wish you and yours good health. Alan Klinkhoff
— Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family This is a distinguished Montreal family which built a successful business continuing over three generations and has made numerous generous contributions to their community and beyond. Their success was due to astute business acumen and good judgement in people. In their art collecting they combined the attributes of keen eyes, and the same good judgement in people, those from whom they were purchasing. The aforementioned serves as a primer for buyers of fine art. The purchasers of these works limited their sources, that is the provenance, to a small number of sellers, all offering a vetted supply of genuinely fine quality works of art. Montreal’s Dominion Gallery, Continental and Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Toronto’s Laing Galleries and Roberts Gallery are listed as the provenance for those where the evidence exists. One of the Jacksons was likely acquired directly from the artist. The fine J.W. Morrice sketch was in fact a gift from Morrice’s nephew to the first generation collector. David Morrice was a regular guest near their country home in the area of Ste. Agathe in the Laurentians northwest of Montreal. David Morrice was himself a very able artist in his own right and painted extensively in the area. The origin of the Ethel Seath cannot be verified with any accuracy. The family was closely connected to The Study school where Seath spent much of her career as the art teacher. It would not be surprising to discover that this master work, painted from the original school on Seaforth Ave, looking out over the City of Montreal, had been acquired from Seath directly.
Most of the artworks among this remarkable collection have only been available on the market once and were acquired by the family either directly from the artist or from a gallery representing the artist. This is an extraordinary opportunity to acquire artworks unseen in public for decades. Now as sellers of their collection, we are particularly pleased and honoured too that they have chosen Alan Klinkhoff Gallery in Montreal and Toronto to represent them in the sale of these fine works of art. With the two galleries in Canada’s largest cities and the opportunity afforded by Klinkhoff.ca, open for viewing 24 hours per day to display the works globally and with the transparency of selling prices posted, offering collectors the opportunity to simply buy, we shall place these in the stewardship of a new generation of collector. We are grateful for the confidence expressed in us and are respectful of their anonymity. In this presentation, we are indebted to Charles Hill, Lucie Dorais, Lisa Christensen and Michèle Grandbois for their academic contributions assisting us in cataloguing and describing properly a selection of the works. We encourage your purchases. Alan Klinkhoff
Nº 1
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Molly Lamb Bobak 1920-2014 The Celebration (Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry), 1989 Oil on canvas board 7 x 11 in (17.8 x 27.9 cm)
— Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry is a regiment of the Canadian Armed forces founded on August 10, 1914. In December of 1941, PPCLI was deployed to France and was the first Canadian infantry unit assigned to the front lines of the Canadian war effort.
signed, 'MOLLY LAMB B' (lower right); dated ‘89’ (verso, upper left) and titled ‘Celebration/PPCLI’ (verso, centre)
Molly Lamb Bobak painted the poetry of people. The colour and composition offered by either random or organized groups of people is of particular attraction to her. Designated an official war artist for Canada toward the end of World War ll, Molly had an emotional affinity to Military pageantry.
Provenance The artist; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present owners, 1989.
Exhibitions Montreal, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., Exhibition & Sale of Works by Molly Lamb Bobak, 1989.
This colourful and vibrant Molly Lamb Bobak painting depicts the 75th anniversary of the regiment celebrated in Calgary in August 1989. The Celebration was originally sold in a solo exhibition at our original family art gallery, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, hosted for Molly in the fall of 1989.
Nº 2
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Goodridge Roberts 1904-1974 Still Life of Fruit and Flowers, circa 1958 Oil on panel 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed, ‘G. Roberts’ (lower right)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal.
Nº 3
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family personality, interested in music and literature and above all, painting. He was not keen on army life, occasionally we met and exchanged views, of which the higher-ups would not have approved.
Randolph S. Hewton 1888-1960 Spring, Charlevoix Co, circa 1930 Oil on canvas 20 x 24 in (50.8 x 61 cm) signed, 'R.S. HEWTON' (lower left); studio stamp 'R.S. HEWTON STUDIO' (verso, top stretcher bar and canvas)
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present owners.
Recollections of Randolph S. Hewton by Jackson for Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc.
A.Y.
— Randolph Hewton's first art training was with William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal, where he won the Wood Scholarship. With the assistance of some good friends in Lachine, Quebec, he was able to study in Paris for several years, and for a short time at the Academie Julian and later under Henry Caro-Delvaille. Hewton loved Paris and I think would have been content to live there permanently. I met him there in 1912 as I was painting around Etaples and on my visits to Paris I stayed with him. We returned to Montreal at about the same time and in the spring of 1913, put on an exhibition together in the new Art Gallery on Sherbrooke Street. While we were not very radical we were exponents of French Art which was not popular at that time in Montreal. It was not a successful exhibition—a friendly notice in the Montreal Gazette, Hewton's aunt bought a sketch, the only sale. I was advised by one of the older Academicians to give up art. Hewton had to go to work in his uncle's firm. We had a last fling at sketching in Emilieville, where we rejoiced in the glory of the Canadian spring. I went to Toronto and became associated with the artists who later formed the Group of Seven. By the end of 1914, Hewton had enlisted in the 24th Battalion. I joined up a few months later in the 60th. I remember some of the boys saying: "Poor Randolph! They will never make a soldier out of him." Randolph was a social being, a charming
Hewton was transferred to the British Army and obtained a commission in the 7th London Regiment and won the Military Cross for gallantry on the Somme offensive in 1918. He obtained a week's leave after the armistice, found some wrapping paper and crayons and made some vigorous drawings of the messed up country. Back in Montreal, there was little interest in art. He exhibited in the first show the Group of Seven put on and became an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1921, and the same year was appointed Principal of the School at the Montreal Art Association. This school was closed after the École des beaux-arts was opened. [In 1920 and 1921 Hewton shared with several artists in the now famous studio at 305 Beaver Hall Hill in Montreal. He exhibited in the first exhibition of the Beaver Hall Hill Group in January 1921 and is considered a founding member of this short-lived but now iconic group.] So back to the paper box business. In 1926, he became president of Miller Brothers. He was married to Isobel Monk (née Robertson), a war widow. In 1933, the office of the company was moved to Glen Miller, Ontario where the mill was situated. Officers of the company assured me that Hewton put new life into the business, had the mill and company houses painted in cheerful colours, improved working conditions and was popular as well as efficient. For an artist to take on such responsibility was a problem. He arranged to take time off in the early spring to go sketching in Baie-Saint-Paul, Saint-Tite-des-Caps and Les Éboulements, often with Albert Robinson and myself. In the spring of 1933, Hewton and I had gone to Saint-Urbain and Robinson was to join us later. A letter informed us he was ill, indeed so ill that he never went sketching again. Another enthusiast was Dr. Banting. He, Hewton and
I went to Saint-Irénée. Lots of snow and sunshine and a lot of spoofing between Hewton and Banting about how they each won the Military Cross. Later we found the Gatineau easier country to access. I had introduced Hewton to Dr. Fred Jeffrey and his wife and they became close friends. The doctor had a cottage forty miles north of Ottawa and with Maurice Haycock we had sketching parties there. Hewton painted two canvases a day out of doors. He developed chronic bronchitis and could no longer work out of doors, then the long illness and with the death of his wife he had not the strength to paint anymore. Several of his pictures have been purchased by the National Gallery of Ottawa (now the National Gallery
of Canada), the Quebec Provincial Museum (now the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec) and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. He was elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1934. Apart from his landscapes and portraits he painted decorative compositions, gay and romantic and charming in colour. Renoir was probably the painter he most admired. When he first exhibited in Montreal he was considered radical. He stirred the academic painters by serving on the Canadian jury for the Wembley Exhibition. That he did so much good work under such difficult conditions is remarkable. If he felt frustrated at times he never showed it. He was a good companion, friendly, sympathetic and generous in his estimate of others.
Nº 4
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Edwin Holgate 1892-1977 Fishing Village, Mutton Bay, circa 1932 Oil on panel 8 ⅜⅜ x 10 ½ in (21.3 x 26.7 cm) signed with monogram, 'EH' (lower right); inscribed and signed by the artist on label (partially obstructed), ‘Mutton Bay - E. Holgate’ (verso)
Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
— As a member of the Group of Seven, Edwin Holgate travelled twice to the region near the border of Quebec and Labrador, the latter at the time still part of the British colony of Newfoundland. In 1930, Holgate visited the fishing village of Natashquan, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence directly north of Anticosti Island. In 1932 he returned to Natashquan and also produced a series of paintings at Mutton Bay, another fishing settlement further along the coast of the Gulf. (Both villages are on the Quebec side of the Labrador border. A long-standing dispute over the demarcation line had been settled in 1927.) The sketches that Holgate painted on his visits to these remote villages are consistently outstanding in quality, and identifiable by their sensational blues, greens and browns. Montreal art dealers Walter and Gertrude Klinkhoff were in regular contact with Edwin Holgate and his wife Frances when they lived in Morin Heights, and later when the Holgates moved back to Montreal. The Klinkhoffs purchased as many works from Holgate as they could. It was a difficult endeavour because Holgate did not need money and was reluctant to part with his work. In his memoirs, Klinkhoff remarked at the esteem in which Holgate was held by other artists. “Holgate was highly respected by other artists. This is an important sign because artists, even if jealous and difficult of temperament at times, do recognize one another”.1 As a veteran of World War I, Holgate occasionally lunched at the United Services Club, across the street from Walter Klinkhoff’s Montreal gallery. Afterwards he would come in, sit on the couch in the main gallery, and be entertained with paintings by him and his colleagues that the Klinkhoffs were offering for sale. Sometimes, noticing the thenelderly artist fatigued, Alan Klinkhoff would offer to drive Holgate back to his nearby apartment. He fondly recalls Holgate reminiscing about the Group of Seven, and the days that are now the subject of many books. It was then that he purchased from Holgate a marvellous sketch of Mutton Bay, which he and his wife Helen continue to enjoy to this day.
Nº 5
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Edwin Holgate 1892-1977 Barns in Snow, Malbaie, circa 1926 Oil on panel 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed, 'E Holgate' (lower left); titled, signed and inscribed by the artist on label, ‘Barns in Snow / Malbaie / Edwin H Holgate / $30’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
— This exciting and early composition by Edwin Holgate exemplifies the spirit of the Group of Seven, which the artist would become a member of in 1929. Holgate’s label on the back gives us the title, Barns in Snow, Malbaie. The artist painted on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River on several occasions during the 1920s. In 1923 and 1924, he went with A.Y. Jackson to Baie St. Paul and the surrounding
areas. In 1926, the artists ventured to La Malbaie, further down the St. Lawrence River. Although Holgate did not supply a date for Barns in Snow, Malbaie, the colors and the environmental conditions implied by the snow on the ground and rooftops, compare to those in La Malbaie (Murray Bay), 1926 (Private Collection). Barns in Snow, Malbaie is painted with vigour, and Holgate gave us a good sense of the time of day. The shadows suggest it was likely late afternoon, as the sun was getting low in the sky and the barns were casting long shadows. The piles of snow topping the trees in the background and the logs stacked beside the barn on the left, suggest a recent snowfall. In writing about A.Y. Jackson, Charles C. Hill has referred to the artist’s perception of harmony between the sagging old buildings that characterized Charlevoix's landscapes and villages in the 1920s, and the region’s rolling landscape. According to Jackson, during the Depression the locals had little to do, so they tore down their old barns and built new "unpaintable ones".2 This clearly is not yet the case when Holgate painted Barns in Snow, Malbaie. In his autobiography, A Painter's Country, A.Y. Jackson noted that for a number of reasons he, Holgate and Albert Robinson worked in La Malbaie in the late winter. Holgate moved about the snowy Charlevoix landscape on cross country skis. Another avid skier who joined them occasionally was Clarence Gagnon, who lived in Baie St. Paul (between stays in Paris). Jackson trudged along on his snowshoes. Jackson believed that it was Holgate who gave him the nickname Père Raquette (Father Snowshoe).3 La Malbaie (“The Bad Bay”), was named by French explorer Samuel de Champlain who, in 1605, failed to find suitable anchorage there. For a period of time, La Malbaie was also known by the unofficial name Murray Bay.
(Fig. 1) A.Y. Jackson (Père Raquette) on showshoes (left) with Edwin Holgate on cross-country skis (right) likely in Charlevoix County.
Nº 6
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
A.Y. Jackson 1882-1974 Les Eboulements, 1923 Oil on wood 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed, 'A.Y. JACKSON' (lower right); titled by the artist, ‘Les Eboulements’ (verso, upper centre) and signed by the artist ‘A.Y. JACKSON’ (verso, lower right)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal, 1926 or 1928, acquired from the artist; By descent to the present owners.
— As A.Y. Jackson’s niece, Naomi Jackson Groves, wrote in Works by A.Y. Jackson from the 1930s (Carleton University Press, 1990), “A.Y. Jackson’s life pattern as an artist shows a definite geographical and seasonal regularity, almost like a migratory bird, impelled by the forces of nature. Once he was able to settle down to paint full-time, and had found a certain territory that suited him, he tended to return there at the same season year after year, for a stretch of a decade or more.”. From 1921 to 1947, almost every late winter and early spring found the artist on the Lower Saint Lawrence. In 1921, Jackson painted at Rivière du Loup and Cacouna on the south shore and two years later he entered Clarence Gagnon territory in Charlevoix county, painting in and around Baie Saint Paul. From Jackson’s inscription on the back of the wood panel, we know he painted this sketch near Les Éboulements, on the plateau east of Baie Saint Paul. He first painted there with Edwin Holgate in March 1923, writing to his cousin Florence Clement on 16 March, “It's snowing in Baie St. Paul. It seldom seems to stop and soon there won’t be anything to paint but snow. The fences have all disappeared … It’s almost impossible to get around. There has not been a thaw all winter and consequently no crusts on the snow, and even with my big snowshoes I sink down so far I can scarcely lift my feet. I expect to spend a week in the next village down - Les Eboulements - and then return here until mid-April…. I have to fill up fifty panels before I leave here” Jackson’s usual practice was to paint oil sketches on site to define the composition and principal colour scheme. When weather was too cold, wet or changeable he might work out the composition in drawings with additional drawings to refine details and clarify light-dark values. As he wrote, his usual practice was to take fifty panels with him on these trips though not all survived. “Duds” were scraped off, cancelled or destroyed and only a few sketches were worked up into canvases on his return to his Toronto studio.
(Fig. 1) A.Y. Jackson, Horse and Sleigh, Lower St. Lawrence, 1924, oil on canvas, 21 x 26 in (53.3 x 66 cm). Previously sold with the title Les Eboulements, Charlevoix County c. 1932, by Galerie Walter Klinkhoff. Not for sale.
There are two canvases related to this study. Horse and Sleigh, Lower St. Lawrence (fig. 1), sold at Joyner Fine Art, 1 June 1999, lot 73, closely follows the sketch with the leaning pole framing the composition lower right, whereas in Morning (private collection), exhibited in the Group of Seven
exhibition in January 1925 and reproduced in the National Gallery of Canada’s 1995 publication The Group of Seven Art for a Nation, the pole is replaced by a small sapling. Both canvases are constructed in parallel, horizontal bands from the foreground to the distant hills on the south shore. A box sleigh is pulled along the road in the foreground, a screen of fir and deciduous trees occupies the middle ground which is in turn framed by the river with an ice floe or the tip of Île aux Coudres at the right. In Horse and Sleigh, Lower St. Lawrence the far shore is defined
by the farms on the gently descending slopes, suggested by the white strokes in the sketch, whereas in Morning the hills are enlarged, animated by the play of light and clouds and descend right to the water’s edge. A related ink drawing, purchased by the National Gallery, was lithographed for the portfolio of Canadian Drawings by Members of the Group of Seven launched at the 1925 exhibition. Charles C. Hill
Nº 7
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
A.Y. Jackson 1882-1974 Winter Baie St. Paul, 1928 Oil on canvas 21 x 26 in (53.3 x 66 cm) signed, ‘A.Y. JACKSON’ (lower left); titled and dated by the artist, ‘WINTER BAIE ST. PAUL 1928’ (verso, top stretcher bar); inscribed in ink, ‘1258b / [illegible]’ (verso, right stretcher bar)
Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 1945, acquired from the artist; Rose Millman, Montreal, 1946. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
Exhibitions Montreal, Watson Art Galleries, A.Y. Jackson Exhibition, November 28 – 3 December, 1934, as no. 1, Winter, Baie St. Paul at $300. Montreal, Dominion Gallery, A.Y. Jackson Thirty Years of Painting, 4-18 May 1946, no. 15, as Winter, Baie St. Paul 1928 21” x 26” at $375, illustrated.
Literature Dominion Gallery, Montreal, A.Y. Jackson Thirty Years of Painting, 4-18 May 1946, no. 15 as Winter, Baie St. Paul, 1928, 21 x 26” at $375, repr.
— In March 1928 Jackson returned to Baie SaintPaul and on 19 March he wrote to Arthur Lismer: “Baie St. Paul smothered in snow, and more falling. It does not excite me very much. Too closed in., but I could not get to St. Urbain on account of smallpox and I have not been vaccinated since I was in the army so I stayed here. Robinson and Hewton are coming to-night and I expect to stick around a week.” (McMichael Canadian Art Collection) The architecture of the Lower Saint Lawrence villages was a constant attraction for Jackson and here farmhouses and barns line the meandering road that follows the curves of the rolling landscape. But he has turned his back on the village of Baie Saint Paul, looking north west along the banks of the rivière du Gouffre leading to the unattainable Saint-Urbain, the subject of Clarence Gagnon’s famous 1925 canvas, Village in the Laurentians (National Gallery of Canada). The parallel diagonals of the foreground road, low hills and river bank are connected by the road and sleigh leading to the bright orange farmhouse at the right. As in the best of Jackson’s Charlevoix canvases, architecture and landscape are one. The clouds, hilltops, river banks, buildings, road and fence posts are all characterized by a similar flowing rhythm. The canvas closely follows Jackson’s initial oil sketch (fig. 1), formerly in the collection of his somewhat distant cousin and friend Edna Breithaupt who he had first met in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener) before the First World War. Even the racing horse and sleigh and sunlit clouds upper left were included in the sketch though he enhanced the textures of the hills and river banks in the canvas and heightened the orange and yellows of the barns and house and clear light on the foreground snow. This canvas was reproduced on the cover of the important exhibition, A.Y. Jackson Thirty Years of Painting held at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal in May 1946. Charles C. Hill
(Fig. 1) A.Y. Jackson, Baie St. Paul, 1928, oil on panel, 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 in (21.6 x 26.7 cm). Sold by Alan Klinkhoff Gallery in 2017. Not for sale.
Nº 8
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
A.Y. Jackson 1882-1974 Cacouna, Quebec, 1935 Oil on panel 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed, 'A.Y. JACKSON' (lower right); titled and dated by the artist, ‘Cacouna 1935 / Laing Galleries’ (lower, centre), inscribed by artist, ‘#797’ (upper, right), inscribed on label, ‘Property of / LAING Galleries’ (lower, centre), titled, dated, inscribed and signed by the artist on paper label, ‘CACOUNA QUE / 1935 #797 / A.Y. JACKSON’ (upper, left)
Provenance Laing Galleries, Toronto. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
Literature N.J. Groves, “Chronology,” in Dennis Reid, Alberta Rhythm: The Later Works of A.Y. Jackson (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982), p. 93.
— In 1921 Jackson made his first painting trip to the Lower Saint Lawrence with Albert Robinson. That year the two artists painted at Cacouna, on the south shore opposite Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River. In his 1958 autobiography Jackson wrote, “The village was a very picturesque place, piled up with snow, with a fine old parish church…” The same parish church seen in this sketch appears in his 1921 drawing reproduced in Naomi Groves’ wonderful book, A.Y.’s Canada (1968). While he contemplated going to Cacouna in the spring of 1927, it appears that he didn’t return there until spring 1935. On 18 April he wrote to Sarah Robertson from Saint Fabien, down river from Cacouna. “It will soon be time to turn homeward. I had hoped to have a whirlwind finish but the fates are against it. For a week it has rained, snowed and these last two days fog has blotted out everything. So I will stick it out five or six days more then go to Montreal. I expect when the fog lifts it will show that all the snow has gone. I had company for three weeks, Albert Cloutier who has a studio next to Lil’s [Lilias Newton]. He is a nice boy and worked very seriously. He is a commercial artist but very ambitious to paint. … The country is not very picturesque, not many old barns or houses and it takes a lot of rearranging. We went to Cacouna for three days and got nothing. It's all gas stations and bungalows. I was there with Robinson fifteen [actually fourteen] years ago but it has changed.” (National Gallery of Canada) The modernization of Quebec’s rural villages and the erection of gas stations and garages as well as asbestos shingled houses, bungalows and fox farms became constant complaints in Jackson’s letters to his fellow Charlevoix painter Clarence Gagnon, then residing in Paris. The rolling rhythms of the sagging barns and houses were lost in these modern “monstrosities”. The landscape and architecture had lost their connection.
(Fig. 1) A.Y. Jackson, Cacouna, Quebec, 1935, oil on canvas 20 x 25 in (50.8 x 63.5cm). Private collection. Not for sale.
In spite of his complaints the village of Cacouna Jackson painted in 1935 appears to have changed little since 1921. As in his earlier paintings of Les Éboulements and Baie-Saint-Paul, the sheds and houses are closely clustered around the central church creating a feeling of intimacy in his depiction of the village. Two horse drawn sleighs, one carrying logs, the other a passenger, occupy a road that cuts into the composition from the lower left, past a leaning barn and wooden barrel and disappearing
between the sheds centre right. The centre of the composition is defined by the peaked roofs and church spires that pierce the grey, rolling clouds. This sketch was worked up into a canvas titled Cacouna, Quebec (fig. 1) that was sold at Heffel Fine Art Auction House on 2 May 2002 and incorrectly dated 1933. In the canvas Jackson extended the roadway to the right to include the driver sitting on the logs and enhanced the colours of the buildings
in contrast to the more monochrome colouring of the sketch, truer to the light of an overcast winter day. The house centre right was now painted a lovely green and blue and he added a flock of crows on its roof and a cross on the spire over the apse of the church. Curiously, given his antipathy to the straight lines of new constructions, the walls of the shed with the red doors no longer sagged into the ground but rose straight from the snow. Charles C. Hill
Nº 9
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
A.Y. Jackson 1882-1974 Winter Haliburton, January 1949 Oil on panel 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed, 'A.Y. JACKSON' (lower right); titled, dated and signed by the artist, 'WINTER / HALIBURTON / JAN 1949 / A.Y. JACKSON' (verso, lower left); cancelled north shore Lake Superior sketch (verso)
Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 1951, as Haliburton, January 1949; Private collection, Montreal, 1955; By descent to the present owners.
— A.Y. Jackson’s sketching expeditions frequently lasted from a month to six weeks, though on occasion he made shorter trips with friends. On 5 January 1949 he wrote to Harry McCurry, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, that he was leaving the next day for Haliburton with his prospector friend, Keith MacIver, the occupant of Tom Thomson’s shack behind the Studio Building. He was back in Toronto by the 16th. This excellent sketch of a snow-covered hillside was painted on this previously unrecorded excursion. From the 1920s Jackson’s interest had turned increasingly to the effects of light on different types of snow and here the architecture has been reduced to a single small, slightly off centre shed. The most striking element in this sketch is the superb foreground triangular shadow that echoes the sky above. The two blues frame the swirling white, pink and yellow snow and are linked by the curving path beaten in the snow at the left. The sketch is a peon of praise for the joys of a sunny day in winter. As was his regular practice, Jackson painted this sketch on the other side of a panel previously used on an autumn trip to the north shore of Lake Superior. Not considered “up to snuff”, Jackson used the verso to title the Haliburton composition. Charles C. Hill
Verso of Winter Haliburton, January 1949
Nº 10
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Albert H. Robinson 1881-1956 Charlevoix County, circa 1929 Oil on panel 8 x 10 ½ in (20.3 x 26.7 cm) inscribed on the reverse ‘Guaranteed to be by Albert Robinson / Gerald Stevens (verso, upper half)
Provenance G. Blair Laing Limited, Toronto. Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present owners.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Hommage a Albert H. Robinson R.C.A. (1881-1956), September 1994, no. 51.
Note On the reverse is the Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Retrospective exhibition label and an endorsement by Gerald Stevens. Stevens was a prominent art dealer, a partner in and later owner of The Stevens Art Gallery in Montreal. He was a longtime friend of F.S. Coburn's, and wrote Frederick Simpson Coburn (1958), the introduction to which was penned by A.Y. Jackson.
— In the 1994 Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Albert H. Robinson Retrospective Exhibition catalogue, Walter Klinkhoff wrote, "I have always held Albert Robinson in the highest esteem. He has been my personal favourite Canadian artist and I would rate him amongst the very best. I know of at least three distinguished Canadian artists who declared without hesitation that Robinson was their favourite also. They were Harold Beament, Henri Masson and Robert Pilot." Robinson is known as a most distinguished colourist, "of the first order," according to the Group of Seven's Dr. Arthur Lismer. Robinson had a notable awareness of modernist techniques and he rendered his paintings successfully by reducing the landscape to only its most essential and joyous elements. He is also greatly admired for his ability to accomplish the remarkable task of delivering harmonious compositions in low tone and high key. In 1956, Thomas R. Lee referred to Robinson's work as, "purely Canadian - with no trace of European influence." He describes the artist himself as, "a Painter's Painter [with] ...no commercial influence at all; he painted for the love of painting."4
Nº 11
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
John Little b. 1928 Parking Lot Rue O'Connell Quebec, 1968 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) signed, 'JOHN / LITTLE' (lower right); titled, signed and dated by the artist, 'PARKING LOT RUE O'CONNELL QUEBEC JOHN LITTLE ‘68' (verso, upper stretcher) Provenance Continental Galleries, Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present owners.
— As is characteristic in among the most interesting of Little’s paintings and what will likely be among his greatest legacy is his respect for the integrity of the urban core. Quebec City, like many North American cities, followed what was popular post WWll terms of urban renewal, it sacrificed the core where people lived to a place where people would work. Part and parcel of the plan was to build an infrastructure of roads to facilitate the commute by car to and from the developing suburbs.
Nº 12
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
John Little b. 1928 Stanley St. at Sherbrooke St. Montreal, 1969 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) signed, ‘JOHN / LITTLE’ (lower right); titled, signed and dated by the artist, ‘STANLEY ST. at SHERBROOKE ST. MONTREAL / JOHN LITTLE ‘69’ (verso, top stretcher bar)
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present owner.
— This painting by Little has conserved for posterity what urban planners of the 1950s and 1960s could not. In the distance there is already the
blight represented by McGill University’s McIntyre Medical Building, built in 1965, hiding Montreal's most sacred heritage, Mount Royal. The Sir William Van Horne Mansion at the corner of Sherbrooke Street, a snippet of which is seen at the intersection on the right-hand side was demolished four years after Little painted this composition. Its demolition became a strong catalyst to increase the support for conservation of the built heritage in the City of Montreal. While The Mount Royal Club remains untouched (at the intersection on the upper left) and the Lord Atholstan House (in the lower left quadrant) was saved in the late 1970s by the wisdom and appreciation of David Culver as head of Alcan, to the north of Stanley and behind the Club a handful of architecturally uninspired and tall apartment buildings have masked views of Mount Royal from this perspective.
Nº 13
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Ethel Seath 1879-1963 Still Life from Seaforth Ave. Oil on canvas 20 x 24 in (50.8 x 61 cm) signed, 'E Seath' (lower left)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition, September 1987, no. 8. Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., The Beaver Hall Group Retrospective Exhibition, September 1999, no. 21.
Literature Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition, (Montreal: Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., September 1987), no. 8, reproduced front cover.
— Simply said, Still Life from Seaforth Ave. is one of the finest paintings by Ethel Seath that collectors will have the opportunity to own. Its brilliant execution in the style of Canadian modernism, and its combination of personal, domestic and cityscape subjects, perfectly encapsulates the environment in which the women associated with the Beaver Hall Group existed. This is undoubtedly why this painting was selected as the cover illustration for Galerie Walter Klinkhoff’s 1987 Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue (fig. 1). Those who have followed the Beaver Hall Group over the years will know that great paintings by Ethel Seath are also exceptionally rare. In writing for Galerie Walter Klinkhoff’s Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue, Roger Little noted that from an early age, the titles of Ethel Seath’s artwork suggested “an attraction to nature as well as to homespun domesticity...The curvilinear patterns which would often characterize Ethel’s work, the bold colours and the occasionally abstracted naivete of her eye - all were evidence of a tenacious yet quiet independence ”.5 Unlike the Group of Seven, a substantial body of work by the Beaver Hall Group’s women artists is urban and domestic. And from 1917 until 1962, Seath taught at The Study, a prestigious girls school that from the early 1920s until 1960 was located on Seaforth Avenue in Montreal. One could scarcely find a more representative painting by Seath than Still Life from Seaforth Ave. Ethel Seath was a successful and highly trained commercial artist. She began her instruction in the 1890s at the Conseil des Arts et Manufactures under the tutelage of Robert Harris and Edmond Dyonnet. In 1896, she secured a position as a newspaper illustrator at the Montreal Witness. Later she worked at the Montreal Star. She was an exception in what was a male dominated field. Her success afforded Seath the opportunity to take art classes with William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal, and she also joined Maurice Cullen’s plein air sketching classes in the Quebec countryside.
Cover of the 1987 Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue.
Through the classes at the Art Association, Seath became associated with the Beaver Hall Group artists. She exhibited at the famous British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London, in 1925 and her work was regularly featured in the Annual Spring
Exhibitions at the Art Association of Montreal. She was a member of the Canadian Group of Painters and the Contemporary Arts Society. Seath’s success is not a banal story of overcoming traditional obstacles. Her father was an unsuccessful businessman and chronically ill. When she was a teenager her parents separated and Seath helped her mother raise her four siblings. She secured her position at the Montreal Witness at the age of 17, to help support her family. While at the peak of her creative painting abilities, Seath’s time was also occupied by her teaching responsibilities, both at The Study and later at the Art Association. If there can be an explanation for the lack of output of the calibre of Still Life from Seaforth Ave., it is probably to be found in that, and the lack of opportunities to exhibit and sell. Canadian art galleries in those days were, after all, not great in number and the Depression would not have helped. When this painting was selected as the cover picture for Walter Klinkhoff Gallery’s 1987 retrospective exhibition, it was assigned a circa date of 1940. Though circa dates do not inherently suggest any particular range, the grounds for this one are unclear. One of the many reasons our family hosted these non-selling exhibitions was to study worthy artists who had not received sufficient recognition. The 1987 exhibition likely remains the largest group of Ethel Seath paintings assembled, and provided a unique opportunity to enhance the study of her oeuvre. Without a reason to suggest this a painting of circa 1940, and given its comparison to known paintings of the 1920s, when The Study opened on Seaforth Avenue, we have elected not to ascribe a circa date this time.
Nº 14
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Kathleen Moir Morris 1893-1986 Fruit Shop, By-Ward Market, Ottawa, circa 1922-1929 Oil on panel 11 x 14 ½ in (27.9 x 36.8 cm) signed, ‘K.M. Morris’ (lower right); inscribed by the artist, ‘Price: $50.00 / [indistinct writing covered by artist’s label]...Fruit Shop, Ottawa / Kathleen M. Morris / 172 O’Connor Street. / Ottawa.’ (verso), inscribed by the artist on label, ‘Fruit Shop, By-Ward Market, / Ottawa / Price $50.00 / Kathleen M. Morris / 172 O’Connor St. / Ottawa.’ (verso, upper left)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners
— Kathleen Morris lived in Ottawa from 1922 to 1929. Ottawa provided her with a wealth of new compositions, different from the highly urban city work she had been painting in Montreal. In the Fruit Shop, By-Ward Market, Ottawa, “Kay” excels in the confidence of brush documenting this animated scene. The activity of markets in Ottawa and Quebec City was a visual stimulation for her. Kathleen Moir Morris has long been an artist of great interest to the Klinkhoff family. In our former gallery business, she was the subject of two retrospective exhibitions, one in 1976, which she attended herself and a second in 2003. The interest of the art market and subsequently that of the Canadian museums has developed for the most part since our family art gallery began promoting the significance of Kathleen Morris and other members of the Beaver Hall Group. The publication in 1999 of Painting Friends, the Beaver Hall Women Painters by Barbara Meadowcroft, pivotal research in part subsidized by friends of the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery was instrumental in provoking attention to their contribution to the Canadian art canon. The recent development showing continued interest is the outstanding exhibition, 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, an exhibition produced and toured by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Kathleen Morris paintings have been featured in the 1924 Wembley Exhibition, international exhibitions in France, London, Brazil and New York and are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, B.C.; Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ont.; Hart House, University of Toronto, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
(Fig 1.) Kathleen Moir Morris, The Fruit Shop, Ottawa, Oil on canvas, 46.4 x 61 cms. Not for sale.
Nº 15
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
James Wilson Morrice 1865-1924 A Canal at Sunset (Marseilles), circa 1904 (Summer) Oil on panel 4 ¾ x 6 in (12.7 x 15.2 cm) studio stamp, 'STUDIO J.W. MORRICE' (verso, middle)
Provenance Estate of the artist, as A Venetian Scene at Sunset; David R. Morrice, the artist’s nephew; Private collection, Montreal, gift from the above; By descent to the present owners. This work is included in the James Wilson Morrice Catalogue Raisonné being compiled by Lucie Dorais.
— Sunset on a small canal, delicious pinks and creams... an impressive palace-looking building, a small boat quietly passing by; on the opposite quay, small silhouettes rushing home before nightfall. We think Venice at the “Golden Hour”, a subject particularly close to Morrice’s heart, especially during the summers of 1901, 1902 and 1904. The palette and technique of our sketch dates it from 1904, but is it really Venice? The little boat is not a gondola, but a tartane, a type of fishing boat found all around the Mediterranean – the long diagonal pole supported the main sail; the quay is too wide, and the wide space opened at the right is not found in Venice, and neither is this building. The 1904 trip is documented by a few letters and by Sketchbook #18 (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). On July 9, from Avignon, Morrice wrote to his friend Joseph Pennell, “I shall stay a few more days & then go to Martigues and afterwards to Venice.” (Washington, Library of Congress). Two pages near the front of the sketchbook were drawn in Avignon, and more than twenty at the end in Venice; but none in Martigues (of which no sketch was ever discovered). Instead, we find many views of Marseille: we follow the artist around the Vieux Port, and sit with him at a few cafés along the Canebière, the city’s most famous avenue. He even ventured further to the Arènes du Prado, where he made a very detailed drawing of a bull
fight; but no drawing of the view in our sketch. Venice being eliminated and Avignon having no canal, we looked more carefully at Marseille... and found the Canal de la Douane (Customs Canal). Located at the south-east corner of the Vieux Port, it had replaced the old Canal de l’Arsenal in 1782, after the decline of the galley-building activities; shaped as a “U”, it ringed a new district of strong stone warehouses. But after 1840 the harbour activities were moved west, and the old harbour area slowly declined: if the 1902 guidebooks quickly mention the Vieux Port before sending the tourist to the new one, they don’t even mention its small canal annex. But Morrice found it, perhaps by chance, en flânant during an early evening leisure walk. The artist immediately saw how the colors of the building – white and dark red, if we believe old colorized postcards – were totally in tune with the pinkish sky and water. With very few colors, he transformed a corner of an old, dirty (and probably smelly) canal, which had become the repository for old tartanes, into a source of beauty, a fitting prelude to his Venetian sojourn. (The canal was filled in 1927; its south branch was disfigured by a three-level outdoor parking in the sixties, its circular ramp located at the exact spot that Morrice painted. The eighties saw its demolition and move underground, while the outdoor space was transformed into the trendy Cours d’Honoré Estienne d’Orves, a magnet for Marseillais and tourists alike.) Lucie Dorais
Nº 16
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
John Lyman 1886-1967 The Hammock Under the Tree (Dalesville, Quebec), 1912 Oil on canvas 24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm) signed, ‘Lyman’ (lower left); signed, titled and inscribed by the artist, ‘JOHN LYMAN / “THE HAMMOCK UNDER THE TREE” / For Mr. Van Valkenburg CCRU’ (verso) Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal. Richard S. Van Valkenburg, Toronto. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners. Exhibitions Montreal, Dominion Gallery, John Lyman and Louis Archambault, 23 April – 3 May 1947, no. 3. Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 9 - 11 Feb 1948, Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, 17 - 19 Feb 1948, Winnipeg, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 20 - 23 Feb 1948, Toronto, Art Gallery of Toronto, 25 - 26 Feb 1948, Montreal, Art Association of Montreal, 27 - 29 Feb 1948, Canadian Appeal for Children, exhibition and auction organized by NGC and UNESCO. Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 5 - 29 Sept 1963, Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, 4 - 27 Oct 1963, and Hamilton, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, 8 Nov - 1 Dec 1963, John Lyman, no. 8 as The Hammock Under the Tree.
(Fig. 1) John Lyman, The Hammock under the Tree, c. 1912, Oil on canvas adhered to paperboard, 12.5 x 15.75 in (31.75 x 40 cm), Art Gallery of Hamilton (2018.1), Gift of Dr. Richard Renlund. Not for Sale.
Literature John Lyman, Louis Archambault (exhibition leaflet), Montreal, Dominion Gallery [1947] no. 3. Travelling Exhibition & Auction of Canadian Paintings & Sculpture, Canadian Appeal For Children (typed list), Library, National Gallery of Canada, one page. Anon, “Art Exhibit to Assist Children of Europe”, The Evening Citizen (Ottawa, ON), 10 February, 1948, p. 3, reproduced b/w. Anon, “Travelling Art Show Makes Novel Appeal”, Montreal Standard (Montreal, QB), February 28, 1948, mention. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, John Lyman, 1963, no. 8 as The Hammock Under the Tree, repr. (unpaginated) Evan H. Turner, Gilles Corbeil, John Goodwin Lyman Retrospective (Exhibition catalogue), Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1963, np, cat. 8. Louise Dompierre, John Lyman, 1886-1967, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1986, p. 206 and 209.
— John Lyman came from a cultured, upper-class Puritan family in New England6. In 1886, the year he was born, his father became a Canadian citizen and established his pharmaceutical business with operations from Montreal to Vancouver. John was two years old when his mother succumbed to typhoid fever. Despite having a governess and an affectionate father, John Lyman lived a solitary childhood in Montreal. The family was interested in painting and John’s uncle, James Morgan, had a collection of impressive works by the Barbizon school and modern Dutch painters. In 1900, at the age of 14, the young man set off for Europe with his father, visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Paris Exposition. After completing his secondary studies at a private school in Connecticut, he began a degree in Literary Studies at McGill University. In February 1906, at the age of 20, he attended the exhibition Some French Impressionists at the Art Association of Montreal, where he had a revelation about becoming a painter. From there, things happened quickly: a summer vacation in Paris, where he took classes with Pierre MarcelBéronneau, a follower of Gustave Moreau; a stint at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, London, to study architecture as per his father’s wishes; and less than six months later, he returned to Paris to resume his painting classes, this time in Jean-Paul Laurens’ studio at the Académie Julian. He spent two years there before finding his true master, the Fauve painter Henri Matisse, whose classes he took from April to June 1910, just before the Académie Matisse at the Couvent du SacréCœur closed. What Lyman retained from his short time with Matisse is clear throughout his oeuvre:
convey nature as he saw and sensed it, with clarity, honesty and faithfulness. According to Lyman, “[t] he painter’s job is to persuade nature to collaborate with him.”7 Returning to Montreal at the end of 1910, Lyman became engaged to Corinne St. Pierre—daughter of the well-known tailor William St. Pierre—and they married in the spring of 1911. Before setting off for Europe, the couple paid a visit to 291, the famous avant-garde art gallery in New York City, where they discovered the articles on Matisse and Picasso written by Gertrude Stein in the photographic journal Camera Work, edited by Alfred Stieglitz. Once they were in Paris, in early June, John and Corinne met Matisse at the Salon des Indépendants, then visited Gertrude Stein, since John had been a
regular figure at her salon in his student days. In 1911, Corinne became pregnant and gave birth to a child who died a few days later. In the summer of 1912, the Lymans settled in the hamlet of Dalesville, in the Argenteuil region located between Montreal and Ottawa. Dalesville was part of the rural area near the town of Lachute where, since the 19th century, a community of Anglo-protestant Scottish and Irish merchants and farmers had flourished. The region inspired the painter to create landscapes— paintings which caused a scandal in May 1913 at the Art Association of Montreal. It must be said, Lyman’s modernist paintings had already earned scathing criticism at the 1912 and 1913 Spring Exhibitions, but this time, the invectives reached their pinnacle. He publicly defended his avant-garde approach, which had been clearly explained by Corinne St. Pierre
who had penned the preface for the exhibition’s catalogue, before resigning himself to exile. It was only eighteen years later, in 1931, when the couple returned to settle permanently in Canada. It was then that the painter found a community that was more open to modern art. He brought together young artists in groups like the Atelier, the Eastern Group and the Contemporary Arts Society. As a painter, art critic and McGill University professor, he dedicated himself entirely to defending art that strives for universality. John Lyman passed away in 1967 in Barbados at the age of 71, followed a few months later by his wife Corinne. Lyman’s 1913 one-man show, a landmark event in Canadian art history, has yet to reveal all its mysteries: of the 35 works (paintings and drawings) presented—among the 42 listed in the catalogue— few have reached us. At the time, Lyman favoured evocative rather than descriptive titles, often relating to music, which creates another obstacle to retracing these works. Fortunately, the images reproduced in newspapers and a few brief descriptions from the critics (hidden amongst the insults) provide some leads. For example, Wild Nature Impromptu,
1st State, a landscape painted in Dalesville in 1912 (no. 36 in the 1913 catalogue), is in the collection at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (1970.499), a gift of the Mrs. John Lyman’s Estate in 1970. Dalesville, another similarly sized landscape painted that same year, is also part of the collection (1970.500). But what became of Rural Sensation (no. 35) or Canadian Essay, No. 2 and No. 3 (no. 26 and no. 34) from the 1912 catalogue? After the disastrous exhibition, the artist kept the works from this time period for himself. Some resurfaced three decades later in retrospective exhibitions held at the Dominion Gallery in 1944 and 19478. It was during the second exhibition, which featured works by both Lyman and the sculptor Louis Archambault, that the astounding painting The Hammock under the Tree was presented to the public for the first time. The following year, the painting was included in the exhibition and sale organized by the Canadian Council for Reconstruction through UNESCO (CCRU), coordinated by Richard S. Van Valkenburg, director of Eaton’s Fine Art Gallery and a prominent figure of the Toronto art scene. This explains the verso inscriptions on the painting.
This exhibition was part of the large scale charity campaign, Canadian Appeal for Children, in which 46 countries of the United Nations contributed to the cause for children of the Second World War. In Canada, every sector of the economy was called upon. The exhibition was placed under the authority of the Canadian Art Council. Thirty-five painters and five sculptors answered the request from Montrealer Marian D. Scott and Torontonian Charles F. Comfort, who headed the CAC member committee. Travelling to five major Canadian cities in February 1948, the exhibition featured a range of styles of recent contemporary Canadian art, from realism to abstraction9. In this regard, John Lyman was unique, choosing to exhibit a work he had painted over 35 years earlier, The Hammock under the Tree10. It was during this exhibition that the painting was acquired by the family of the present owners - a collector known for his interest in modern art and the works of James W. Morrice in particular. Ever since he had studied in Paris, John Lyman had been a great admirer of Morrice. When Lyman returned to Canada, he wrote a monograph about Morrice, which was published in 1945 by Éditions de L’Arbre in Montreal. The two Canadians, who had both known and frequently visited with Henri Matisse, shared the great Fauvist’s view of art; Namely, that art should express feelings rather than transpose reality. This is precisely what Corinne St. Pierre had tried to explain to the Montreal public in the preface for her husband’s exhibition catalogue in 1913: Art that looks natural is nonsense; art must be artificial; where imitation ceases, art begins; […] Art is not the story of what we see, but of what we think about what we see; what determines it is what arises between expression and the inspiring object: imagination, organizing intelligence and personality as well.11 The late François-Marc Gagnon wrote that, in the development of Canadian art, Morrice and Lyman were, “‘the missing link’ of Fauvism, between the Impressionism of Clarence Gagnon, the earlytwentieth-century painter bitterly opposed to everything that had followed Impressionism, and the Cubism of Alfred Pellan, who had spent fourteen years in Paris in contact with all the avant-gardes.”12 The exhibition Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse, organized by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in 2014, demonstrated their
aesthetic kinship. Certainly, The Hammock under the Tree could have been included in the exhibition for its decorative qualities. But the work escaped attention, tucked away in the current collection, having emerged just once in 67 years, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ retrospective exhibition of Lyman’s work in 1963. The exhibition also toured to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Interestingly, the latter gallery recently acquired the sketch for this work (Fig. 1). John Lyman adopted the artistic principles championed by Henri Matisse as displayed in The Hammock under the Tree. The meticulous composition of the elements seen in the study were reproduced in the large painting. A notable difference is the pink clothing worn by the female figure—most likely Corinne, now facing forwards. It becomes a focal point from which a multitude of chromatic waves flow through the areas of light and shadow. The long brushstrokes of colour and areas of exposed canvas bring movement to the painting, from left to right and from bottom to top. Devoid of any picturesque elements, the landscape respects the two-dimensional plane by highlighting the foreground and background elements and using yellow gold for the structures. The motifs of the shrubs to the right of the dirt path as well as the woman are reminiscent of the dark outlines and shading used in other Dalesville scenes. There are few examples where John Lyman pushes the pictorial and decorative treatment of surfaces so far13. Just as in a musical composition, here, the smallest element contributes to the overall dynamic of the piece: the rhythmic sensations evoke the wind that sweeps over the waving grass and rustles the leaves of the umbrella tree. On this beautiful summer day in the country, these waves carry through into the sky, fanning out into sunbeams. The Hammock under the Tree embodies what Lyman meant when he said that “the painter’s job is to persuade nature to collaborate with him.” This remarkable work illustrates John Lyman’s unique early contribution, at a time when the art world was vehemently averse to the new languages of the Parisian avant-garde.14 Michèle Grandbois
Nº 17
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
J.E.H. MacDonald 1873-1932 Near Lake Wapta, Kicking Horse Pass, Rocky Mountains, 1929 Oil on cardboard 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed and dated ‘J.M. / ‘29' (lower left); inscribed by the artist, ‘Rainy weather / n. f. s.’ (verso, upper right) and titled and signed by the artist, ‘Near Lake Wapta. Kicking Horse / Pass / Rocky Mtn. / J.E.H. MacDonald’ (verso, upper right)
Provenance Roberts Art Gallery, Toronto; Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
— During the years that J.E.H. MacDonald explored his beloved Lake O’Hara, in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park, he made full use of his time in order to execute as many studies as he possibly could while he was there. He painted in the summer twilight, from the shelter of overhanging rocks during rainstorms, and when he found himself with time on his hands along the way. After disembarking the train at Wapta Station, or when waiting for it after the eleven kilometre horse trip down the valley from Lake O’Hara proper to the station, he had sufficient time – on more than one occasion – to explore the mountain slopes at hand in the Kicking Horse Valley. Here, we find him painting high on a slope above the valley floor, looking back towards the region he loved so deeply. He was in the vicinity of what is now the Paget Lookout when painting this work, the view looks over the shoulder of Mount Stephen on the right, with Narao Peak and a ridge of Mount Victoria at the centre-left and centre, respectively. Wapta Lake lies hidden in the steep valley below, out of view and off to the left. In the very far distance, peeking over Stephen’s shoulder, are two silvery-purple triangular peaks that seem to grab at the clouds and trail their summits through them. These are the blended summits of Mount Biddle and the Wiwaxy Peaks, peaks that cradle the Lake O’Hara region. A patch of brilliant sunshine glows from the dip between these summits and the ridge of Victoria, this would be shining on Lake O’Hara, MacDonald’s personal mountain mecca.
A bright, energetic, and quickly executed work, this study is additional proof of MacDonald’s ability to get up high. In his day, this vantage point would have required a rough scramble. The Paget Fire Lookout was built in the 1940s, used for that purpose until the 1970s, and is a day shelter today. MacDonald would not have had the nicely maintained trail that currently exists for hikers to gain this view when he was there in 1929. Yet he revelled in the scrambles that it took to attain unique views such as this one, they are a far cry from more easily reached views on established trails and along lakeshores. It was these off-trail adventures that served to bolster his sense of accomplishment and euphoria in the mountains, and underlie his attachment to the opportunities that presented themselves near Lake O’Hara. MacDonald mentions sketching in the vicinity of the Wapta Lake train station several times in his journals, often with details that we might be able to link to a specific work. In these journals, which reside in the Library and Archives Canada holdings, he writes of painting “at bridge above Wapta” where the mountains made “fine silhouettes” and of capturing “Victoria lighter in tone than Narao”. We know he was near the Sherbrooke Lake trail head in 1929, painting a work called Poplars and Mountain Slopes (Private Collection). That same trail might have been the starting point for that scramble that resulted in Near Lake Wapta, Kicking Horse Pass, Rocky Mountains, painted the same year. Poplars and Mountain Slopes depicts a significant amount of snow on Narao Peak, further suggesting that they were done on different days on the 1929 trip – most probably, one at its beginning and the other at its end. Works such as these add significant detail to our understanding of MacDonald’s time in the mountains, and can tell us exactly where he was when we match them to the place they depict, compare the details in them, and plot MacDonald’s paintings on a map. Near Lake Wapta, Kicking Horse Pass, Rocky Mountains, is a brightly executed work – despite the words “Rainy Weather“ that the artist has inscribed on its back. The golden bleached colours of autumn on the slope in the near-ground, and the sense of steepness in this wild mountain valley are faithfully rendered. The work speaks of autumnal heat and ripeness, of high alpine places, and of the nature of the wilderness, with its ever-changing weather, and
the ravages of natural elements – we see skeletal burned trees in the near-ground. Above all, they are delightful statements about J.E.H. MacDonald’s love of the mountains of western Canada. Lisa Christensen
Far do you call me Heavenly mountains Lead my soul wandering By your green fountains — J.E.H. MacDonald Journal entry: March 19, 1927
Nº 18
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
J.E.H. MacDonald 1873-1932 River Pastures, Gull River, 1921 Oil on cardboard 8 ½ x 10 ½ in (21.6 x 26.7 cm) signed and dated, ‘JM’/ 21 (lower left); titled, signed and dated by the artist, ‘Gull River / J.E.H. MacD. / ‘21 / River Pastures / J.E.H. MacDonald / 1921’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Laing Fine Art Galleries Limited., Toronto, circa 1950. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
Literature E.R. Hunter, J.E.H. MacDonald A Biography & Catalogue of his Work (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1940) pp.2627, 54; Nancy E. Robertson, J.E.H. MacDonald, R.C.A., 18731932 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1965) p. 41; Paul Duval, The Tangled Garden (Scarborough: Cerebrus/Prentice-Hall, 1978) p. 141; Robert Stacey, “Chronology and Selected References,” in Robert Stacey/Hunter Bishop, J.E.H. MacDonald Designer (Ottawa: Archives of Canadian Art an imprint of Carleton University Press, 1996) p. 121.
— J.E.H. MacDonald was the oldest member of the Group of Seven and his career first developed within the context of an earlier definition of Canadian art. In the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth century, Canadian artists focused on the rural aspects of the landscape and the hard fought growth of small settlements and farms, as seen in the annual calendars of the Toronto Art League, of which MacDonald was a member. With an invalid wife and son to support, in the early 1920s his time was taken up with the financial responsibilities of teaching at the Ontario College of Art leaving him little time to paint. While on occasion he joined his fellow artists on expeditions to the wilder landscapes of Algonquin Park and Algoma, he also returned to rural subjects sketched on brief holidays at Lake Simcoe or in the Haliburton region of Ontario, southwest of Algonquin Park. A good map of the area can be found on page 732 in volume two of David Milne Jr.’s and David Silcox’s catalogue raisonné of the paintings of David Milne (University of Toronto Press, 1998).
Paul Duval informs us that MacDonald spent his summer 1921 holiday visiting a former co-worker from the design firm Grip Ltd., where the future members of the Group of Seven had first met before the First World War. Fred Peel lived at Coboconk on the Gull River and owned a lumber mill and cottage nearby. While initially developed by the lumber industry, the area had since been cleared of trees allowing the growth of pastures and farms. River Pastures, Gull River is a lyrical sketch painted in a delightful palette of greens and oranges. The rocky foreground bears evidence of the thinness of the soil covering, though sufficient for grazing cattle, visible amidst the trees in the middle ground. Grazing cattle on the Gull River was the subject of two of MacDonald’s canvases, Cattle by the Creek of 1918 (National Gallery of Canada) and River Pastures, Gull River of 1922. In both canvases the foreground is occupied by water and the trees and cattle are arranged across the middle of the composition in a horizontal band. E.R. Hunter, author of the early biography of J.E.H. MacDonald, described River Pastures, Gull River as “a symphony in green” with “a balanced unity of all the parts.” From a label on the verso we can deduce that this sketch was acquired by Laing Fine Art Galleries around the time of its move from 60 Bloor Street East to 194 Bloor Street West in 1950. Charles C. Hill
Nº 19
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Robert Pilot 1898-1967 Porte Saint-Louis, Quebec, circa 1955 Oil on canvas 22 ⅛ x 18 ⅛ in (56.2 x 46 cm) Provenance Continental Galleries of Fine Art, Montreal. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
— In capturing this perspective over Quebec City, Robert Pilot has perched himself up on the ramparts just outside the St. Louis Gate. Beyond the gate and the Garrison Club, Pilot has composed part of the famed Château Frontenac between the tower of the Gate and the steeple of Chalmers-Wesley Church. It was the temperament of the skies above Quebec City and the character of the city itself that inspired Robert Pilot’s work for more than 40 years. Harold Beament, a President of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, a good friend of Robert Pilot and, for those who knew him, a tough critic, observed, “In its cityscape of muted colours and overcast weather, Quebec was well suited to the poetic vein in Pilot’s personality.”15
"In its cityscape of muted colours and overcast weather, Quebec was well suited to the poetic vein in Pilot’s personality." — Harold Beament
Nº 20
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Robert Pilot 1898-1967 Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Paris, view from quai de la Tournelle, circa 1921 Oil on panel 5 x 7 in (12.7 x 17.8 cm) signed, ‘R. PILOT’ (lower right); signed by the artist, ‘R.W. PILOT’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
— This is an exquisitely painted composition by Pilot of either 1921, the year he was a participant in the Beaver Hall Group Exhibition, a centenary we celebrate now, or conceivably the following year. It was with the unusual maturity of a 22 year old artist Pilot had exhibited in the first Group of Seven exhibition. Pilot here presents us with what is of course an iconic view of Paris. However, for Pilot the magnificence of Notre Dame is a compositional device in his exploration of his interpretation of impressionist techniques as executed in the skies above and river below Notre Dame.
Nº 21
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Robert Pilot 1898-1967 Village Street, Baie St. Paul P.Q., 1951 Oil on canvas board 12 ⅛ x 16 ⅜ in (30.8 x 41.6 cm) signed, ‘R. PILOT’ (lower right); signed, titled and dated by the artist, ‘R.W. PILOT’ / ‘Village Street, Baie St. Paul P.Q. / 1951’ (verso)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners.
Nº 22
Property of a Distinguished Montreal Family
Frederick B. Taylor 1906-1987 Looking Southwest at that end of Trafalgar Ave., Montreal, December 17, 1950 Oil on panel 10 ⅜ x 8 ⅜ in (26.4 x 21.3 cm) signed, ‘F.B. Taylor’ (lower right); numbered, inscribed, titled, signed and dated by the artist, '1217 / Looking Southwest / at the end of / Trafalgar Ave., / Montreal / Frederick B. Taylor / 17.XII.50’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal. Private collection, Montreal; By descent to the present owners. This work is included in the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Frederick Taylor Inventory, no. 1217.
— Fred Taylor was a trained architect. This composition gave Taylor license to compose with a symphony of rooflines in a community setting of upper Westmount. In the distance to the left would be an outer building of the Samuel Bronfman mansion, a property recently renovated by a Bronfman family member. It is reputed to be one of Montreal’s finest homes.
Taylor was an artist of great accomplishment in oils as well as printmaking. Born in Ottawa, a graduate in Architecture from Montreal’s McGill University, a lifetime member of the Society of Canadian PainterEtchers and Engravers, member of the Canadian Graphic Arts Society and Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. Fred Taylor was meticulous in achieving his artistic objectives before releasing a work of art. His attention to detail, even of the presentation of his work, is evidenced by the “FRAMING NOTE” he often stamped on the reverse of particularly small format paintings, instructing the owner not to allow the frame to cover more than 1/16th of an inch of his panel and otherwise disturb his intended composition. For a time Taylor was active in the Canadian labour movement, a friend of Dr. Raymond Boyer and Dr. Norman Bethune, abandoning his political affiliation and activity around the time of The Geneva International Labour Congress in 1951. From then Taylor continued to enjoy a productive artistic career working at this stage primarily in oils and finding subject matter in the provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia as well as in the area of San Miguel de Allende where he moved in 1959 looking for relief from the discomfort of serious arthritis. Taylor exhibited regularly at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in Montreal as well as other fine Canadian galleries including Toronto’s Roberts Gallery. His paintings are included in countless public collections including The National Gallery of Canada, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. More than a quarter of a century ago, my father, Walter Klinkhoff, wrote in his Reminiscences of an Art Dealer that “[...] E.P., the great business tycoon, may one day only be remembered as being Fred’s brother!” With the histories of Don Mills, Northern Dancer and Argus Corporation stashed away on dusty library shelves I dare say Dad’s prognostication is already accurate for the generation of millennials.
(Fig 1.) Trafalgar street has been extended westward with the addition of a few houses on both sides of the street, now obfuscating from view the Bronfman mansion.
— Property from Various Private Collections
Nº 23 Frederick B. Taylor 1906-1987 Back Galleries, Dorchester Street, May 12, 1958 Oil on panel 10 ⅜⅜ x 8 ⅜ in (26.7 x 21.6 cm) signed and dated ‘F.B. Taylor ‘58’ (lower right); inscribed by artist, ‘16-81’ (verso, circled) and titled, signed and dated by artist, ‘C[indistinct] note for / prepared painting VI. / “Back Galleries / Dorchester St. W. near / Chenneville St. / Montreal / Frederick B. Taylor 12.V.58 (verso)
Provenance Private collection, Toronto; Mayberry Fine Art; Alan Klinkhoff Gallery.
Note This work is included in the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Frederick Taylor Inventory, no. 16-81.
— Taylor’s interest in back galleries dates at least to the mid-1930s in his days when he was primarily working in etching. This subject sporadically resurfaces in etching and later in his oil paintings. Harvest of Mammon of 1948, likely politically charged, an aquatint, is perhaps the most famous of the multiples. It is not incidental that Taylor has sought out for composition a modest, working class property, the kind which only a few years after the date of his paintings was subject to the wrecker’s ball through expropriation under the guise of urban renewal. Taylor painted a large canvas measuring 30” x 24” which Galerie Walter Klinkhoff sold more than 30 years ago.
Nº 24 Kathleen Moir Morris 1893-1986 Looking up Sainte Cecile Street, circa 1933 Oil on canvas 21 x 18 in (53.3 x 45.7 cm) signed, 'K.M. Morris' (lower right)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by present owner, Toronto, October 12, 2013.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Important Canadian Art, 5 - 20 December 2013.
— Kathleen Morris painted this important work in her characteristically bold and rich colour palette. It is a view juxtaposing the varied and diverse constituents of the city centre, including working class Montrealers, the Catholic Church and what it represents in the roots of the city and the burgeoning religion of big business. Ste. Cecile Street is a narrow street only a few blocks from the original building where the Beaver Hall Group exhibited 100 years ago now. A photo of the street in the McCord Museum of 1910 (access number MP-0000.825.8) of what was then called St. Margaret Street, was accompanied with the following description when published in the Montreal Gazette; The working-class flats were either clad in wood or in brick. They were exposed on two sides only and were, therefore, normally very dark. The street’s only redeeming feature was found by looking northward where an impressive view of the splendid cupola of St. James Cathedral (today, Mary Queen of the World) could be contemplated.16 In Kay Morris’ composition we note the newly constructed Sun Life Building, a monumental structure finally completed in 1933, a landmark as important in its day to Montreal as Place Ville Marie was to be a generation later. Today there is only a remnant of Ste. Cecile Street, now with an office tower “1000 de la Gauchetière” overlooking the Cathedral from the south and the Sun Life Building beyond. Kathleen Morris paintings have been featured in the 1924 Wembley Exhibition, international exhibitions in France, London, Brazil and New York, and are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in B.C., Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, Hart House at the University of Toronto, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Kathleen Moir Morris, Saint-Cecile Street, Montreal, after 1933, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in (60.9 x 45.7 cm). McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontario, no. 1981.58. Gift of the artist. Not for sale.
Nº 25 Adrien Hébert 1890-1967 Port of Montreal, circa 1927 Oil on canvas 20 ⅛ x 16 ⅛ in (51 x 41 cm) signed, ‘Adrien/Hébert’ (lower right); inscribed, ‘Je certifie que ce tableau est bien un original de Adrien Hébert / Louis Paul Perron’ (verso, upper centre)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal
— The location Hébert has painted is Victoria Basin. Hébert painted Montreal in transition to becoming a modern city. The development of the port was evidence of this evolution, and one which introduced significant economic prosperity to the City of Montreal. Victoria Basin served an important function in the activity of the Port of Montreal in its development from the early 1920s. In addition to two storage hangars, above them was then a novel conveyor system linking the dock to the grain silos, allowing for an efficient loading and unloading of ships. The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, and the opportunity for vessels to bypass the City, impacted adversely on the port. Since the 1980s many of the industrial structures have been dismantled and the Victoria Basin, now called Bassin de l’Horloge, serves mostly small vessels, many of them leisure craft. The tower is the Clock Tower or Sailors’ Memorial Tower, originally built in 1921-22 to commemorate the sailors and merchant marines killed in World War I. The story is also that the tower and a supporting wall were built to hide from many views the hangars and the grain conveyor system on top. In the catalogue for the celebrated Montreal Museum of Fine Arts travelling exhibition, 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, scholar Esther Trépanier begins her text: “In view of painter Adrien Hébert’s persistent preoccupation with urban modernization, which set him apart from other Quebec artists of the 1920s, his case merits individual attention. Of all the artists who exhibited with the Beaver Hall Group, Adrien Hébert stands out for his interest in picturing the commercial and industrial development of a contemporary city”.17 On his works that depict the port as their subject,
Trépanier writes, “About 1924 ... [w]hen he first began depicting the port, it had been just acclaimed the fourth year running as the world’s largest exporter of grain. [...] The port of Montreal, with its connection to a vast railway network, had become Canada’s main transport hub, rivalling America’s greatest Atlantic ports”.18 Trépanier continues, “Hébert’s paintings of the port of Montreal exhibit a more linear, realistic style than his earlier works. The palette is generally composed of tones of grey and ochre but always subtly harmonized with touches of brighter colour, usually blue, green and red”.19 She notes that in a great number of his works illustrating the port of Montreal, Hébert strives to capture the “monumentalization of the port’s architecture” and that natural elements — such as the sky, clouds, and water — are “pushed by the industrial motifs”.20 Indeed, in the present Port of Montreal, Hébert chooses to accentuate the clear geometry and powerful masses of the industrial elements to express the vitality and strength of the port. Trépanier concludes that, “Hébert’s images of the built structures associated with the commercial and industrial development were clearly a reflection of a positive, liberal perspective of the progress as compatible with harmony and beauty.”21
Nº 26 Adam Sherriff Scott 1887-1980 Sketch for Old Time Sugaring Party, St Hilaire, P.Q. Oil on canvas 25 x 40 in (63.5 x 101.6 cm) signed and inscribed, ‘A. SHERRIFF. SCOTT. RCA’ (lower left); inscribed, titled and signed, ‘Painted for Violet [?] / A.Sherriff Scott / Sketch for “Old time Sugaring party, St Hilaire, PQ” / Adam Sherriff Scott. R.C.A.’ and impressed with studio stamp (verso, upper centre)
Provenance Private collection, New Brunswick; By descent to the present owner.
—In this, the 100th anniversary of the first exhibition of the Beaver Hall Group, it should be emphasized that Adam Sherriff Scott was among that group. He also exhibited in their second and final group exhibition the following year. Beyond those contributions to this important chapter in Canadian art history, he along with Edwin Holgate signed the lease for the Group’s studio and exhibition space at 305 Beaver Hall Hill.22 Of course, the composition and title reads well without additional explanation. Visitors to Montreal’s finest offices, those of Power Corporation, will remember the exceptional historical map of Canada, a mural one enjoys while waiting for security clearance before proceeding to the elevators. That is a masterpiece by Sherriff Scott.
Nº 27 John Fox 1927-2008 Montreal Street, 1959 Oil on linen 30 x 24 in (76.2 x 61 cm) signed, ‘J.Fox’ (lower left); inscribed ‘MONTREAL STREET/ OIL ON LINEN/ 1959, JOHN R. FOX/ 30 X 24 INCHES/ PF314’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Estate of the artist; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Private collection, Montreal.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., John Fox: Retrospective Exhibition, 11-25 September, 2010, no. 4; Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Important Canadian Art, 13 August - 12 September 2010.
— We have always considered this type of painting by John Fox to be a glance at Pierre Bonnard. A local radio broadcaster refers to this kind of potential relationship as perhaps “distant cousins”. Take James W. Morrice and go forward 30 years in the development of modern art. Documentaries, his paintings are not. Fox was living on a small street called Selkirk just north of Sherbrooke Street at St. Mathieu, just a few hundred meters west of our Montreal location today. Looking at this painting, this is most assuredly inspired by a view looking toward a complex of greystone buildings on Sherbrooke Street which were developed some 15 years ago now and incorporating a 20 storey condominium. It is now known as the Beaux Arts Condominiums, a prestigious Montreal address in the Golden Square Mile
Nº 28 Paul Vanier Beaulieu 1910-1996 Nature morte, 1955 Oil on canvas 28 ¾ x 36 ¼ in (73 x 92.1 cm) signed and dated, ‘p.v. beaulieu/’55’ (lower right)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Canadian Post~War & Contemporary Art, 17 May, 2012, lot 33; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by present owner, Montreal, 1 November 2012.
Exhibition Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Important Canadian Art, 28 September - 24 October 2012.
— Probably the finest original research we sponsored at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in the numerous retrospective exhibitions we hosted was that produced by Germain Lefebvre for our Paul Vanier Beaulieu exhibition in 2009. Germain provided outstanding and original research about this yet unheralded purveyor of important modern painting. A read of Germain’s complete text is a must for Canadian art enthusiasts. "When I arrived in Paris," he confided during an interview that aired on Radio-Canada, "my training was primarily locally based. I greatly admired Clarence Gagnon and Maurice Cullen. And over there, Vlaminck made a strong impression on me because he did landscapes with broad colourful strokes using a palette knife. And then, little by little, the Paris school won out. I felt I could do something different."23 The reader will discover through Lefebvre’s text a career path that begins in the neighbourhood of Emile Nelligan and moves through a cultural environment primarily in Quebec and France which includes references to Pauline Julien, Claude Jutra, Dallaire, Pellan, Picasso and Zadkine. This still life of 1955 is an outstanding example of the best of Beaulieu at the height of his artistic ability.
Paintings by Paul Vanier Beaulieu are in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée national d’art moderne de Paris, London Art Museum, Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Nº 29 Frederick B. Taylor 1906-1987 Pouring Residue Bronze into the Chill Moulds in the Brass Foundry, Dominion Engineering Works, Lachine, Quebec, 1942 Oil on canvas 13 x 16 in (33 x 40.6 cm) signed and dated, ‘F.B Taylor ‘42’ (lower right); titled and dated by the artist, ‘POURING RESIDUE BRONZE INTO CHILL MOULDS/IN THE BRASS FOUNDRY. NOVEMBER 1942/DOMINION ENGINEERING WORKS LACHINE. P.Q’(verso, top stretcher bar) and inscribed ‘FREDERICK B. TAYLOR/3633 OXENDEN AVENUE/MONTREAL P.Q.’ (verso, upper horizontal stretcher, right)
Provenance Private collection, Montreal; Private collection, Montreal, daughter of the above; Alan Klinkhoff Gallery, October 21 2015; Private collection, Toronto, November 13, 2015; Mayberry Fine Art; Alan Klinkhoff Gallery.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Alan Klinkhoff, Montreal, Artists in the City of Montreal, January 2015; This work is included in the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Frederick Taylor Inventory, no. 543 —In 1942 and 1943 Taylor executed a series of works at Dominion Engineering Works in Lachine, Quebec, resulting in, among other fine compositions, Pouring Residue Bronze into Chill Moulds in the Brass Foundry, Dominion Engineering Works, Lachine, 1942.
While the Canadian government had sent artists overseas as War Artists there was no programme to encourage artists at home. In 1996, Sophie Gironnay’s Frederick B. Taylor, Graveur réaliste radical, she underlines that Canada’s contribution to the war effort was most certainly through the military support in personnel but also through the unprecedented industrial expansion building tanks,
ships, guns, aircraft and armaments of various kinds. Taylor was a pioneer, entering the factories to paint and thereby celebrate Canadian workers, male and female, who were supporting the war effort. From 1942 until 1945, Taylor sketched at The Fairchild Aircraft Plant in Longueuil where Boilingbroke Bombers were being built, the Dominion Engineering Works plant in Lachine where “pom pom guns” were being produced for corvettes, and other plants where Canadian workers were providing armaments for the war effort. The work produced by Taylor in the city of Montreal, in his own words, “emphasises the immense historical importance of the war and war-time production in Canada” and were a testament to the period of time in which, “Canada grew from an industrial nation of small importance to one of truly great importance" (Autobiographical notes, p.34). In addition to having documented the wartime effort, Taylor’s socialrealist portraits also served to encourage the labour movement in Quebec. Barry Lord’s The History of Painting in Canada: Toward a People’s Art and the autobiographical notes of the artist himself provide important insight as to their importance. According to Lord, “Taylor wanted to go into the factories that were producing armaments and other war materials, and paint the heroic portraits of workers with outstanding production records, as well as pictures of highly productive work teams in action. These he suggested could be used as posters and otherwise exhibited in factories and union halls to encourage an all-out effort to increase war production to defeat fascism”.24 Pouring Residue Bronze into Chill Moulds in the Brass Foundry, Dominion Engineering Works, Lachine, 1942 is a fine example of this important body of work, championing the working class and their contributions to Canada’s achievements in World War II.
Nº 30 John Little b. 1928 Sketch, Pine Ave above Peel, Montreal, 1961 Oil on canvas board 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) signed twice, 'JOHN/LITTLE' (lower right); titled, dated and signed by the artist, 'SKETCH / PINE AVE / above Peel / Montreal / '61' / John Little' (verso, centre)
Provenance Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Sale of Fine Canadian Art, May 22, 2008, Lot 9; Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
— Our Pine Avenue looking toward Peel Street of 1961 shows Little’s evolution toward a style of post Impressionism and hints at one of Montreal’s iconic homes, that of Sir Hugh Allan. Just beyond that structure in the distant left is an entrance with 2 posts crowned by heads of horses, I think still remaining today. The sprawling house was given to the Royal Victoria Hospital and became their Allan Memorial Lady’s Pavillon.
Nº 31 Frederick Simpson Coburn 1871-1960 Logging in Winter, 1933 Oil on canvas 12 x 14 in (30.5 x 35.6 cm) signed, 'F.S. COBURN 33’ (lower right)
Provenance Galerie L’Art Français, Montreal. Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Private collection, Westmount, Quebec.
Nº 32 Frederick Simpson Coburn 1871-1960 and Malvina Scheepers 1870-1933 Still Life of Roses, 1916 Oil on wood board 10 ⅜ x 14 ⅝ in (26.4 x 37.1 cm) signed and dated,'F.S.C. + M.S. 16.' (lower left)
Provenance Private collection, Toronto.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871-1960) Retrospective Exhibition, September 1986, cat. no. 40.
— This beautiful and rich still life is a duet in paint by Frederick Simpson Coburn and the woman who would become his wife, Malvina Scheepers. Coburn met Malvina Scheepers in 1897 while studying at the National Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. There he occupied a studio above the home of architect Edouard Scheepers, Malvina’s father. At the time of Coburn’s arrival, Malvina was an art student and engaged to a Dutch painter. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that Coburn and Malvina would marry. During those years Coburn had a distinct preference for continental Europe. In 1913, he returned to Canada to spend time with his father, who was in failing health. With war also on the horizon, he had tried unsuccessfully to convince Malvina to join him. Once back in Canada, he reluctantly accepted to remain there until the war was over. His concern for Malvina would have made this a period of some anxiety for Coburn. Malvina eventually found herself stuck in Holland when the Germans occupied Belgium. Without any commitment from her, Coburn sent money for her passage to Canada in the hope of securing her safety - and marriage. Evelyn Lloyd Coburn, in the book about her uncle, F.S. Coburn: Beyond the Landscape, described the ensuing events as follows:
His patience was at last rewarded with the arrival of a cablegram on October 24, 1915, with the brief message: ‘Leave Saturday with Niew Amsterdam - Scheepers [Malvina].’ It is hard to imagine what Fred must have felt….25 On his return to Canada, Coburn had established a studio in his hometown of Melbourne, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. It was there that Malvina finally joined him. She had left for Canada in late 1915 and so this “duet” of 1916 would have been painted soon after her arrival. Perhaps it was a celebration of their union. With its muted tones and neutral, monochromatic background, Still Life of Roses projects some distinct qualities of the Dutch still life painting tradition, and the looser brushwork suggests the influence of the Impressionists. Coburn’s talent is legend but the lesser known Malvina was a competent professional artist in her own right. According to Evelyn Lloyd Coburn, the Coburn couple was known to work on the occasional landscape together and for at least a short period of time they each pursued their own art careers.26 From 1916 to 1918, Frederick and Malvina Coburn featured independently in the exhibitions of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Nº 33
Property from a Notable Westmount Collection
Toronto, Picture Loan Society, Water Colours by David Milne, 21 February - 9 March 1951, no. 12 as "Bear Camp No. 2". Toronto, Hart House, University of Toronto, David Milne, 7 - 22 January 1962, as "Bear Camp No. 2".
—Baptiste Lake is in the Bancroft area, just over 200 km northeast of Toronto. Frequently on the move throughout his life, often because of impecuniousness but also in search of new painting places, Milne scouted and then moved to this lake in the later 1940s. A skilled carpenter, he built a stillextent cabin in 1949.27 This was his studio for three years, the base for his explorations and memorable depictions of the surrounding landscape. Bancroft was a gritty and poor logging area at the time, yet the series of watercolours Milne executed there are, by contrast, ephemeral, even ethereal in their touch and mood. Milne’s outline of the gently hilly terrain rising from the lake structures Bear Camp V. Milne identified the site as Camp Makwan. The buildings and lakefront docks of the camp seem insubstantial, floating as they are in Milne’s signature washes of bright watercolour pigment. They may be abandoned camps that dotted the area and attracted Milne. Painting in February, he nonetheless revels in the hues of autumn. Milne was a keen observer of such phenomena, but he was not an en plein air painter in the sense that he insisted on transcribing just what he saw. Instead, he was an ecstatic connoisseur of natural phenomena who rendered what he recalled and thought as well as his immediate perceptual experience. Here he remembers the autumn from the perspective of winter, rendering the scene with his characteristic nervous outlining and freely flowing, saturated watercolours. Milne died at Baptiste Lake in December 1953.
Literature
Mark A. Cheetham
David Milne 1881-1953 Bear Camp V (Baptiste Lake, Ontario), circa February 23, 1950 Watercolour on paper 19 x 25 3/4 in (48.3 x 65.4 cm) signed, [in 1946, per Silcox / Milne], ‘DAVID MILNE’ (verso, lower left) inscribed by Duncan, ‘W-560 David Milne / Bear Camp II, blue cabin / (Feb. 1950) (verso); inscribed ‘David Milne / Bear Camp II: blue cabin / (feb 1950) / W-627 (verso)
Provenance Duncan / Picture Loan. John Aird, Toronto, circa 1955. Laing Galleries, Toronto, 1967. S. Pollock, Montreal, 1967. Private Collection. H. Hallward, Montreal, 1970. Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1974; Acquired from the above by Private Collection, Montreal, 1974.
Exhibitions
David Silcox, Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), repr. p. 362 as Bear Camp V, 1950; David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume 2: 1929 1953, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), no. 502.26, repr. p. 949, as Bear Camp V. This work is included in the David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings compiled by David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, Vol. 2, no. 502.26.
Nº 34
Property from a Notable Westmount Collection
David Milne 1881-1953 Parliament Buildings at Queen’s Park (Toronto), January 30, 1940 Oil on canvas 18 x 26 in (45.7 x 66 cm) signed, [in 1946, per Silcox / Milne], ‘DAVID MILNE’ (lower left)
Provenance Galerie Godard Lefort, Montreal, 1973 Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1976; Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Montreal.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Godard Lefort, David Milne (18821953): A Survey Exhibition, 22 April - 15 May 1971, cat. no. 22 as Parliament Buildings. Toronto, Marlborough-Godard Gallery, David Milne, The Toronto Year, 1939-1940, January 1976, cat. no. 41 as Parliament Buildings.
Literature Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto, David Milne, The Toronto Year, 1939-1940, January 1976, cat. no. 41 as Parliament Buildings, repr. p. 37. This work is included in the David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings compiled by David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, Vol. 2, no. 401.42
— Milne depicted figures and buildings more often than we might at first think. Both in the northeastern USA and in Ontario, he showed barns in the rolling countryside that he lived in and loved as much as remote settings, houses in Uxbridge and other towns where he resided, and as in this case and his paintings of the national parliament buildings in Ottawa, celebrated and significant buildings. He was equally taken with the forms of ramshackle neglect (see Ruin in the Wood, No 15) and official structures. Milne’s title here is again specific, the imposing Ontario Legislative Building in Queen’s Park, Toronto – designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by Richard Waite and opened in 1893 – on a winter Tuesday. The weather was “moderately cold,” according to the Globe and Mail. Daubs of white on the building, front paths and driveway, and especially the tree to the left, suggest the expected covering of snow, yet Milne fills his foreground and the mass of the building with a thin, dark pigment. However much wartime Toronto might have warranted it, the effect is not ‘dark’ because he also lights the windows with exuberant flashes of yellow, orange, and red. These highlights suggest interior lighting and perhaps curtains across the large windows. In 1939, Milne painted the same building seen again from the south, though from a more oblique angle. He chose a night scene: the building is lit, and the sky is dark. Trees are silhouetted (fig. 1). In the oil from 1940, he has reversed this relationship of tone. What this variation on the theme underlines is Milne’s constant fascination with the fluctuations in what he sees. Not content to flip the tonal values in a second watercolour, in the later version he turns to oil paint, thinly applied over a coarsely textured support. The earlier watercolour has the drama of an oil painting; the later oil painting mimics the fluidity of watercolour. Mark A. Cheetham
(Fig. 1) David Milne, Parliament Buildings, 1939, watercolour, 15 x 19 in (38.1 x 48.3 cm), Private Collection, Ontario. Not for sale.
Nº 35 Marc-Aurèle Fortin 1888-1970 Étude le Port, circa 1930 Watercolour 9 ¾ x 14 ¼ in (24.8 x 36.2 cm) signed, "M.A. FORTIN" (lower left); titled and signed by the artist, ‘Etude le Port/ Fortin (verso, centre)
Provenance Galerie L'Art Français, Montreal; Property of Roland Dumais, Montreal. Cosner Gallery, Montreal; Acquired from the above by the present private collection, Montreal.
— There is a freshness and vibrancy of colour in this fine watercolour exceeding that of many of Fortins of this generation. Although small in size, the work shows the ability of the artist to “think” in the medium of watercolour, essentially sculpting with his medium to reveal images and highlights. It is the absence of paint that serves to deliver his composition. This is a talent shared by a limited number of artists who are also accomplished painters in oils. One would be inclined to include in that elite group David Milne, Franklin Carmichael and Molly Lamb Bobak. It is of interest to note the development of the Port of Montreal in the 1920s and the construction of these massive grain silos. Whether it is intentional or otherwise, one cannot help but consider the economic activity Fortin describes and the related social change marked by those years, juxtaposed against the traditions represented by the Cathedral of Saint Anthony of Padua in the distance. Fortin was not a documentary painter. However one might speculate that this fine composition may have been inspired by a view from the Hochelaga Maisonneuve Pier. A previous owner of this fine Fortin, Roland Dumais, was a successful Montréal architect and a client of Galerie Walter Klinkhoff.
Nº 36 John Little b. 1928 Peel St. and Dorchester, circa 1959 Oil on canvas board 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm)
— The view of Peel Street at Dorchester, circa 1959, now René Lévesque, features prominently one of Montreal’s legendary landmark structures, now gone, The Windsor Hotel, a grand hotel of the day and Windsor Station looming in the background.
signed, 'JOHN/LITTLE' (lower right)
Little commemorated these areas as buildings were razed to make way exclusively for office towers and expressways in order that business people could efficiently drive in from the developing suburbs and return there after 5pm. As we wrote in the only authorized publication about the artist, he was concerned that people could no longer live in the city centre and that these areas after 5pm became bleak, void of people and after dark may be dangerous for pedestrians. We should not forget that just to the east of Windsor Station, on Osborne Street “in the day” at the Alberta Lounge Oscar Peterson was at the piano. This was a very dynamic area in the evenings with clubs and bars and restaurants. Osborne Street was eradicated and the area replaced by the Château Champlain and Bonaventure Hotels accompanied by the cold concrete of Place Bonaventure.
Provenance Dominion Bridge Company, Ltd; Alex Campbell, Montreal (gifted by the above, December 8, 1959). Private collection, Montreal.
The Guardian, in the March 12 edition, wrote about Toronto and that it is scrapping the Sidewalk Labs project and looking for plans “for a people - centred vision”, one focused on “affordability, low carbon design and an emphasis on local and minority owned businesses.” John Little had observed almost two generations ago, that the emphasis on suburbanization and the city core being populated by office towers, all the small retail and service businesses that had existed on the streets were sacrificed as computers shopped at their highway side shopping centre on their way from or returning to home in the suburbs. The remaining, surviving or new generation of small retail or service businesses were relocated to basements or sub-basements below the towers.
Nº 37 John Little b. 1928 Place Royale, Rue St. Paul, Montréal, 1965 Oil on canvas board 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) signed, 'JOHN/LITTLE' (lower right); titled, signed and dated by the artist, 'PLACE ROYALE / RUE ST. PAUL / MONTRÉAL / JOHN LITTLE / '65' (verso, upper centre)
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Private collection, Montreal.
— John Little has always been a believer in conserving the urban core as a place not only to work but also to live. Within the context of post WWII suburbanization and commercial development of the city centre came wholesale demolition of some areas of the inner city to make way for new and larger roads and office complexes. Little thought the preservation of these neighbourhoods an important part of the fabric of the city. A shy and gentle man, he was ill-equipped to halt this destruction of our heritage. At the height of this popular bulldozer policy to what was touted as urban renewal, in 1961 to photographer Don Newlands, an acquaintance of his at MacLean's Magazine, Little said, "If we knock down all our old buildings and neighbourhoods we'll become a people without a past… My motto is, new plumbing for old buildings... I don't mean to preserve everything but there is so much in this city worth preserving" he continued.28 With pencils and paper, camera and film and ultimately paint on canvas (and canvas board), what Little was able to do was capture these snippets of urban life as we knew it before the wrecker's ball struck. John Little is a chronicler. His paintings are a part of our collective history. They serve as an allegory for all the streets and neighbourhoods adversely affected by suburbanization and the bulldozer approach to urban renewal. In his personal style, John Little celebrates the integrity of the old. The demolition of neighbourhoods was for him like tearing out photos from the family album. Little is to our knowledge the only artist in Canada and conceivably North America to have committed an entire career to the
commemoration of the downtown and the inner city neighbourhoods during this destructive period. The years around 1965 are critical in the development of precisely the area we now refer to as Old Montreal where John Little painted this outstanding composition. The redevelopment of the central core and waterfront areas of Montreal had been studied for some years and included plans for an expressway that would have been built essentially along Rue de la Commune through the heart of the area Little painted and continuing adjacent to Place Jacques Cartier, Bonsecours Market, and eastward. This elevated expressway and its access ramps would have eviscerated the area. The salvation of Old Montreal, some might suggest, came in the reaction and subsequent response by a couple, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel and her husband Sandy (Daniel) van Ginkel. She graduated in architecture at McGill University and continued on earning a degree in city planning from Harvard. Along with her husband Sandy, who was a Dutch trained architect, they established a design and management firm in Montreal in 1957. The ensuing debates they provoked advocating the importance of the preservation of built heritage, repurposing of old buildings instead of demolishing them and replacing them with the new, in addition to Sandy's participation in the City of Montreal's planning department ultimately, “... rescued Old Montreal from Freeway developers."29 Montreal architect and philanthropist Phyllis Lambert said, "He saved Old Montreal from being destroyed."30 The year 1964 came with the heritage protection offered by the designation of "Old Montreal" as the Arrondissement historique de Montréal. “With massive investments from the three levels of government, as well as from businesses and individuals, a lengthy rehabilitation effort began.”31 However, despite this classification, in 1971, the Quebec government tore down several 19th century buildings to make way for a new courthouse.32 In Little’s Place Royale, at the top of the street on the left was the business of “Sellier J E Lortie Saddler, Leather Canvas Goods”. This is a storied company which finds its roots back in 1892 when, according to their site, Joseph Edward Lortie left Ottawa where he had apprenticed with his father in the trade of saddlery and harness making and relocated to Montreal.33 The evolution of their businesses and
additions to their product lines to ensure prosperity in an ever changing economic environment is proudly described on their website: Year in and year out, through boom and bust, through two World Wars, through deep economic depression and years of prosperity, J.E. Lortie Co. Ltd. prides itself on selling quality products made in its own Montreal plant. Three generations of the same family have succeedingly reinvested in the upgrading of their production facilities while always conserving a deep commitment to
good workmanship. In today's evolving global market situation, J.E. Lortie Co. Ltd., management team and employees enter the second century of corporate history with confidence remembering that continued trust in basic values is the soundest guarantee of a successful future.34
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Nº 38 John Little b. 1928 Rue la Gauchetière at Rue d'Hôtel de Ville, Montréal, circa 1963 Oil on panel 8 x 10 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm) signed, 'JOHN/LITTLE' (lower right); titled and signed by the artist, 'RUE LAGAUCHETIERE [sic] / et RUE D'HOTEL DE VILLE / MONTRÉAL / JOHN LITTLE' (verso, centre)
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, as Rue Lagauchetere [sic]. Michael H. Dunn, Montreal. Private collection, Montreal.
— Rue la Gauchetière at Rue d'Hôtel de Ville is of the style and generation circa 1963, that to date attracts the most attention in the market. The area Little captured here recounts the heritage of Montreal’s Chinatown, a once thriving neighborhood along de la Gauchetiere Street and continuing east. It was largely demolished for urbanization projects including the building of The Palais des congrès de Montréal, Montreal’s downtown convention centre. The provenance of Michael Dunn reminds those of us “who were there” of Michael’s keen eyes in appreciating a fine work of art. His financial well being permitted him ownership of important fine art. A mutual friend reminded us recently that Michael was also an astute financial investor and that he was an early owner of shares in Berkshire Hathaway who considered Warren Buffett a personal friend.
Nº 39 René Richard 1895-1982 Trappers' Encampment, circa 1940 Mixed media 7 ½ x 9 ½ in (19.1 x 24.1 cm) signed, 'R.Richard' (lower right)
Provenance The Glebe Center Inc., Ottawa; Galerie Alan Klinkhoff; Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2015.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Alan Klinkhoff, Montreal, René Richard: Tom Thomson of the North Exhibition, 1 June 2016.
— This fine work captures the essence of the life of the great Canadian trapper. In his first career beginning in his youth, René Richard was living in Cold Lake, Alberta where he hunted, fished and trapped in season by canoe and by dog team and sled in another. To our knowledge there is not another artist of experience who in fact lived that life.
Nº 40
Property from a Distinguished Toronto Collector
Philip Surrey 1910-1990 End of Summer, 1974 Oil on canvas 32 x 24 in (81.3 x 61 cm) signed, ‘SURREY’ (lower right)
Provenance Probably acquired from the artist by Galerie Gilles Corbeil, Montreal, circa 1974; Mr. H. Cohen, Montreal; Galerie Jean-Pierre Valentin, Montreal. A.K. Prakash & Associates, Toronto; Private Collection, Toronto.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, 18 September - 2 October, 2004, no.26; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, Recent Acquisitions Exhibition, March 2005.
Literature Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, as End of Summer, repr. front cover.
— End of Summer is a generational painting and perhaps Surrey’s most important painting of this vintage. This painting served as the cover image on the catalogue of the Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, September 18 - October 2, 2004, hosted at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff. The location is somewhat recognizable. The artist has located himself on Fairmont at Jeanne-Mance, looking West with a slice of Mount Royal in the distance. As is characteristic of some of the best of Philip Surrey, he is working with the mystery of evening, his subject illuminated by electric light. He is an avid painter of youth, customarily full figured. His use of stripe patterns on the clothing serves to accentuate their forms. This is a neighbourhood scene in Montreal’s Mile End borough, one with mixed roots in origins including Greek, Italian, Jewish and Portuguese. One notes a predominance of geometric forms - squares, circles, rectangles - in his design. Surrey has now taken us to that inevitable transition, the end of summer, when, for youth at any rate, much changes. Love is an emotion he was troubled by from his childhood, a struggle he described in the biographical sketch Margaret wrote on his behalf. Youth is a constant in a significant body of his work. Youth and love, or youth and romance find composition in many of his fine works in various media beginning in the 1950s, notably including in oils his Lovers, Westmount Park (Private Collection), Lovers, Westmount Park, 1957 (formerly in the Canadian Embassy, Mexico), The Lovers circa 1957 (Art Gallery of Hamilton) and in etching, Boy and Girl of 1961.
Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., 2004. Front cover.
The passing seasons are a metaphor for any transition of a phase. Director of Discovering Philip Henry Surrey; The Artist in the City Project, Terry Rigelhof suggested to us recently that “La fin de l’été / End of Summer is the artist’s reconciliation with a future now in younger hands.” Perhaps, this is a hypothesis of merit to consider. Surrey was by 1974, 64 years of age. Years of social unrest, Vietnam, Kent State, the FLQ Crisis were now behind us. Anything might have been possible going forward to another generation. Wonderstruck by the evening sky, their future is theirs to make. In the words of Bryan Adams in Summer of 69, “And now the times are changin'”. As Dan Delaney of Montreal’s West End Gallery astutely said about Surrey’s paintings when interviewed shortly after the artist’s passing, Dan told the reporter that in his opinion Surrey’s paintings dealt with social issues and the subconscious: “There was always a question to be answered and the viewer had to look within himself to answer”.35 End of Summer is a painting of considerable importance to the canon of post-WWll contemporary Canadian art.
Nº 41
Property from a Distinguished Toronto Collector
John Little b. 1928 Parc Montmorency, Québec (with a view of the Seminaire), 1966 Oil on canvas 24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm) signed, ‘JOHN/LITTLE’ (lower right); titled, signed and dated by the artist, ‘PARC MONTMORENCY QUÉBEC JOHN LITTLE ‘66’ (top stretcher bar)
Provenance Continental Galleries, Montreal. Private collection, Westmount. Private collection, Toronto.
Nº 42 Charles Camoin 1879-1965 Voiliers dans le port de Cannes, 1956 Oil on cardboard 9 ½ x 13 in (24 x 33 cm) signed, 'Ch Camoin' (lower right)
Provenance Wally Findlay Galleries, Inc. Private collection, Montreal. This work will be included in the Inventory of Les Archives Camoin.
—Charles Camoin is a world renowned artist, one of the 6 artists who exhibited in the now iconic exhibition of 1905 at the Petit Palais in Paris in room Vll in the Autumn Salon whose style introduced the art world to what would become known as fauvism. The other artists accompanying Charles
Camoin were Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, André Derain, and Albert Marquet. Charles Camoin is an important French artist whose work and style is a witness to his time and place. His career evolved from the inspiration of Pierre Auguste Renoir, admiration of Cézanne, and respect for paintings of his peers, maybe most notably Albert Marquet. By 1921, Camoin was sharing time between a studio in Montmartre and one in Saint-Tropez, the latter where he was increasingly spending time while exhibiting in among Paris’ finest art dealing galleries, including Charpentier and Bernheim-Jeune, as well as the major salons of his day. After WWll, Camoin rented a studio overlooking the Gulf of Saint-Tropez where he painted this painting.
Nº 43 Philip Surrey 1910-1990 March Wind (The Crossing), 1980 Oil on canvas 48 x 84 in (121.9 x 213.4 cm) signed and dated, ‘SURREY / 1980’ (lower left)
Provenance Private collection, Westmount, Quebec; Private collection, Toronto, 2012.
— This composition is inspired by the intersection of Montreal’s St. Remi and St. Jacques streets. Surrey’s interpretation is surreal, having entirely removed everything that is ancillary to his requirements. There is no spontaneity to his painting. Terry Rigelhof, General Editor of Discovering Philip Surrey, The Artist in the City Project, records 11 and conceivably 12 versions of this monumentally important picture executed over a period of some 5 years during which the artist worked it up to this state, the grand finale. The Musée National des Beaux Art du Québec has a full-scale version painted in pastels. (fig. 1) It is irresistible not to point out the autobiographical note of Surrey’s support of the Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club and his pride in being a Canadian. Have a close look at the license plates on the oncoming cars. Anecdotally, somewhere along my way as an admirer of this composition, someone has suggested that it is a miniscule image of the artist in
the yellow car on the entrance ramp up on the right. On what we believe to be the largest painting Philip Surrey ever painted, in March Wind (The Crossing), 1980 he addresses his definitive comments on the aspect of the human condition in his “automobile age”. Gilles Daigneault wrote in an interview in 1979 and published in Vie Des Arts entitled L’Expressionnisme de Philip Surrey: On this matter there is one thing that occupies a special place in the artist’s imagination and which he often uses to express what he resents most: the automobile. “At present” he says, “we are going through not the atomic age (at least not as long as each person does not have his own reactor) but certainly the automobile age.” Recent pictures like ‘The Highway’ and ‘The Trophy’ show how Surrey transforms simply disagreeable spectacles…into powerful images of the human condition… [...] Now, during our conversation, Surrey would speak frequently of his fundamental pessimism, saying that it is very difficult in our day to be lucid and optimistic at the same time. Gilles Daigneault, now a director of the Fondation Guido Molinari, is one of the most perceptive observers of contemporary art of this generation. Exceptionally, he succeeded in drawing out Philip Surrey to express himself directly beyond anything we have read elsewhere. Among the paintings reproduced in Vie des Arts to accompany Gilles’ article is a slightly smaller version of March Wind (The Crossing). Margaret Surrey wrote in Philip’s name that "[to live with danger] is manifested in the reluctance or inability of a person to envision his own death even though he sees the threat all around him. This trait enables us, despite the statistics of traffic deaths, to drive with peace of mind."36
(Fig. 1) Philip Surrey, Le Gros Vent de mars (March Wind), 1980 (circa), pastel and colored pencil on paper glued on canvas, 92 x 160.5 cm. Collection of the Musée National des Beaux Art du Quebec. no. 1992.267. Not for sale.
Fast forward to June 14, 2018, Jennifer Keesmaat, CEO of Creative Housing and former chief planner of Toronto published in The Guardian.com:
We designed Canada's cities for cars, not people – and the people are dying Toronto’s latest toll of cyclists and pedestrian deaths is hardly unique – cities all bought the myth that cars give us freedom Anxiety has begun to permeate everyday urban life: parents stress about their kids walking home from school; office workers check and double-check the street before rushing to a nearby cafe; cyclists act erratically when their truncated bike lanes dump them into fast-moving traffic. People are on edge everywhere. Meanwhile, automobile companies brand their vehicles with names like Explorer, Escape, Liberty and Journey. Cars are designed to look like birds and rockets, and are sold to us via multimillion-dollar ad campaigns ….. After 100 years of marketing, we have continued to believe – and want to believe – that the car gives us unfettered personal liberty. We are not alone in having made comparisons between paintings of Philip Surrey and Alex Colville. Some years ago, strolling through a brilliant Alex Colville exhibition at Toronto’s AGO, I was struck at how appropriate one of the descriptive panels was to Philip Surrey. Relating one of Alex Colville’s paintings to the films of Joel and Ethan Coen of which it is noted the artist was a fan, it read, “... both filmmakers and artists produce undercurrents of fear, tension and the unknown, suggesting that everyday moments can tip toward calamity.” Surrey often achieves a similar temperament in his own style. March Wind (The Crossing) is a foundation composition for an important collection of contemporary Canadian art.
Nº 44 Moise Kisling 1891-1953 Les orchidées, 1930 Oil on canvas 16 ⅛ x 13 in (41 x 33 cm) signed, 'Kisling' (lower left)
Provenance Wally Findlay Galleries, March 1975; Acquired from the above by the present private collection, Montreal, March 1975.
Literature Moïse Kisling, et al. Kisling, (New York : Harry N. Abrams, 1971), p. 197. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Jean Kisling, dated March 19, 1974. Kisling is the co-author of the 'Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre de Moïse Kisling' currently being repared with Marc Ottavi.
— In the bespoke portfolio accompanying this Moise Kisling provided by Wally Findlay Galleries it reads; Poland has long been the merging ground of Western Slavonic cultures. Through the centuries of struggle, conquest, independence and reconquest, Poland has been a crossroads for both invading armies and currents of thought and culture from the west and the east. From the point of view of art, the French influence has been especially strong on a number of artists. This was particularly so in the case of Kisling. Moïse Kisling was born in Cracow, Poland on January 2, 1891. At the time of his birth, Cracow was actually in Austrian territory, and thus it is not surprising that the art of Kisling’s native city was dominated by Austrian art. Kisling’s father was a tailor, but there was no question of having Moïse follow in this father’s footsteps. From earliest childhood his gift for drawing was evident, and the family therefore planned to have him become an engineer, but at the age of fifteen he won a competitive art examination and as a result entered the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. There he would normally have been subjected to Germanic influences, but his professor
at the academy was Josef Pankiewicz who had resided in France and knew the Impressionists, Bonnard and Vuillard, and carried back to Poland the new vision and impetus of Impressionism. After four years of study under Pankiewicz and with his encouragement, Kisling went to Paris and settled in Montparnasse. He lived in an attic in the Rue des Beaux-Art near St-Germain-des-Prés. His wit, joviality, talent and charming, sensitive nature rapidly gained many friends for him. Very soon he was accepted as an intimate of the group at the Café de Versailles, where Guillaume Apollinaire, Picasso, Derain, Modigliani, Pascin and André Salmon met, and where the Ecole de Paris was born. Gay and generous, Kisling enjoyed life in Paris and was soon recognized as one of the most likeable and picturesque figures of the quarter in which he lived. His gaiety sometimes turned into boisterousness; twice he was involved in duels. After Kisling had been in Paris a short time, he made a trip to England. Upon his return to France, he followed Picasso to Céret, the Barbizon of Cubism. There he became closely associated with Braque and Juan Gris, as well as the poet, Max Jacob, and Frank Haviland, the manufacturer of Limoges, who was an admirer and collector of Picasso’s work. Like the painters Modigliani, Pascin and Soutine, Kisling was aware of the revolution Cubism was effecting in art, and his awareness is manifest in some of his portraits and landscapes of his period, yet he developed his own personal style of expression. He painted landscapes in which the influence of Cézanne is clearly evident, but among artists of his own time it was Derain who influenced his work most strongly. From Derain he gained in particular the typically French sense of proportion and, for a time at least, his native sensual exuberance was somewhat repressed in his paintings. The fire of his natural temperament, however, was not dimmed as is proved by the fact that in 1912 he fought a furious duel with sabers and pistols with his compatriot Leopold Gottlieb. In 1914 Kisling returned to Paris and took a studio in Rue Joseph-Barrat. Modigliani often came to Kisling’s studio to paint and to sleep. When the First World War broke out, Kisling was travelling in Holland. He immediately returned to Paris and enlisted in the Foreign Legion. In the trenches his closest companion
was Blaise Cendrars. In 1915, Kisling was wounded in action and subsequently released from service. With Kisling’s return to civilian life, a new phase in his career as an artist began. Four years after his release from military service, he had a Parisian exhibition. Though he had exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants in 1913, before his Paris exhibition of 1919 his paintings had been known and appreciated by only a restricted circle of fellow artists. The Paris exhibition of 1919 was an outstanding success and brought him both recognition and acclaim. Kisling was twenty-eight years old. He had freed himself completely from Cézanne and developed his own personal and distinctive style in which the spirited use of color springing from his native tradition was combined with the discipline acquired through his years of contact with French painters. From that point on, his fame became worldwide. He was, and is, acknowledged as one of the best painters of the Ecole de Paris and is now represented in important museums and private collections throughout the entire world. Kisling’s work is in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and in the museums of Belgrade, Brooklyn, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Marseille, Moscow, Stockholm, Tel Aviv and Venice. Two other events marked 1919 as an important year in Kisling’s life. He became a French citizen, and the Order of the Legion of Honor was conferred upon him. The following years were filled with intense work and with success. A series of exhibitions in Paris was followed by exhibitions in New York, London, Geneva, Brussels, all of them adding to his fame. In 1926 he went to paint at La Ciotat, Sanary, near Saint-Tropez, and was so delighted with the area that he later built a home there. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Kisling volunteered for the French Army, at the age of forty-eight. But France fell, and Kisling was threatened by the Gestapo, so he made his way to Portugal and then to the United States. He had always liked to paint artists and actresses: Michele Morgan, Arletty, Edith Mera, Madeleine Sologne had sat for him in France. In the United States Chaplin, Charles Boyer, Paulette Goddard, Arthur Rubinstein and Edward Robinson came to his studio. In 1946, Kisling returned to France and was reunited with his two sons, one of whom had been a fighter pilot in the Free French Air Forces. He settled in Sanary-sur-Mer in Provence, and died there in
his villa in 1953 after a brief illness. He was then sixty-two years old. He had been painting for forty-seven years and in that time had produced landscapes, still lifes, figure paintings and portraits, in all of which the magnificence of his brilliant coloring, his strong sense of form and composition are the silent yet living proof of his genius. Kisling was one of Modigliani’s closest friends. He was faithful to that star-crossed genius until the latter’s death in 1920. In some of Kisling’s paintings of female nudes and of young boys there are traces of the melancholy so characteristic of Modigliani, but Kisling’s masterly use of pulsating color lends a note of joy even to these canvases. In ‘Modern French Painters’ Jan Gordon speaks of the use of color in terms which apply perfectly to the work of Moïse Kisling. He says: ‘By color one does not imply that actual color must be forced to any exaggerated pitch of garishness. Color covers every kind of tint, and every shade of grey. But intelligent color realizes both the value of the most forceful as well as the most subtle of notes. The colorist organizes design as carefully as he organizes his linear or spatial construction. He uses color as it is necessary to the emotional intention of his work.’ Though Kisling had lived most of his life in France, had fought for France, and was a French citizen, he never forgot or lost the riches of his Slavonic heritage. Byzantine art touched the Slavonic nations and gave them a hieratic sense of form and a love of brilliant color. Kisling used color, in the words of Jan Gordon, ‘as it is necessary to the emotional intention of his work.’”
Nº 45 Jean Paul Riopelle 1923-2002 Untitled (PM44), 1978 Oil on canvas 9 ½ x 7 ½ in (24.1 x 19.1 cm) signed, 'R.' (lower right); signed by the artist, 'riopelle' (verso)
Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (PM44). Acquavella Modern Art, Reno, Nevada. Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal, 2010; Private collection, L'Estérel, Quebec.
Exhibition Toronto, Galerie Simon Blais, Art Toronto, October 28 – November 1, 2010.
Note This painting is included in the Jean Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné compiled by Yseult Riopelle, Vol. 5: p. 286.
Nº 46 Philip Surrey 1910-1990 Decarie II, circa 1966 Oil on board 6 x 8 in (15.2 x 20.3 cm)
"[to live with danger] is manifested in the reluctance or inability of a person to envision his own death even though he sees the threat all around him... This trait enables us, despite the statistics of traffic deaths, to drive with peace of mind.”37
signed, 'SURREY' (lower left)
The composition shows the heavy equipment employed in the construction of Montreal’s Decarie Expressway, a sunken north/south highway heading into the city. His description of the construction equipment suggests somewhat surreal imagery. While the concept of such a construction project had been debated by municipal politicians for years beforehand, with the objective of its completion in time for Expo 67, it was in 1965 that a decision was made and the construction got under way. The roadway was officially opened less than a week before the World’s Fair.
Provenance Galerie Martin Inc., Montreal. Loch Gallery, Toronto.
— Decarie ll is a wonderful testimony to Surrey’s achievement as being a master at painting works illuminated by electric light. The painting epitomizes the artist’s preoccupation and resentment of cars and their impact upon urban life.
Nº 47 Louis Muhlstock 1904-2001 In The Lane, Montreal, circa 1940 Oil on canvas 18 x 21 in (45.7 x 53.3 cm) Provenance Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto. Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg; Alan Klinkhoff Gallery.
— “With an acute eye for character and a profound humanity, Montreal draughtsman and painter, Louis Muhlstock, created a portrait of the Depression in gentle, intimate drawings of marginalized people. His paintings of deserted streets and houses, done before and after the Second World War, are spare images that convey silence and memory”.38 Much has been written about Louis Muhlstock by learned art scholars. Esther Trepanier writes
a particularly valuable contribution to his appreciation and understanding in Jewish Painters of Montreal39, for those of us who had the privilege of knowing Louis, even as an acquaintance, we will all have endearing stories of the artist as a legend, a raconteur and as a bit of an entertainer showing his works and his commendations. Well into his 90s in age, if one telephoned to make an appointment to visit, cognisant of his timeline, Louis would always reply to the effect that, the day you wish to come by, phone, if I answer the call, come over. From the days when we would occasionally visit with Louis, an aged Canadian artist who had painted in the neighbourhood of St. Famille Street for some 60 years, an artist who was witness to a huge evolution in art in Canada and who, regardless, was always true to himself. Louis Muhlstock as a great Canadian artist of his generation.
Nº 48 Robert Pilot 1898-1967 Schooner Loading, 1919 Oil on panel 10 ¾ x 14 in (27.3 x 35.6 cm) signed and dated "R Pilot / '19." (lower right); titled, signed, and inscribed in a light dry medium, "Schooner Loading / R. Pilot / 35.00" (verso, centre)
Provenance Private collection, Nova Scotia.
— This outstanding painting was executed by Robert Pilot at age 20 or conceivably 21, the year before he participated in the first exhibition of the Group of Seven (along with both Albert Robinson and Randolph Hewton as the other two non Group members who were invited participants). This was two years prior to the now legendary Beaver Hall Group exhibition where Pilot also exhibited. If Robert Pilot was not a prodigy as an artist he was a quick study, a disciplined and tremendously able student of painting in oils at an early age. Maurice Cullen, his step father, was likely his first master. Then , like many of the members of the Beaver Hall Group, young Pilot was a student of William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal.
Nº 49 John A. Hammond 1843-1939 Fishing Boats, Bay of Fundy, circa 1904 Oil on board 28 ¼ x 36 ½ in (71.8 x 92.7 cm) signed "J.Hammond" (lower right); titled, inscribed and signed in pencil, "Fishing Boats / Bay of Fundy / $300 / J Hammond (verso, upper right)
Provenance Johnson Art Galleries, Montreal; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, as Fishing Boat [sic], Bay of Fundy; Private collection, Montreal.
Exhibitions Possibly Montreal, Art Association of Montreal, Exhibition of the 25th Annual Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, 17 March to 4 April, 1904, possibly no. 84, as Fishing boats, Bay of Fundy; Possibly St. Louis, Missouri, Universal Exposition [at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition or the St. Louis World's Fair], 30 April - 1 December 1904, possibly no. 42, as Fishing Boats, Bay of Fundy; Possibly Montreal, Art Association of Montreal, Exhibition of Canadian Paintings Featured from the St. Louis Exposition, 5 - 16 January 1905, possibly no. 8, as Gaspereaux Fishing at $300.00 and as being returned to Scott & Sons, Montreal.*
Note The catalogue of the 1904 exhibition of The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Official Catalogue of Exhibits for the art exhibitions at the St. Louis World's Fair list an exhibited picture by Hammond, no. 84, Fishing boats, Bay of Fundy and no. 42 Fishing Boats, Bay of Fundy., respectively. These titles are identical to the present oil painting, which is titled by the artist on the verso. A selection of pictures at the St. Louis World's Fair would subsequently show at the Art Association of Montreal in January 1905. A review of this exhibition from the Montreal Star ("Canadian Art Exhibit is now on View Here", 7 January 1905) describes, "Mr. Hammond's five pictures of land and water are bright, sunny pictures, with one particularly well executed, a Gaspereaux fishing fleet in early morning."
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery extends its thanks to Ms. Audrey Marcoux, Documentation Technician, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, for her assistance in our research of this exhibition.
Nº 50 Marc-Aurèle Fortin 1888-1970 Paysage à Québec, circa 1936 Oil on board 16 ½ x 23 ¼ in (41.9 x 59.1 cm) signed, 'M.A. Fortin' (lower right); titled and signed, ‘Paysage à Québec / M.A. Fortin’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Galerie L'Art Français, Montreal; Corby’s Distilleries, Montreal; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, as Quebec Landscape, ca. 1935, and 'oil on Masonite'; Acquired from the above by the present owner, Toronto, 2008.
— This is an outstanding work by the master, probably painted in Quebec City. It represents an excellent example of his innovative and unique approach to painting in Canada. This lyrical painting is described in a style commonly referred to as “la manière gris." This grey period is defined by his application of a steel grey colour paint over the surface of the support, upon which Fortin later works up his subject matter. Fortin’s bold palette counts him among the moderns of his generation.
Nº 51 Philip Surrey 1910-1990 Winter Night, circa 1965 Oil on masonite 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm) signed, 'SURREY' (lower right)
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Galerie Clarence Gagnon, Outremont. Private collection, Montréal; ByDealers Auction House, Post-War and Contemporary Sale, lot 8, 10 Novembre, 2019; Galerie Alan Klinkhoff, Montréal.
— In Winter Night we find a lone woman, fighting one of winter's nasty winds. One can only speculate that Surrey's characteristic lone male is the figure sheltered in the car conspicuously noticeable behind the windshield. In the manner of the surreal two of the traffic lights are without any support. "In many of my pictures there is a man walking by himself, that man is always me."40, metaphorically Philip Surrey said. "The city is his place. Night is his time, and the overwhelming solitude of man his theme.... Apprehension and fear lurk in the threatening shadows, but the greatest terror is loneliness."41 Robert Ayre on Philip Surrey
Nº 52 Philip Surrey 1910-1990 The Argument, 1951 Oil and tempera on board 5 ¾ x 7 ¾ in (14.6 x 19.7 cm)
— Extraordinarily, in the evolution of The Argument of 1951, as it resolved itself into larger formats one of the transitions is that many of the male figures are female and looking much more sporty than did the men in the sketch.
signed and dated, 'Surrey 51' (lower left)
It is not uncommon that Philip Surrey’s paintings evoke the less endearing traits of his fellow man. In The Argument Surrey has chosen not to paint the fun filled baseball game, but instead an argument at the game. What was the argument? Perhaps it’s about the call that ended the game. Conspicuously absent are the baseball players. Are these the fathers of the players? Packing up the bats, the lone figure on the right one might reasonably speculate is a cameo of Philip Surrey, as is his custom, not engaging with other actors in his paintings. In a list of paintings he revised in 1986, for a proposed book Surrey refers to a painting of 1952, Joueuses de baseball (The Baseball Players), notably the feminine (fig. 1). Are these then the fathers or spouses of the girls who had been playing? The Argument is a richly painted and highly desirable painting from this important generation of his work.
Provenance Watson Art Galleries, Montreal, 1951. Dominion Gallery, Montreal. Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Kastel Gallery, Montreal. Dr. Norman Tepper, Montreal. A.K. Prakash, Toronto; Alan Klinkhoff Gallery.
Exhibitions Montreal, Watson Art Galleries, Exhibition, November 1951, no. 13; Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, September 2004, no. 63.
One of few additional references we have located to baseball players comes from his autobiographical notes (actually transcribed by his wife Margaret), documenting Philip’s painting process. “Sometimes I bring a half finished one downstairs and hang it, sometimes for weeks. Eventually I will see what needs to be done and take it back upstairs and do some more to it. Joueuses de baseball [The Baseball Player], hung over our dining room table for a year with all the players nude. Then I went up to my painting room and clothed them’.42
(Fig. 1) Philip Surrey, Joueuses de baseball (The Baseball Players), 1952, oil on canvas 20 x 24 in. Featured in an article by Robert Ayre, “The City and the Dream of Philip Surrey” published in Canadian Art, Vol. 21, no 5, Sept-Oct 1964, pp. 284-287.
Nº 53 Marc-Aurèle Fortin 1888-1970 Lafresnière, premières neiges, circa 19231928 Oil on canvas 39 x 48 in (99.1 x 121.9 cm) signed ‘M.A. Fortin’ (recto, lower left)
Provenance Galerie L’art Français, Montreal, 1942-43. Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal. Private Collection, Vermont, USA.
Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie l’Art Français, [s.n., M.-A. Fortin], December 1942; Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Marc-Aurèle Fortin Retrospective Exhibition, September 1979, no. 26; Laval, Quebec, Maison des arts de Laval, Salle Alfred Pellan, Exposition Pellan, Fortin, Gagnon, 18 November, 1988 - 15 January, 1989, cat. no. 16; Montreal, Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Exposition Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 15 May - 15 September, 1984, no. 101; Montreal, Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Exposition Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 24 May - 28 August, 1994, no. 101.
Literature Louis-A Lange, Un peintre du terroir: Marc-Aurèle Fortin, L'Action Universitaire (Montreal), Vol IX, No. 8, April 1943, pp. 5-6, reproduced p. 5; Louise Beaudry, Exposition Pellan, Fortin, Gagnon, (Laval, QC: s.n., n.d [1988?]), cat. no 16, reproduced p. 16 as Lafresnière; premières neiges, 97,8 x 121,9 cm., Collection Dr. et Mme Gilles Maillé.
Publications A photograph of the December 1942 exhibition at Galerie l'Art Français is illustrated in Marc-Aurèle Fortin : l'homme à l'oeuvre43 which shows the artist seated in front of a salon style hang of an exhibition of his work. The present Lafresnière, premières neiges can be seen in part in the upper left quadrant. The photograph was first published in La Patrie (Montreal)44
— First Snow, Lafresnière beautifully illustrates that rare time of year when the leaves are still a wonderful array of reds and oranges and yet, a soft, glistening layer of the first snow lightly covers the ground and
rooftops. This brief moment of transition between the fall and the winter is perhaps the best subject matter for Fortin, a virtuosic colourist, as it implored him to broaden his palette and marry the reds of the fall with the blues of the winter. In this picture, it is impossible to ignore the Fauvist quality of Fortin’s oeuvre. Like the modern Fauvists of the turn of the twentieth century, Fortin’s colours are freed from the tradition of representational, naturalistic painting. His palette evokes the seasons with colours that are beyond nature, like the mauve of the mountains in the background or the blue snow of the foreground. To accomplish this, Fortin even employs modern painting techniques, like painting directly from painting tubes, without pouring or mixing colors on a palette, to keep the paint as fresh and vibrant as possible45. In the late 1920s, contemporary critics recognized his break from naturalism and described his work in terms of the supranatural. For example, in 1928, art critic Jean Chauvin described him as, “[...] a magician conjuring up, out of the earth, out of his palette, giant trees, extravagant skies, a whole enchanted nature [...]”46. Fortin’s landscapes are even compared to Walt Disney’s works, again emphasizing the magical allure of the images he creates, which recognizably transcend the natural world47. By 1933, Fortin’s talents were rewarded with his first solo show held at the Art Association of Montreal. In a contemporaneous review printed in the Montreal journal La Patrie (first identified by distinguished scholar and art historian Esther Trépanier), critic Jean-Marie Gélinas emphasises Fortin’s prominence in the Montreal art scene: "While a Marc-Aurèle Fortin exhibition is not a novel event for Montrealers - this Impressionist may be, of all the metropolis’ artists, the one who avails himself of most frequent exposure and in the most diverse locations - the fact remains that we find a renewed charm in these decidedly unusual paintings at every occasion, in a country where art is often only in the nascent stages.”48 As this statement attests, by the early 1930s, Fortin is well-known and is perhaps one of the most exhibited artists of the era. Unlike most artists, Fortin’s oeuvre
did not go unheralded during his lifetime and his work achieved considerable praise throughout his career. Likewise, First Snow, Lafresnière was an exceptionally well-received work. The first record listing its exhibition was at Galerie L’Art français in 1942. Fortin was present for the show, a retrospective of the artist’s career, and is pictured in front of the work in figure 1. The exhibition opened to acclaim in “Un Peintre Canadien Honoré” (TR: “A Canadian Painter Honoured”) in La Patrie, where the image of Fortin in front of First Snow is also reproduced. It is not coincidental that a year later in a 1943 article about Fortin, written by Louis Lange, the owner of Galerie L’Art français, that First Snow, Lafresnière is the only Fortin he illustrated (fig. 2). The work, not only monumental in size, is equally monumental in beauty. In his appreciation, Lange writes: “Fortin has an inviting sense of colourist expression; he knows how to convey the splendours of the autumn, and how to compose magnificent symphonies of green in tribute to the summer. His trees, unfurled against a sky flecked with white, rotund clouds—resembling large bursts of shrapnel—
are not mere decorative pretence; they are bristling with life, enough so to animate the entirety of the canvas.”49. First Snow, Lafresnière was subsequently exhibited in a retrospective exhibition at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in September 1979 (no. 26). It was also exhibited at the Maison des arts de Laval, Salle Alfred Pellan in the landmark exhibition Alfred Pellan, Marc-Aurèle Fortin et Clarence Gagnon (no. 16) in 1988. It was even exhibited at the Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin in 1984, (no. 101) and again in 1994 for the ten year anniversary of the museum. First Snow, Lafresnière is emblematic of Fortin’s appreciation for Quebec history and specifically for the poetic, traditional way of life of its rural villages. Author of Marc-Aurèle Fortin: L’Homme à l’œuvre, Guy Robert, claims that Fortin was one of a number of avant-garde artists and intellectuals working in Quebec with similar intentions, namely to capture the beauty of historic Quebec villages; others included Marius Barbeau, Gérald Morisset and Jean Paul Lemieux50. While many of Fortin’s works allude to his attention to a more traditional way of living, First Snow overtly reveals Fortin’s motivations as it depicts the Légaré family mill in La Fresnière, now old Saint-
(Fig. 1) Fortin (centre) pictured in front of First Snow, photograph taken at the Fortin exhibition of 1942 at Galerie L'Art français, published in La Patrie, 20 December 1942.
Eustache, Quebec, as indicated by its title (fig. 3). Fortin’s canvas depicts the mill from further down the Rivière du Chêne (Oak River), looking towards the mill and dam (fig. 4). The Légaré family mill was inaugurated in 1763 alongside a dam created in the adjacent river. The mill was entirely powered by the water from the dam to produce wheat and buckwheat. From its inception, the mill was an essential part of the village. Not only was it the first industry introduced in the village, but it also served as a meeting space for village events and celebrations51. The mill is one of the few mills in Quebec to survive well into the second half of the twentieth century and was owned and operated by the Légaré family from 1907 to 1978, when it was given to the city and turned into a Quebec heritage site and museum. Like Fortin’s painting, the mill remains a symbol of Quebec village life in perpetuity as a museum and heritage site. Anna Orton-Hatzis
(Fig. 2) Louis Lange, owner of Galerie L’Art Français, published in L’Action universitaire, Avril 1943, vol. 9, no. 8
(Fig. 3) The Légaré Mill, c. 1930, From the historical society of Saint-Eustache, Quebec
(Fig.4) Further along the banks of the Rivière du chêne (Oak River) in La Fresnière, c. 1915, from the Historical society of the Laurentians.
— The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin This selection of fine paintings hails from the most important single Canadian art collection offered for sale in a generation. In 1993, Walter Klinkhoff wrote: “Mel and Mitzi Dobrin were probably our best clients, both as regards quality as well as quantity of their purchases. Their enthusiasm, particularly for Canadian art, their energy and capacity for making purchases without hesitation or fear, was truly astonishing..." We are proud to have been chosen by the next generation of the Dobrin family to offer their remarkable collection, including the selection of works featured here.
Nº 54 Clarence A. Gagnon 1881-1942 Maison de Fermiers au soleil couchant (Baie St. Paul), circa 1923 Oil on panel 6 x 8 in (15.2 x 20.3 cm) titled and dated by Lucile Rodier Gagnon on her inventory label, ‘maison de fermiers au soleil couchant (Baie St. Paul) 1923’, and numbered ‘140’ (verso)
Provenance Estate of the artist, Lucile Rodier Gagnon Inventory No. 140, as Maison de Fermiers au soleil couchant (Baie St. Paul).
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Dominion Gallery, Montreal. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
Nº 55 Tom Thomson 1877-1917 Early Spring, Algonquin Park, Spring 1917 Oil on board 8 1/4 x 10 1/2 in (21 x 26.7 cm) typed on printed label, ‘54 THORNHILL AVENUE / MONTREAL 6, QUEBEC / September, 1968 / This Tom Thomson painting was given to my father / and mother, the late Sir George and Lady Parkin / in April, 1920, by their daughter and son-in-law / Alice and Vincent Massey. It has been in my possession / since 1931 / [signed] Raleigh Parkin’ (verso, centre)
Provenance Estate of the artist; Vincent and Alice Massey, Toronto, 1918. Sir George and Lady Parkin, Toronto, 1920. Raleigh Parkin, Montreal, 1931, by descent. G. Blair Laing Limited, Toronto. Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, 1968. Acquired from the above by Mitzi and Mel Dobrin in 1968.
Exhibitions Toronto, The Art Gallery of Toronto, Exhibition of Canadian Paintings, 9 August-30 September 1926, as Early Spring, no. 47, loaned by Vincent Massey; Oshawa, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Tom Thomson, The Last Spring, May 4-January 7, 1996, no. 2.
Literature Joan Murray, Tom Thomson The Last Spring (TorontoOxford: Dundurn Press, 1994) repr. p. 28, pl. 2 reproduced in color Joan Murray, Tom Thomson, Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 1917.05, www.tomthomsoncatalogue.org.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin — Tom Thomson’s oil sketches were almost all painted in front of the motif and worked up into canvases during the winter in Toronto. The change of scale between the small sketch and large canvas posed new challenges and as sketches fed his canvases, the painting of the canvases also brought changes to his sketches. A new formality first appears in his oil sketches of 1916 together with a refinement of touch and paint application. Colour is cooler and more restrained. Over the winter of 1916-1917 Thomson painted some of his most famous canvases, including The Jack Pine in the National Gallery of Canada. A very formal composition, the structure is defined by the vertical trunk of the jack pine and the horizontal bands of colour with which he painted the sky and water. A similar clarity and almost classical formality characterize a number of Thomson’s sketches painted in the spring of 1917. The overcast sky determines the low-keyed tonality of Early Spring, Algonquin Park. The foreground snow is painted with wide, horizontal strokes of white and is crowned by the vertical, brown-leafed, young birches and black spruce. An opening to the snow-covered ice in the middle ground leads to the intense blue hills of the far shore, recalling the blue hills across the lake in The Jack Pine. Though thickly painted, the bare wood at the edges of the colour areas allows the forms to breath. There is a wonderful stillness and maturity in this superb sketch, painted in the spring before Thomson’s premature death in the summer of 1917. This painting was acquired by Vincent and Alice Massey from the artist’s estate through Dr. James MacCallum in early 1918. The Masseys gave it to Alice Massey’s parents Sir George and Lady Parkin and it was bequeathed to their son Raleigh Parkin on the death of Mrs. George Parkin in 1931. Charles C. Hill
Nº 56 Clarence A. Gagnon 1881-1942 Ferme du rang Saint-Laurent, Baie SaintPaul, circa 1924 Oil on wood panel 4 3/4 x 7 1/4 in (12.1 x 18.4 cm) titled and dated by Lucile Rodier Gagnon on her inventory label, ‘Ferme du rang Saint-Laurent, Baie St. Paul (vers 1924)’ and numbered ‘327’ (verso); thumbprint (verso, upper right)
Provenance Estate of the artist, Lucile Rodier Gagnon Inventory No. 327, as Ferme du rang Saint-Laurent, Baie St. Paul. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Exhibitions Kitchener-Waterloo, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Clarence Gagnon, RCA, LL.D, 1881- 1942, January 7 February 6, 1966.
Nº 57 Clarence A. Gagnon 1881-1942 The Old Mill or Automne dans Charlevoix, circa 1923 Oil on panel 6 x 9 in (15.2 x 22.9 cm) titled and dated by Lucile Rodier Gagnon on her inventory label, ‘Automne dans Charlevoix. (vers 1923)’, and numbered ‘149’ (verso)
Provenance Estate of the artist, Lucile Rodier Gagnon Inventory No. 149, as automne dans Charlevoix. Dominion Gallery, Montreal, as The Old Mill. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin
Nº 58 Clarence A. Gagnon 1881-1942 Early Spring, St. Urbain, circa 1920 Oil on panel 5 3/4 x 8 3/4 in (14.6 x 22.2 cm) titled and dated by Lucile Rodier Gagnon on her inventory label, ‘Early Spring, St. Urbain ([illegible]1920)’ and numbered ‘191’ (verso)
Provenance Estate of the artist, Lucile Rodier Gagnon Inventory No. 191, as Early Spring, St. Urbain. Dominion Gallery, Montreal. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin
Nº 59 Clarence A. Gagnon 1881-1942 Jour de boucherie, Baie St. Paul, circa 1923 Oil on panel 5 x 7 in (12.7 x 17.8 cm) titled and dated by Lucile Rodier Gagnon on her inventory label, ‘Jour de boucherie, Baie St. Paul (vers 1923)’ and numbered ‘582’ (verso)
Provenance Estate of the artist, Lucile Rodier Gagnon Inventory No. 582, as Jour de boucherie, Baie St. Paul. Continental Galleries, Montreal. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Exhibitions Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Clarence Gagnon Retrospective Exhibition, September 1975, no. 26.6.
Nº 60 Frank H. Johnston 1888-1949 Tribute to Tom Thomson, circa 1923-1925 Oil on canvas 57 x 42 in (144.8 x 106.7 cm) signed, ‘Frank H. Johnston’ (recto, lower left)
Provenance Fannin Hall Collection Ltd., Vancouver. The Art Emporium, Vancouver, 1973. Acquired from the above by Mitzi and Mel Dobrin, circa 1980.
Exhibitions Vancouver, Kenneth Heffel Gallery, Second Annual Group of Seven Exhibition, 3 March, 1980, as One Fine Day, Algoma.
Literature “It was one fine day when this show opened its doors”, Larry Emerick, Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, BC), 3 March 1980, B5, illustrated with a photograph by Ralph Bower, Roaslyn Porter looking at One Fine Day by Frank Johnston: “Frank Johnston, another favorite, provides one of the blockbusters of the exhibition with One Fine Day, Algoma.”
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin — Frank Johnston got his real start as an artist when he worked at Grip Limited in Toronto in 1911. At this lively, highly competitive commercial art firm, he met future Group of Seven members J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, and Franklin Carmichael. There is no record of his meeting Tom Thomson but both were at Grip at the same time. Likely they spoke or, at least, had a nodding acquaintance. Doubtless, Johnston would have watched Thomson go on his painting trips (which began in 1912) with envy as he continued to work in the office. Then, in 1917, Thomson died in Algonquin Park under mysterious circumstances and Harris, MacDonald and A.Y. Jackson took up the responsibility of publicizing and placing his work. In 1918, they achieved a real success - The Jack Pine was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Then, when the Group of Seven was founded in 1920, Thomson was spoken of. “He should have been a member,” all agreed. Of course, Johnston, being a member, would have thought so too. Johnston might not have thought about Thomson when he went to Winnipeg in 1921 but when he returned in 1924 and saw how Thomson and his work was beginning to become a legend, he must have thought about him a great deal. At some time in these years, he essayed his observations of Thomson’s work in a magnificent tribute to the artist, Tribute to Tom Thomson. If we compare Tribute to Tom Thomson with Thomson’s masterpiece The Jack Pine, we can see there is much that is similar. It is one artist’s rendition of what there was about The Jack Pine that he admired. He chose to select the time of day as late afternoon or the approach of evening. Looking at The Jack Pine, we realize that is the time of day Thomson intended but with the addition of the colours of a northern sunset. Johnston clearly worked from a sketch or memories of the northern landscape in the late summer or fall; Thomson from the first indications of winter. Johnston has yellow trees which seem to pop out of the hillside in the distance; Thomson had snow.
What may have kindled Johnston’s memories of Thomson’s great picture is the foliage of the trees with their drooping, trailing branches. They recall, however distantly, The Jack Pine. Or it might have been the shape of the trees - two trees at right, a smaller tree or tree form at left.
perhaps he showed it under another title.
Whatever the trigger may have been, what we have here is a unique painting expressing one artist`s homage to another. There is great spirit in the depiction, nothing slavish. Johnston was his own man.
The painting seems to be dated stylistically to the period 1923-1925.
Besides, having worked in commercial art for years, he knew how to create strong design. He also knew how to depict glistening light. He does so here. The silhouette of the trees against the sky is memorable; the foreground has a decorative, mosaic-like effect, which may reflect the kind of handling which Johnston learned through his work in tempera paint. All in all, it is a magnificent realization, a summation of the northern landscape in the hands of a truly sophisticated artist. Did he show the painting publicly? It must have been in one of the myriad exhibitions in which artists showed – and then sold - their work, perhaps in the Ontario Society of Artists shows where Johnston usually exhibited. He may have felt it was too private a work to exhibit. It embodied his reverence for Thomson in a way that he may have wished to keep to himself. He may also have considered the painting to be too different from the main body of his work with its robust feeling for nature. On the other hand,
We have one clue. Johnston signed the painting “Frank H. Johnston,” a signature he used in 1924, but in 1925 changed to the more exciting way of styling himself “Franz Johnston.”
There is one review by a noted critic of the day, Hector Charlesworth, in which he complains of Johnston’s use of purple. He wrote in Toronto Saturday Night of the OSA show in March 1924, “An important group of canvases is shown by Frank Johnston (Winnipeg) in one of which his predilection for purple results in exaggeration. His best work is “A Night in September” painted in low tones and convincing in atmospheric treatment” (Hector Charlesworth. “O.S.A. Annual Exhibition. Technical Average High and Group System Disappearing.” Toronto Saturday Night, March 29, 1924. p. 3.) Could our canvas be one of these works? At any rate, the person who introduced it to the market, clearly felt that he (and perhaps this may have been the artist himself) or she couldn’t remember the title but did have an idea of the date and exhibition. We have retitled the painting closer to Frank H. Johnston’s intention when he painted the work. It is a tribute, in our view, to both men, painting giants in a not so long-ago world. Joan Murray
Nº 61
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin
Robert Pilot 1898-1967 The Lane, Peel Street, Montreal, circa 1950 Oil on canvas 28 x 22 in (71.1 x 55.9 cm)
“Painting was his life and he gave himself to it without reserve. His love and his respect for his profession made it impossible for him to work with less than complete sincerity [...] The work he has left us is a rich and eloquent testimony to a life of devotion to the Art he loved so greatly.”
signed, ‘R. Pilot’ (recto, lower right)
T.R. MacDonald
Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal; Acquired from the above by Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
Nº 62 Frederick H. Varley 1881-1969 Portrait of Nancy, Toronto, 1948 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 in (50.8 x 40.6 cm) inscribed, ‘GMG SPRUNG’; stamped and numbered, ‘VARLEY INVENTORY / No. 301 / NOTIFY NATIONAL GALLERY / OF CANADA OF CHANGE IN / OWNERSHIP OF ADDRESS’; inscribed, ‘TORONTO 1948’ (verso, lower horizontal stretcher)
Provenance The Art Emporium, Vancouver. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin
— While it’s natural to think of Milne as a landscape painter, the domestic was a strong, and not unrelated, interest in his work, especially in his later career. He was a builder of cottages and homes and revelled in the temporary ‘camps,’ the ‘painting places’ that he set up on picture-making excursions. He frequently depicted the interiors of his shelters, whether permanent or temporary. In these interiors, Milne showed the materials and tools of artmaking to such an extent that many such works are in fact meta-paintings, reflections on the artform itself. Not one to depict himself very often, instead, materials objects and especially his female partners resonate with an intimacy that potently, if invisibly, imply the presence of the artist. In these two unpretentious, but affecting, portraits, we see Kathleen Pavey, with whom Milne began a relationship in 1938. He met her at Six Mile Lake, where she was on a camping trip; Milne seems to have rescued Kathleen from a near mishap in her canoe during a squall. She was then twenty-eight while Milne was in his fifties. Milne moved from Six Mile Lake to Toronto in the summer of 1939 to live with Pavey. Typically for Milne, they shifted from address to address. He was again stimulated by urban surroundings, painting numerous watercolours in various parts of the city and making
Nº 63 David Milne 1882-1953 The Knitter (Toronto), February 1940 Watercolour on paper 14⅞ 7/8 x 16 3/8⅞ in (37.8 x 42.9 cm) inscribed, ‘The Knitter’ (verso); inscribed by Duncan, ‘<159 / 174 / 182> W-184 // Feb 1940’ (verso); inscribed by the Duncan estate, ‘1258’ (verso)
Provenance Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin by 1979.
Exhibitions Toronto, Marlborough-Godard, David Milne, The Toronto Year, 1939-1940, January 1976, no. 22.
contact with a range of artists and collectors. A child on the way, however, the couple moved to northeast of Toronto to the small town of Uxbridge, Ontario in 1940. During the year in Toronto, Kathleen was pictured in Milne’s work approximately forty times. In these two portraits, she is visualized in their domestic setting, absorbed in her hand work. While Milne has sketched Kathleen quickly in watercolour – as noted above, calligraphic speed is palpable in this work, suggesting directness – the sophistication of his technique and intensity of his observations should not be underestimated. More than any other painting medium, watercolour is suited to staining large areas of the surface with liquid colour; this we see in the vibrant purples and soft browns that he uses for the floor in both works and also in smaller areas such as the pinks of Kathleen’s face and blouse in The Knitter. In contrast to Stream in the Bush (Boulders in the Bush II) and Channels in this collection of Milnes, this is palpably ‘wet’ painting. Yet Milne’s painterly prowess shines in how he controls this fluid medium with the firm, largely rectilinear architecture of a chair, a table, what appears to be a laundry drying rack in The Knitter, and the vertical lines of radiators in both pictures. Large portions of each picture are left open and white, adding the sense that we are glimpsing a scene that is in flux.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Literature David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume 2: 1929-1953, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), cat. no. 401.48, p. 709 as “The Knitter”, 1940 (February, Toronto).
Notes Duncan Catalogue W-184, National Gallery of Canada. Marlborough Godard Gallery, 1976, no. 22, p. 11, repro. p. 24. This work is included in the David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings compiled by David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox.
Kathleen Pavey was a nurse, not an artist, but Milne’s choice to show her dexterity and concentration in these images might suggest that these works are in part about characteristics crucial to Milne the painter, that they reflect on Milne and on painting itself as well as Kathleen Pavey. She does not acknowledge that she is being painted – she is not posing – yet the depiction of a manual craft suggests a bond. She is perhaps knitting for their unborn child, as she mentions in her diary. We sense that Milne is there too, even though she doesn’t acknowledge his presence. As usual, these paintings are challenging to Milne technically and to his viewers. For example, how does he include so much visual pattern and yet capture the likeness of the all-important sitter? In Sewing, Kathleen’s form stands out against the washes of colour on the chair and floor because – ironically – her limbs are not painted, but only quickly outlined.
Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, Intimism represented seemingly every day domestic interiors, very often focused on a lone female sitter involved in domestic duties or reading. In Vuillard’s paintings especially, decorative motifs such as floral wallpaper would often seem to overwhelm if not quite dissolve these human protagonists. Milne had painted several such scenes of Patsy in New York, c. 1913-14. Both watercolours and oils, these include Striped Dress, Red, and The Yellow Rocker. These two paintings of Kathleen Pavey from 1940s are much simpler and more immediate than the New York paintings, yet they also share many of the concerns, qualities, and pleasures of Milne’s early essays in Intimism. Mark A. Cheetham
While these are not large paintings in any sense, they participate significantly in an important art historical category with which Milne was familiar from his time in New York City: the approach known as ‘Intimism.’ Best appreciated in the work of late 19th - to early 20th-century French painters
Nº 64 David Milne 1882-1953 Sewing I (Toronto), 1940 Watercolour on paper 15 x 11⅛ in (38.1 x 28.3 cm) inscribed, ‘Sewing’ (verso); inscribed by Duncan, ‘W-168 / 176’ (verso); inscribed by the Duncan estate: ‘538 // 178’ (verso)
Provenance Marlborough - Godard Gallery, Toronto. The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin.
Exhibitions Toronto, Marlborough Godard, David Milne: The Toronto Year 1939-1940, 1976, cat. no. 18.
Literature Marlborough Godard, Toronto, David Milne: The Toronto Year 1939-1940. Introduction by David Milne
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin Jr. Exhibition catalogue, Toronto: Marlborough Godard Gallery 1976, cat. no. 18, p.11, repr. p. 22. David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume 2: 19291953, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), cat. no. 401.40, p. 707 as Sewing I, 1940 (February, Toronto).
Notes Duncan Catalogue W-178, Sewing, National Gallery of Canada The oil version of this subject is Sewing II, 401.84. The figure is Kathleen Milne. The series designation is ours. Catalogue Raisonné (Silcox, Vol. 2, p. 707) This work is included in the David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings compiled by David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox.
Endnotes 1 Walter Klinkhoff, Reminiscences of an Art Dealer (1993), p. 8. 2 Jackson letter to Anne Savage, 11 April 1932, as per Charles C Hill Farm at Port au Persil MMD Collection 3 A.Y Jackson. Painter’s Country : The Autobiography, (Clarke, 1976) 4 Thomas R. Lee, Albert H. Robinson: The Painter's Painter. Pamphlet. 1956. 5 Walter Klinkhoff Gallery., Roger Little. Ethel Seath: 1879-1963: Retrospective Exhibition. (Montreal: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, 1987), unpaginated. 6 This text benefited from the assistance of Annie Arsenault (National Gallery of Canada) and Danielle Blanchette (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) and fruitful discussions between the author and Lucie Dorais, Charles C. Hill, Tobi Bruce (Art Gallery of Hamilton) and Nathalie Thibault (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec). 7 Guy Viau, “John Lyman,” Montreal, Vie des arts (33), Winter 1963–1964, p. 30. 8 Charles Hill found the consignment record for The Hammock under the Tree in the archives of the Dominion Gallery, May 17, 1946, stock no. 12120d. 9 Forty artists featured in the exhibition included painters Franklin Arbuckle, Archibald Barnes, Allan Barr, P. E. Borduas, Fritz Brandtner, A. J. Casson, Paraskeva Clark, Charles F. Comfort, Stanley Cosgrove, Jacques De Tonnancour, Kenneth Forbes, Eric Goldberg, Lawren Harris, Edwin H. Holgate, A. Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Henri Masson, David Milne, Lilias Torrence Newton, Louis Muhlstock, Jack Nichols, Will Ogilvie, Alfred Pellan, Robert Pilot, Goodridge Roberts, Anne Savage, Carl Schaefer, Marian D. Scott, Percy Tacon, Frederick H. Varley, R. York Wilson, William A. Winter; and sculptors Emanuel Hahn, Jacobine Jones, Stephen Tranka, Florence Wyle and Elizabeth Wyn Wood. The Emily Carr Estate donated to the exhibition a later painting, “The Wood”. 10 The work’s record at the Dominion Gallery lists the completion date as “September 1912.” 11 Foreword to the Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by John G. Lyman, presented at the AAM from May 21 to May 31, 1913 in Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse, p. 223. 12 “Lyman’s Encounter with Matisse” in Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse, (exhibition catalogue), Richmond Hill, Kleinburg, Québec, Firefly Books, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2014, p. 171. 13 On the Beach, Bermuda, 1913 (Lavalin Collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal A 92 995 P 1) and The Lawns of Fairfield, Cowansville (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, gift of Mrs. John Lyman Estate [1970.510]). 14 To our knowledge, John Lyman revisited the hammock as a subject in 1926, in a work that was displayed at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris in 1927 before being presented, that same year, in the artist’s first exhibition since 1920 in Montreal at Johnson Art Galleries Ltd. (634 St. Catherine Street). The Hammock, oil on wood, 30 x 40 cm, is now housed at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, gift of Mrs. John Lyman Estate (1970.506). 15 Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts, et al. Robert W Pilot Retrospective. (Montreal: Simpson Pres. 1969), 5. 16 Robert N, Wilkins. “Many Narrow Streets of Yesteryear Still Exist — in Name Only.” Montreal Gazette. June 20, 2014. https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/many-narrow-streets-of-yesteryear-still-exist-in-name-only. Esther Trépanier, “The Modern City: Adrien Hébert”, 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, 17 (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2015), 20 18 Ibid., 212 19 Ibid., 214 20 Idem 21 Ibid., 218 22 Jacques Des Rochers, Brian Foss, Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal et al. 1920s Modernism in Montreal The Beaver Hall Group (London, UK: Black Dog Publishing, 2015), 306 23 Germain Lefebvre and Galerie Walter Klinkhoff. Looking Back at Paul Vanier Beaulieu’s Remarkable Life and Career (2009). Accessed March 16, 2021, https://www.klinkhoff.ca/blog/category/1/8225 24 Barry Lord. The History of Painting in Canada : Toward a people’s art, (Toronto: NC Press, 1974), 195 Evelyn Lloyd Coburn. F.S. Coburn : Beyond the Landscape (Erin, Ontario: Boston Mills Press, 1996), 68 25 26 Ibid.,73-74 Margaret Surrey, Biographical notes of Philip Surrey, 133. Ibid., 133. 27 The Art Gallery of Ontario has prepared an informative series of videos on Milne, one of which explores Baptiste Lake through the artist’s diaries and a commentary by David Milne, Jr., who remembers living there when this picture was made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB5JzV7G1-k 28 Don Newlands. “A Fond Last Look at Montreal.”MacLean’s, 6 May 1961, 12-16 29 Sandra Martin. "Sandy Van Ginkel Rescued Old Montreal from Freeway Developers." The Globe and Mail, July 24, 2009. Accessed July 17, 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/sandy-van-ginkel-rescued-old-
montreal-from-freeway-developers/article1200451/ 30 Ibid. 31 Martin Drouin. "Old Montreal." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed July 17, 2019. https://www.thecanadian encyclopedia.ca/en/article/old-montreal. "Old Montreal / Rue Notre-Dame - Three Courthouses." Old Montreal. Accessed July 17, 2019. http://www. 32 vieux.montreal.qc.ca/tour/etape2/eng/2text4a.htm. 33 "History of JELCO." J. E. Lortie Cie Ltée / Co. Ltd. Accessed July 18, 2019. http://jelco.ca/en/history.php. 34 Ibid. The Westmount Examiner, May 10, 1990, author and page not noted. 35 36 Margaret Surrey, op. cit., 141 37 Margaret Surrey, Biographical notes of Philip Surrey, Philip and Margaret Day Fonds, P85A, National Archives of Canada, Estate Philip Surrey, 141. 38 “Louis Muhlstock”, The National Gallery of Canada, Accessed March 16, 2021, https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/louis-muhlstock. Esther Trépanier, op. cit. 39 40 Margaret Surrey, op. cit.ht 41 Robert Ayre, "City and the dream of Philip Surrey'', Canadian Art, Vol. 21, September 1964, 287 42 Margaret Surrey, op. cit., 159B Guy Robert. Marc-Aurèle Fortin: L'œuvre Et L’homme (Montreal, Quebec: Stanke, 1976). 43 "Un peintre canadien honoré". La Patrie (Montreal), 20 Dec. 1942, RR 45 44 45 Guy Robert. Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 62. 46 “Marc-Aurèle Fortin”. National Gallery of Canada, Accessed March 2018, www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/ marc-aurele-fortin. 47 "Esther Trépanier. La Réception Critique De Marc-Aurèle Fortin". Journal of Canadian Art History, XXVIII, 2007, 6. 48 Ibid. (English Translation) Louis Lange, "Un Peintre du Territoire". L’Action universitaire, avril 1943, vol. 9, no. 8, 5 (English translation) 49 50 Guy Robert. Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 122. 51 Léopoldine Marcotte. “The Légaré Mill in Saint Eustache, Quebec.” Encyclopedia of French Cultural Heritage in North America. Accessed 1 September 2020, www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-627/ The_L%C3%A9gar%C3%A9_Mill_in_Saint_Eustache,_Quebec.html.
Special Contributors Mark A. Cheetham Mark A. Cheetham, PhD, FRSC, is the author of books, volumes, and articles on topics ranging from Immanuel Kant and Art History to abstract art to Postmodernism in Canada. He has written extensively on Canadian artists, including Jack Chambers, Alex Colville, Robert Houle, and Camille Turner. His two books on abstract art offer new understandings of this radical form over its 100+-year history (The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting; Abstract Art Against Autonomy: Infection, Resistance, and Cure since the ‘60s.) Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature since the ‘60s was published in 2018. Active as a curator of contemporary and historical art, he recently presented Struck by Likening: The Power & Pleasure of Artworld Analogies at the McMaster University Museum of Art (2017) and Ecologies of Landscape at B E Contemporary, Toronto (2018-19). He is a professor of Art History at the University of Toronto. Lisa Christensen Lisa Christensen has worked in the art world for over thirty years, holding the positions of Director, Calgary Office for Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Associate Curator of Art at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum and Curator of Art at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, in addition to freelance curatorial and corporate work for the Audain Art Museum, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Art Gallery of Alberta among others. She has served on the Board of the Alberta Museums Association, the Art Advisory Council of Calgary’s Military Museums and as a trustee of the Board of the Leighton Art Centre. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary and is the author of four books on Canadian art history: A Hiker’s Guide to Art of the Canadian Rockies, A Hiker’s Guide to the Rocky Mountain Art of Lawren Harris, The Lake O’Hara Art of J.E.H. MacDonald and Hiker’s Guide, and Truth and Beauty in the Canadian Rockies: Exploring the Art of Walter J. Phillips, published in 2019. This award-winning series of books takes a unique approach to art history, combining a trailguide format with art history. A Hiker’s Guide to
Art of the Canadian Rockies won nine awards, including the inaugural W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and the Canadian Museums Association’s Award for Excellence in Publishing. Lisa is an accomplished public speaker, having lectured and presented on the subject of Canadian art at the University of Calgary, the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, the University of Lethbridge as well as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Alberta and many other public galleries. Lisa possesses a broad knowledge of Canadian art and a unique knowledge particular to the art of Canada’s West and the Rocky Mountains. She is an authority on art of the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Michèle Grandbois Michèle Grandbois is currently an independent art historian. She holds a doctorate in history from the Université Laval, and she taught art history before moving to the Musée national des beauxarts du Québec (MNBAQ) in 1987 as curator of the museum’s collection of works on paper and then of its collection of modern art. She retired from the museum in 2014. In addition to her activities in documentation, public representation, and expansion of the MNBAQ collections, Grandbois coordinated, directed, or co-directed some thirty exhibitions during her time as curator. She is the author of numerous monographs on Canadian artists, including Jean Dallaire, Clarence Gagnon, and Jean Paul Lemieux. Among her thematic writings are L’art québécois de l’estampe, 1945-1990 and (co-written with Anna Hudson and Esther Trépanier) The Nude in Modern Canadian Art, 1920–1950, winners in 1996 and 2011 respectively of the Award of Outstanding Achievement in Research from the Canadian Museums Association. She was general editor of the book Marc-Aurèle Fortin: L’expérience de la couleur (Marc-Aurèle Fortin: The Experience of Colour), which was awarded the Prix Marcel-Couture at the 2011 Salon du livre in Montreal. Her last project as curator of the MNBAQ was the exhibition Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse, presented in Quebec City in the summer of 2014.
Always seeking deeper understanding and animated by her desire to create greater public awareness of art history, Michèle Grandbois now devotes herself to writing projects on Canadian modern art. Charles C. Hill Charles C. Hill was Assistant, then Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada from 1972 to 2014. He has organized numerous exhibitions, including Canadian Painting in the Thirties (1975) and The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation (1995), and was co-organizer of Tom Thomson (2002), Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon (2006) and Artists, Architects, Artisans: Canadian Art 1890-1918. He became a member of the Order of Canada in 2000.
Joan Murray Joan Murray, the author of Tom Thomson: Trees, The Best of the Group of Seven, Northern Lights: Masterpieces of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Kurelek’s Vision of Canada, and many others, has had a curatorial, scholarly and administrative career spanning over 30 years, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (1968-1973) and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery of Oshawa where she was director from 1974 to 2000. Anna Orton-Hatzis Anna served as the inaugural coordinator of the online education platform LEARN at the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery where she also held the position of gallery assistant and researcher between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018. Between her tenures at Klinkhoff, Anna obtained her master’s degree from the University of Chicago, specializing in Art History. For her master’s thesis, she wrote on french artist Eugène Fromentin and his approach to orientalist painting. Prior, she graduated from McGill University with a joint honors bachelor’s degree in Art History and Anthropology. At McGill, Anna completed two honors theses, the first on museum repatriation policies in Canada and the second on the modern, Scottish potter Emma Gillies, a project written in conjunction with an exhibition at the
University of Edinburgh. Her current interests relate to French art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, post-colonial theory and gender studies. Since Fall 2018, Anna has been pursuing these interests at the doctoral level at the City University of New York in Manhattan.
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Frederick Taylor Inventory Project Alan, Jonathan and Craig Klinkhoff are pleased to announce the Frederick Taylor Inventory Project. All owners of works of art by Frederick Taylor are invited to submit images and details for inclusion in the official inventory. Visit Klinkhoff.ca/FredTaylor
The Montship Collection (formerly Montreal Shipping) A unique, maritime-themed collection for sale at Alan Klinkhoff Gallery. Visit Klinkhoff.ca/Montship
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— Appraisals & Estate Planning The Klinkhoff family has been appraising works of art since 1949. Alan, Jonathan and Craig Klinkhoff have many years of professional experience conducting appraisals, including evaluations for insurance, estate planning and for the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (CCPERB). The list of beneficiaries includes some of Canada’s most prominent private collectors as well as its finest institutions.
The Importance of Planning In due course, careful planning of how your collection is to be sold or distributed among your legatees is prudent. As a caution, we recommend that collectors not assume their children or heirs will share their same collecting interests. Speaking to your heirs about your legacy intentions and their preferences may alleviate the stress and cost to your heirs in future. If you enjoyed the purchase process, you may find that you enjoy equally the selling process. Alan Klinkhoff Gallery regularly conducts valuations of collections of important fine art. We offer accurate, cost effective appraisals and getting updates from us is both simple and efficient. Accuracy is derived from our experience as practitioners in the market. We elect to evaluate works within the ranges of our expertise and our interests. We do not undertake valuations for which we would need commit countless hours of research into relatively unknown artists
whose work is likely of the most modest value. Instead, we work within our areas of expertise and experience, that being recognized Canadian and international artists of importance. Our appraisals are of the highest professional standard. For decades now appraisals by the Klinkhoffs have been solicited by museums, government tax agencies, The Federal Minister of Justice, insurance companies, private collectors and corporations.
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Alan and Walter Klinkhoff outside Galerie Walter Klinkhoff.
— Buying Art Expertise in recognizing authenticity and quality works of art is the result of decades of working with Canada’s most important artists. The Klinkhoff family sold works directly on behalf of some of Canada’s most distinguished artists and/ or their estates, including Molly Lamb and Bruno Bobak, Paul-Émile Borduas, Sam Borenstein, Frederick Simpson Coburn, Nora Collyer, Berthe des Clayes, MarcAurèle Fortin, Clarence Gagnon, Prudence Heward, Randolph Hewton, Edwin Holgate, A.Y. Jackson, Jean Paul Lemieux, Arthur Lismer, John Little, Kathleen Morris, Robert Pilot, Anne Savage, René Richard, Jean Paul Riopelle, Goodridge Roberts, and Frederick B. Taylor In addition to associations with artists and/ or their estates, the Klinkhoff family has prepared and presented more than 35 museum-style retrospective exhibitions. These annual non-selling shows feature an important selection of works by a Canadian artist with a view in mind to studying them and sharing their virtues with other art aficionados. The Klinkhoff family has celebrated in that fashion several of the artists mentioned above as well as Emily Carr, Adrien Hébert, David Milne, M.A. Suzor-Coté and Albert H. Robinson to name only a selection.
A Note From Alan Klinkhoff My father was a gentleman of great integrity and an excellent role model for my brother and me. We offer to today’s buyers the same confidence and trust for the future, symbolized by the presence of my sons, Jonathan and Craig in the galleries. Today’s buyers like the idea that if they buy from a Klinkhoff today that there will be a Klinkhoff around when they are sellers. Jonathan, Craig and I provide guidance in all aspects of art collecting, including buying, selling, appraisals, estate planning, restoration, insurance and storage. Alan Klinkhoff Gallery also has longstanding relationships with a global network of collectors and organizations, enabling us to guide buyers and sellers of important fine art of greater interest in markets beyond Canada. We continue to serve successive generations within
families. Over the years the Klinkhoff family has been instrumental in helping to build some of Canada’s most prominent collections. The success of the Klinkhoff family’s endeavours is reflected in how frequently paintings with the Klinkhoff provenance are now owned by Canadian museums, featured in major exhibitions, in important retrospectives and publications.
Alan Klinkhoff with Madeleine DesRosiers & Jean-Paul Lemieux, L'Isle-aux-Coudres 1979
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Alan Klinkhoff Gallery is rooted in now three generations of experience in art markets, Canadian and international. For the reasons of financial efficiency, maximizing financial benefit, while minimizing financial risk and confidentiality, selling (or buying) your fine art to or through the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery is likely your most advantageous and financially efficient selling venue. In 2017, Alan Klinkhoff Gallery successfully managed the sale of a collection of paintings by Lawren Harris valued at more than $35 million, the largest single consignment of works of art in the history of the Canadian art market. The Klinkhoff family has sold works on behalf of countless distinguished private collectors and/or their estates as well as on behalf of important corporate collectors. References are available upon request.
With galleries in Montreal and Toronto, Alan Klinkhoff Gallery is the only fixed price fine art gallery selling classic fine art with locations in Canada’s two largest art collecting markets.
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— Art Consulting Services Advice From Experienced Art Dealers Unabashedly we encourage collectors of fine art to acquire works of art from our important inventory available in both our galleries and at www.klinkhoff.ca. We are confident that the works we offer are of excellent quality and available only at a fair price. Ours is a vetted selection of fine art. Our interest is to assist collectors of important fine art to allow us to help build their collections.
We Build Collections For the asking, we are pleased confidentially to provide references serving as merchants and advisors over the decades and continue to develop some of Canada’s most prominent private and corporate collections. Historically, the Klinkhoff family was instrumental in helping to develop the collections of the late Kenneth Thomson, the late Michael Dunn, the late R. Fraser Elliott, the late John A. MacAuley, Power Corporation of Canada, Canada Steamship Lines, Imperial Oil and countless others.
From left: Alan, Gertrude and Walter Klinkhoff inspecting a painting circa 1986
“...they find a knowledgeable person highly recommended, and whether it is for surgery, tax advice or the purchase of art, they are capable of taking advice.” Walter Klinkhoff, 1993 Paintings sold by the Klinkhoff family are in major museums, nationwide, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Quebec Museum), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Collection, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and others. Within the last 30 days of drafting this publication, two important museums have purchased fine paintings from us. Selectively, Alan Klinkhoff Gallery offers existing clients professional consulting services for buying and selling important fine art in Western Europe, the UK and the USA as well as at auction. Take advantage of our longstanding relationships in the trade and allow us to assist you using three generations of experience.
The Art of Taking Advice Walter Klinkhoff, my father, back in 1993 writing about successful and intelligent people wrote: “...they find a knowledgeable person highly recommended, and whether it is for surgery, tax advice or the purchase of art, they are capable of taking advice.” He continued about people in our business who ask advice about buying fine art and cannot act on it. “But it is frustrating if one spends time explaining and giving more reasons for recommending a course of action and the answer one gets begins
with ‘I don’t know’. When in a bad mood I usually respond that I know that they don’t know, which is sufficiently obvious, but that is the reason I am telling them. If they still don’t know after that, everybody is just wasting time.”
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Modern, Impressionist & 19 Century Art — Spring 2021
Klinkhoff Gallery
