HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
NOVEMBER 24, 2011
V ISIT
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
www.heffel.com VANCOUVER
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TORONTO
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MONTREAL
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
ISBN 978~1~927031~02~5
SALE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2011, 4PM, TORONTO
OTTAWA
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10/5/2011, 10:31 AM
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10/5/2011, 10:31 AM
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
AUCTION THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2011 4 PM, CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART 7 PM, FINE CANADIAN ART PARK HYATT HOTEL, QUEEN’S PARK BALLROOM 4 AVENUE ROAD, TORONTO PREVIEW AT HEFFEL GALLERY, VANCOUVER 2247 GRANVILLE STREET SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29 THROUGH TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 11 AM TO 6 PM PREVIEW AT GALERIE HEFFEL, MONTREAL 1840 RUE SHERBROOKE OUEST THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10 & FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 11 AM TO 7 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 11 AM TO 5 PM PREVIEW AT HEFFEL GALLERY, TORONTO 13 & 14 HAZELTON AVENUE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19 THROUGH WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 11 AM TO 6 PM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 10 AM TO 12 PM HEFFEL GALLERY, TORONTO 13 HAZELTON AVENUE, TORONTO ONTARIO, CANADA M5R 2E1 TELEPHONE 416 961~6505, FAX 416 961~4245 INTERNET WWW.HEFFEL.COM
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE VANCOUVER
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TORONTO
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE A Division of Heffel Gallery Inc. TORONTO 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E1 Telephone 416 961~6505, Fax 416 961~4245 E~mail: mail@heffel.com, Internet: www.heffel.com MONTREAL 1840 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, Quebec H3H 1E4 Telephone 514 939~6505, Fax 514 939~1100 VANCOUVER 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G1 Telephone 604 732~6505, Fax 604 732~4245 OTTAWA 451 Daly Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6H6 Telephone 613 230~6505, Fax 613 230~8884 CALGARY Telephone 403 238~6505 CORPORATE BANK Royal Bank of Canada, 2 Bloor Street East Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8 Telephone 604 665~5191, 800 769~2520 Account #06702 003: 109 127 1 Swift Code: ROYccat2 Incoming wires are required to be sent in Canadian funds and must include: Heffel Gallery Inc., 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E1 as beneficiary. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chairman In Memoriam ~ Kenneth Grant Heffel President ~ David Kenneth John Heffel Auctioneer License T83~3364318 and V11~100777 Vice~President ~ Robert Campbell Scott Heffel Auctioneer License T83~3365303 and V11~100776 Follow us on
@HeffelAuction
HEFFEL.COM DEPARTMENTS FINE C ANADIAN ART canadianart@heffel.com APPRAISALS appraisals@heffel.com ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE B IDDING bids@heffel.com SHIPPING shipping@heffel.com SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions@heffel.com
CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTIONS Heffel Fine Art Auction House and Heffel Gallery Inc. regularly publish a variety of materials beneficial to the art collector. An Annual Subscription entitles you to receive our Auction Catalogues and Auction Result Sheets. Our Annual Subscription Form can be found on page 108 of this catalogue. AUCTION PERSONNEL Audra Branigan, Elizabeth Hilson and Michelle Nowacki ~ Administrative Assistants Lisa Christensen ~ Calgary Representative Kate Galicz ~ Director of Appraisal Services Andrew Gibbs ~ Ottawa Representative Jennifer Heffel ~ Auction Assistant Patsy Kim Heffel ~ Director of Accounting Lindsay Jackson ~ Manager of Toronto Office Lauren Kratzer ~ Director of Art Index, Manager of Shipping Jamey Petty ~ Director of Shipping and Framing John Maclean, Anders Oinonen and Bobby Ma ~ Internal Logistics Alison Meredith ~ Director of Online Auction Sales Jill Meredith ~ Manager of Coordination and Reporting Kirbi Pitt ~ Manager of Advertising and Marketing Tania Poggione ~ Director of Montreal Office Olivia Ragoussis ~ Manager of Montreal Office Judith Scolnik ~ Director of Toronto Office Rosalin Te Omra ~ Director of Fine Canadian Art Research Goran Urosevic ~ Director of Information Services CATALOGUE P RODUCTION Audra Branigan, Dr. Mark Cheetham, Lisa Christensen, Dr. Franรงois~Marc Gagnon, Robert Heffel, Lindsay Jackson, Lauren Kratzer, Judith Scolnik and Rosalin Te Omra ~ Essay Contributors Brian Goble ~ Director of Digital Imaging David Heffel, Jill Meredith and Kirbi Pitt ~ Catalogue Layout & Production Dorota Kozinska ~ Proofreading Colleen Leonard, Max Meyer and Olivia Ragoussis ~ Digital Imaging Robert Heffel, Iris Schindel and Rosalin Te Omra ~ Text Editing, Catalogue Production COPYRIGHT No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, photocopy, electronic, mechanical, recorded or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Heffel Gallery Inc.
PRINTING Generation Printing, Vancouver ISBN 978~1~927031~02~5
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MAP OF PREVIEW AND AUCTION LOCATIONS
AUCTION Park Hyatt Hotel Queen’s Park Ballroom 4 Avenue Road, Toronto
PREVIEW Heffel Fine Art Auction House 13 & 14 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto Telephone 416 961~6505
Hotel Telephone 416 925~1234
Fax 416 961~4245
Saleroom Cell 1 888 418~6505
Toll Free 1 800 528~9608
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 5 5 5 5 7 100 101 106 107 107 108 108 109 110 111
SELLING AT AUCTION BUYING AT AUCTION GENERAL BIDDING INCREMENTS FRAMING , CONSERVATION AND SHIPPING WRITTEN VALUATIONS AND APPRAISALS CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY A RT CATALOGUE NOTICE FOR COLLECTORS TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS CATALOGUE ABBREVIATIONS AND S YMBOLS CATALOGUE TERMS HEFFEL ’S CODE OF BUSINESS CONDUCT , ETHICS AND PRACTICES ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION F ORM COLLECTOR PROFILE FORM SHIPPING FORM FOR PURCHASES ABSENTEE BID FORM INDEX OF ARTISTS
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
SELLING AT AUCTION Heffel Fine Art Auction House is a division of Heffel Gallery Inc. Together, our offices offer individuals, collectors, corporations and public entities a full service firm for the successful de~acquisition of their artworks. Interested parties should contact us to arrange for a private and confidential appointment to discuss their preferred method of disposition and to analyse preliminary auction estimates, pre~sale reserves and consignment procedures. This service is offered free of charge. If you are from out of town, or are unable to visit us at our premises, we would be pleased to assess the saleability of your artworks by mail, courier or e~mail. Please provide us with photographic or digital reproductions of the artworks and information pertaining to title, artist, medium, size, date, provenance, etc. Representatives of our firm travel regularly to major Canadian cities to meet with Prospective Sellers. It is recommended that property for inclusion in our sale arrive at Heffel Fine Art Auction House at least 90 days prior to our auction. This allows time to photograph, research, catalogue, promote and complete any required work such as re~framing, cleaning or restoration. All property is stored free of charge until the auction; however, insurance is the Consignor’s expense. Consignors will receive, for completion, a Consignment Agreement and Consignment Receipt, which set forth the terms and fees for our services. The Seller’s Commission rates charged by Heffel Fine Art Auction House are as follows: 10% of the successful Hammer Price for each Lot sold for $7,500 and over; 15% for Lots sold for $2,500 to $7,499; and 25% for Lots sold for less than $2,500. Consignors are entitled to set a mutually agreed Reserve or minimum selling price on their artworks. Heffel Fine Art Auction House charges no Seller’s penalties for artworks that do not achieve their Reserve price.
BUYING AT AUCTION All items that are offered and sold by Heffel Fine Art Auction House are subject to our published Terms and Conditions of Business, our Catalogue Terms and any oral announcements made during the course of our sale. Heffel Fine Art Auction House charges a Buyer’s Premium calculated at seventeen percent (17%) of the Hammer Price of each Lot, plus applicable federal and provincial taxes. If you are unable to attend our auction in person, you can bid by completing the Absentee Bid Form found on page 110 of this catalogue. Please note that all Absentee Bid Forms should be received by Heffel Fine Art Auction House at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of the sale. Bidding by telephone, although limited, is available. Please make arrangements for this service well in advance of the sale. Telephone lines are assigned in order of the sequence in which requests are received. We also recommend that you leave an Absentee Bid amount that we will execute on your behalf in the event we are unable to reach you by telephone.
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Payment must be made by: a) Bank Wire direct to our account, b) Certified Cheque or Bank Draft, unless otherwise arranged in advance with the Auction House, or c) a cheque accompanied by a current Letter of Credit from the Purchaser’s bank which will guarantee the amount of the cheque. A cheque not guaranteed by a Letter of Credit must be cleared by the bank prior to purchases being released. We honour payment by VISA or Mastercard for purchases. Credit card payments are subject to our acceptance and approval and to a maximum of $5,000 if you are providing your credit card details by fax or to a maximum of $25,000 if the card is presented in person with valid identification. Bank Wire payments should be made to the Royal Bank of Canada as per the account transit details provided on page 2.
GENERAL BIDDING INCREMENTS Bidding typically begins below the low estimate and generally advances in the following bid increments: $100 ~ 2,000 .............................. $100 $2,000 ~ 5,000 ........................... $250 $5,000 ~ 10,000 ......................... $500 $10,000 ~ 20,000 ................... $1,000 $20,000 ~ 50,000 ................... $2,500 $50,000 ~ 100,000 ................. $5,000 $100,000 ~ 300,000 ............. $10,000 $300,000 ~ 1,000,000 .......... $25,000 $1,000,000 ~ 2,000,000 ....... $50,000 $2,000,000 ~ 5,000,000 ..... $100,000
INCREMENTS
FRAMING, CONSERVATION AND SHIPPING As a Consignor, it may be advantageous for you to have your artwork re~framed and/or cleaned and restored to enhance its saleability. As a Purchaser, your recently acquired artwork may demand a frame complementary to your collection. As a full service organization, we offer guidance and in~house expertise to facilitate these needs. Purchasers who acquire items that require local delivery or out of town shipping should refer to our Shipping Form for Purchases on page 109 of this publication. Please feel free to contact us to assist you in all of your requirements or to answer any of your related questions. Full completion of our Shipping Form is required prior to purchases being released by Heffel.
WRITTEN VALUATIONS AND APPRAISALS Written valuations and appraisals for probate, insurance, family division and other purposes can be carried out in our offices or at your premises. Appraisal fees vary according to circumstances. If, within five years of the appraisal, valued or appraised artwork is consigned and sold through either Heffel Fine Art Auction House or Heffel Gallery Inc., the client will be refunded the appraisal fee, less incurred “out of pocket” expenses.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE VANCOUVER
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The Purchaser and the Consignor are hereby advised to read fully the Terms and Conditions of Business and Catalogue Terms, which set out and establish the rights and obligations of the Auction House, the Purchaser and the Consignor, and the terms by which the Auction House shall conduct the sale and handle other related matters. This information appears on pages 101 through 107 of this publication. All Lots can be viewed on our Internet site at: http://www.heffel.com Please consult our online catalogue for information specifying which works will be present in each of our preview locations at: http://www.heffel.com/auction If you are unable to attend our auction, we produce a live webcast of our sale commencing at 3:50 PM EST. We do not offer real~time Internet bidding for our live auctions, but we do accept absentee and prearranged telephone bids. Information on absentee and telephone bidding appears on pages 5 and 110 of this publication. We recommend that you test your streaming video setup prior to our sale at: http://www.heffel.tv Our Estimates are in Canadian funds. Exchange values are subject to change and are provided for guidance only. Buying 1.00 Canadian dollar will cost approximately 0.97 US dollar, 0.73 Euro, 0.62 British pound or 7.55 Hong Kong dollar as of our printing date.
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CATALOGUE
Featuring Works from The Estate of Edgar and Dorothy Davidson A Prominent Montreal Collection An Important Private Estate, Toronto & other Important Private Collections
SALE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2011, 4:00 PM, TORONTO
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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HAROLD BARLING TOWN CGP CPE CSGA OC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 1991
Two Years Before the Last oil and lucite 44 on board, signed and dated 1959 and on verso titled and dated on a label 24 1/4 x 24 1/4 in, 61.6 x 61.6 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Private Collection, Toronto The members of Painters Eleven differed in their ages, styles and approaches to art. They had in common their shared interest in creating something new and their geographic association of Toronto. They came
together in 1953, with Harold Town being the second youngest of this disparate group. Town was an incredibly diverse artist who worked in many media, and whose work pushed the limits of abstract art in each media he explored to its fullest extent. His work in oil is characterized by varied and often busy patterns, the use of collage elements and rough, textural surfaces. His quirky colours and brilliant hues are often used in opposition to one another as they are in this work; these are colours that speak boldly of Canadian abstract art in the 1950s and 1960s. Town’s calligraphic mark~making and incised scoring of partially dry paint recall ancient, ruined buildings. This contrast of the modern and the ancient results in an interesting juxtaposition of medium and message.
E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 15,000
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RITA LETENDRE ARCA OC QMG
1928 ~
Projection oil on canvas, signed and dated 1964 and on verso signed, titled and dated 8 x 10 in, 20.3 x 25.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Sandra Paikowsky, Rita Letendre: The Montreal Years 1953 ~ 1963, Concordia Art Gallery, 1989, page 32 During the early 1960s, Rita Letendre began to create fiery paintings erupting with thick, undulating texture and bold colour combinations. Consequently, she garnered great critical and commercial success that led
to traveling to Paris in 1962 with Ulysse Comtois on a Canada Council grant, then moving onwards to Rome and Israel before returning to Canada in the fall of 1963. With regard to Letendre’s travels, Sandra Paikowsky writes, “The new sobriety, the new angst and the emphatic dualism of light and colour were all reflections of her experiences in different cultural environments and geographic locales.” Executed in 1964 as a result of such experiences, Projection is a small yet dramatic painting with vibrant red and vivid green pushing against the masses of black with great confidence. Furthermore, the works produced shortly after her trip are regarded as the beginnings of her geometric works of the late 1960s and 1970s. Projection still reflects the dynamic abstraction of the Automatists, yet given the title and horizontal lines, this work is a clear predecessor to the flat, hard~edged works that were to follow.
E STIMATE : $9,000 ~ 12,000
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THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON CGP CSPWC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 2006
Thelonious at the Five Spot #1 oil on canvas, signed and dated 1963 and on verso titled and inscribed Riverside 50 x 50 in, 127 x 127 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, British Columbia Thelonious at the Five Spot #1 is a direct representation of the energy that had newly emerged onto the Toronto arts scene with the success of Painters Eleven. After the group’s official disbandment in 1960, Tom Hodgson continued to display his flair for Abstract Expressionism and for hosting social gatherings ~ this work being a combination of both
talents. Hodgson’s studio, the Pit, was the unofficial party quarters during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s for Hodgson and his painter friends. During one notably interesting evening at the Pit, one of Hodgson’s studio models stood in front of a slide show frame while his colourful abstract images were projected onto her body as she danced to the jazz music of famous pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. The title refers to Monk’s recordings at the famous Five Spot Café in New York. This legendary jazz club was a popular haunt for artists, and Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Joan Mitchell were regulars. Hodgson had his own distinct visual rhythm, which is clearly manifest in this work through broad brush~strokes, varied textures and a sense of spontaneity.
E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 16,000
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HAROLD BARLING TOWN CGP CPE CSGA OC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 1991
No Sun oil and lucite 44 on board, signed and dated 1959 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed oil on lucite 44 ~ use no turps in cleaning / Caution signature will float, Signed in blue on surface Town 59 / signed 16~12~70 30 x 24 in, 76.2 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, British Columbia The members of Painters Eleven were successful at creating their own artistic identities before their official parting in 1960. It was during the significant Painters Eleven time period that Harold Town’s multiple
artistic abilities clearly emerged as printmaker, painter and sculptor. He was an artistic tour de force, simultaneously working in various media with incredible vigour. In 1959, this energy was filtered primarily into painting and, as a result, his paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s are considered to be his most inspired. No Sun is an exemplary work from this period, with Town’s gestural brushwork highlighted by brilliant, unpredictable juxtapositions of colour. The work is highly expressive ~ characteristic of Town’s abstract paintings from this time ~ yet still maintains a consciously determined design with the definitive strokes near the perimeter successfully harnessing the storm of intense colours within. Although Town’s artistic identity would continue to evolve in the years to follow, it is works such as No Sun that so superbly capture his relentless energy and talents.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
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JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN AANFM RCA
1923 ~ 1999
Miroir sans image / rouge~orangé ~ no. 9 oil on canvas, signed and dated 1971 and on verso signed, titled and dated 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal
L ITERATURE : Constance Naubert~Riser, Jean McEwen: Colour in Depth, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987, page 48 The year 1971 was an important one for Jean McEwen. After he had devoted four years to the acrylic medium, an exhibition at the Galerie Godard Lefort in Montreal showcased his triumphant return to oil
painting with the Miroir sans image series. The oil medium allowed McEwen to create depths that acrylic could not. In Miroir sans image / rouge~orangé ~ no. 9, seductive shades of red are anchored by dark green at the perimeter and rich yellow squares in all corners. Thus the work excludes any subject matter, and the title only further reinforces the elimination of any extraneous narrative. Miroir sans image translates as “Imageless Mirror” and, as alluded to, in no way does the surface become physically reflective. Constance Naubert~Riser writes of the series: “This is painting that reflects nothing from the outside, painting that is nothing but painting, nothing but colour, variegated and stratified.” Such colour illustrates the dichotomy of this classic McEwen ~ pulling the viewer into the magnetic, bountiful depths but also drawing us back to the surface by the chromatic and wondrous gleam of the gold ~ thus exemplifying McEwen’s important contribution to formalism and the painterly approach.
E STIMATE : $30,000 ~ 50,000
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RITA LETENDRE ARCA OC QMG
1928 ~
Sans titre oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 14 1/8 x 12 1/8 in, 35.9 x 30.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Soixante, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal After the ground~breaking Refus global was published in 1948 and with the subsequent progression of the Automatists in Montreal, abstract art was being increasingly exhibited in the city. As a result, the public and art institutions gained more knowledge and gradually became well acquainted with non~figurative art. This growing acceptance and
appreciation set the stage for Rita Letendre’s rising success in the early 1960s, which included exhibiting at the Musée des beaux~arts de Montréal and the Musée du Québec in 1961 and, in the years to follow, traveling to Paris, Rome and Israel. The timing for success in Montreal was ripe, and Sans titre is a reflection of her commitment and dedication to the pulsating, vigorous abstraction of the Automatist movement. In 1961 ~ a pivotal year for Letendre ~ her most inspired and coveted works began to emerge, paintings bursting with thick impasto and zones of bright, turbulent colour ~ qualities that explode from Sans titre. The tonal composition of the vibrant green, cool white and deep orange against the dark background is the product of gestural strokes by Letendre’s powerful, yet ever so rhythmical, palette knife.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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MICHAEL JAMES ALECK SNOW OC RCA
1928 ~
Walking Woman oil on unstretched canvas 62 x 19 3/4 in, 157.5 x 50.2 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Private Collection, Montreal Michael Snow’s iconic Walking Woman works are emblematic of the Toronto Pop Art scene in the 1960s. Based on ideas generated from a cardboard cut~out of the walking woman form, which he created as part of a series intended to consist only of five or six works, Snow became interested in the possibilities that this large form presented as a stencil. His explorations of it were many and inventive, and were the sole focus of his work for a period of six years. On canvas and paper, flat sheets of metal and glass, and as a subject for film, she was folded, cut out, draped on dowels, silkscreened into prints and reproduced on T~shirts. She is always the same, yet always different, whether she was painted, sculpted, laser~cut in steel or taken out and placed into the public environment. Whether elongated, distorted, reversed in a mirror image, expanded or shrunk in this iconic series of works, her image challenges our perception of the human form.
E STIMATE : $45,000 ~ 65,000
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Untitled oil on canvas, signed and on verso dated December 1964 on the gallery label 44 x 40 in, 111.7 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : The New Design Gallery Ltd., Vancouver Private Collection, Toronto In 1960, Gordon Smith was chosen to represent Canada at the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; he also toured England and Europe. While visiting museums, he was drawn to artists for whom colour, mood and light were the focus, particularly J.M.W. Turner. Smith pulled this thread into his
abstract work, which he had begun in 1951 after studying with abstract painter Elmer Bischoff at the California School of Fine Arts. At that time, the work of the Abstract Expressionists had made him keenly aware of the qualities of paint itself and the gestural act of painting. Smith meshed together what interested him from these disparate artists into a synthesis of his own. By the mid~1960s, Smith was using colour in a bold way, as seen in this hot and sensuous palette of red, orange and gold. In this extraordinarily sensitive and poetic work, an abstracted relationship between figure and ground is explored, using softly layered, glowing colour fields. Drawn lines intersect and emphasize form, rather than defining it. Smith’s continual drive to evolve makes him one of Canada’s most important early modernist painters.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
1909 ~ 1977
Sing, Sing, Sing (BG 38) acrylic on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated December 1974 68 x 114 3/4 in, 172.7 x 291.4 cm P ROVENANCE : David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Karen Wilkin, editor, Jack Bush, 1984, “Wendy Brunelle Talks with Jack Bush, January 1977”, page 197 In 1974 Jack Bush began to paint musical themes explicitly. Music ~ jazz especially ~ had been important to his art for years, but here the connection is unequivocal and celebratory. By titling this magisterial canvas after the famous Benny Goodman big band tune of 1938, Bush was not only acknowledging the affinity of musical and painterly improvisation but also his longstanding fidelity to Henri Matisse’s explicitly musical compositions such as contained in Jazz, his artist’s book of 1947. As Matisse’s paper cut~outs do, Bush’s highly coloured forms move with freedom, elegance and purpose. Bush was a consummately visual artist ~ a master of colour, rhythm, texture and timing. This is not primarily a painting about music, or about Goodman, or even about Bush’s mood as he worked (he has said that he did not listen to the songs or instruments referenced in his titles as he painted ~ works such as Woodwind [1976], Mood Indigo [1976] and Basin Street Blues [1975]). The painting is not an illustration but a visual experience. While the surface soars in all respects, Bush at this time planned his large canvases with coloured preparatory drawings, including the all~important key colour of the ground, which he often laid in with chalk.
16 Just as the artist looked and thought hard as he applied the richly coloured and variegated ground and placed his colour “notes”, we can best derive satisfaction and insight from this canvas by attending to its details. In the grouped colour bars that parade across the top left, we see repetitions of hues (two yellows, two reds, several greens), but the shades of each tint are always different. Nothing is mechanical or made by system, but rather, carefully improvised. If we think of these colours as accents, the lone hard white just off centre in this group is a remarkable punctuation. As these forms rise from left to right, they also separate into free, solo marks. Reading from left to right, the last bar in the sequence appears almost as a negative form, given that its colour is very close to that of the ground. Noticing this subtle but important gesture about the painting’s materiality can also lead us to see that Bush left an uneven edge around the entire painted surface, a revealing space between what he painted and the physical frame of the work. This irregular threshold again declares that the painting is made of pigment on a ground, a pragmatic assertion also characteristic of the prominent American abstractionists of critic Clement Greenberg’s post~painterly abstraction generation, of which Bush was a prominent member. From the 1960s until his death in 1977, he exhibited with American artists such as Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and Helen Frankenthaler. He was in all ways their equal. As a composer in colour, he was unequalled. We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, for contributing the above essay. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the work of Jack Bush, being prepared by Sarah Stanners in cooperation with the National Gallery of Canada. Sarah Stanners will also be co~curating a Jack Bush retrospective exhibition with Marc Mayer at the National Gallery of Canada, scheduled to open in October 2014.
E STIMATE : $130,000 ~ 160,000
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH
Sing, Sing, Sing (BG 38)
ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
acrylic on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated December 1974 68 x 114 3/4 in, 172.7 x 291.4 cm
9 1909 ~ 1977
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LISE GERVAIS QMG
1933 ~ 1998
Les sentinelles oil on canvas, signed and dated 1964 and on verso titled on a label 48 1/4 x 60 1/4 in, 122.5 x 153 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Montreal Lise Gervais was interested in the possibilities inherent in paint, and used the palette knife to apply broad swathes of colour to her canvases. Choosing pure, brilliant pigments, she allowed very little blending to
occur in her work, thus her colours are incredibly rich. In Les sentinelles, this attention to the wonder of colour is enhanced by the visible, varying depth of the paint layers in areas of consistent colouration which have been applied against white, enhancing their brilliance and translucency. Gervais sometimes titled her works with reference to their bold colours, further underlining her interest in this aspect of her art. Quebec~born, she was inextricably linked to the Automatists in her approach and ideals, so much so that Jean~Paul Riopelle collected her work. Gervais was a respected teacher who, after studying at the École des beaux~arts in the late 1950s, went on to teach there herself in the 1960s. She also taught at Concordia University and the University of Quebec in Montreal.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
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YVES GAUCHER ARCA
1934 ~ 2000
CDR ~ GRB I acrylic on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 1988 40 x 50 in, 101.6 x 127 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Montreal
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Yves Gaucher, A Fifteen~Year Perspective, 1963 ~ 1978, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1979, page 16 Minimalism, as both a stylistic and philosophical choice, has been a part of accepted post~war visual practice since the 1960s. Nonetheless, the term has become a catch~all way of describing the process and intentions
of every individual Minimalist artist. In the case of Yves Gaucher, it was the impact of contemporary classical music, particularly that of Anton Webern, as well as his exposure to the painters of the New York School, that further determined his challenging of our notions of visual perception by refining and paring down the elements in his already abstract works. As Roald Nasgaard relates in his 1979 exhibition catalogue, Gaucher, who referred to himself as a French~speaking North American, created art that was the product of a cultural milieu between Paris and New York, and therefore not as easily categorized or appreciated as were other Quebec painters. Since 1963, his weaving of subtle colour juxtapositions and shape delineations explored motifs ranging from his Danses CarrĂŠes series through Grey on Grey, Colour Bands and, in the 1980s, his Dark Paintings, of which CDR ~ GRB I is a fine example.
E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000
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JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN AANFM RCA
1923 ~ 1999
Dernier rayon d’un rouge oil on canvas, signed and dated 1987 and on verso signed, titled and dated 1989 60 x 40 in, 152.4 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Ontario Jean McEwen can be associated with American painters such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Ad Reinhardt, who devoted themselves to the exploration between tectonic structure and its relationship to colour in abstraction. McEwen had studied with Rothko in San Francisco and, while in Paris in 1952, became well acquainted with American modernists showing there. From 1957 on, McEwen explored colour field painting through a succession of series. McEwen’s sensitivity to colour was such that as a young man in Paris he was struck by the luminosity of Pierre~Auguste Renoir’s blues. In Dernier rayon d’un rouge (Last Ray of Red) McEwen’s deep orange~red flames burn passionately behind the dark field in the foreground that dominates the work, glowing through delicate vertical lines and a horizontal band in the dark field and along its edges. Against the magisterial presence of the darkness, the red ~ which, as the title could suggest, is about to be overwhelmed ~ has an emotional eloquence, like a sunset being consumed by the night. In 1987, the first date noted on this work, McEwen was honoured with a retrospective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
E STIMATE : $25,000 ~ 35,000 12
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RITA LETENDRE ARCA OC QMG
1928 ~
Micromégas oil on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 1961 12 1/8 x 14 1/8 in, 30.8 x 35.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Here and Now Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Robert Fulford, Toronto Star Daily, March 24, 1962
E XHIBITED : Here and Now Gallery, Toronto, Rita Letendre, March 24 ~ April 9, 1962 In 1962, Dorothy Cameron, director of the Here and Now Gallery, issued a press release praising Rita Letendre because she had sold 53 paintings
that year. This was unprecedented in Canadian art, and was matched only by the Toronto artist Harold Town. Robert Fulford, writing for the Toronto Star, was most impressed by her solo show at Cameron’s gallery and remarked, “What is unexpected is the brilliance, and especially the variety of the pictures in the exhibition.” Letendre chose the title of this work knowingly. “Micromégas” is a short story by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire, published in 1752. It was considered a significant development in the history of literature because from it originated ideas which evolved into the genre of science fiction. The tale recounts a visit to Earth of a being from a planet that circled the star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn. The abstract cobalt blue pigment floating in a jet~black universe is a powerful and intense example of her work from her first solo exhibition outside of Quebec.
E STIMATE : $9,000 ~ 12,000
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PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE ESTATE
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PAUL~ÉMILE BORDUAS AUTO CAS QMG RCA
1905 ~ 1960
Chinoiserie oil on canvas, signed and dated 1956 and on verso titled on the Roberts Gallery label and alternatively titled Birches, Winter on the Laing Galleries label 23 1/2 x 28 3/4 in, 59.7 x 73 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist by Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., London, England, February 21,1957 Laing Galleries, Toronto Roberts Gallery, Toronto An Important Private Estate, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Two Canadian Painters: Paul~Émile Borduas ~ Harold Town, Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., 1958, reproduced page 9 François~Marc Gagnon, Paul~Émile Borduas (1905 ~ 1960), Biographie critique et analyse de l’oeuvre, 1978, pages 401, 418, 449, 501 and 529 and reproduced figure 103 Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting, The Logic of the Gaze, 1983, page 89
E XHIBITED : Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., London, England, Two Canadian Painters, Paul~Émile Borduas ~ Harold Town, October 7 ~ 25, 1958, catalogue #7 Chinoiserie was purchased in Paul~Émile Borduas’s Paris studio on February 21, 1957, along with three other pictures, by Mr. Cochrane, director of Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons in London, England. This gallery would exhibit Borduas’s work a few times, and our painting was exhibited from October 7 to 25, 1958, in a joint show with the Toronto artist Harold Town, under the title Two Canadian Painters: Paul~Émile Borduas ~ Harold Town. Alan Jarvis, then director of the National Gallery of Canada, wrote the preface of the catalogue published on that occasion. Blair Laing of Laing Galleries in Toronto bought it from Tooth and brought the painting back to Canada to sell it to a Canadian collector. Chinoiserie belongs to a series of paintings from 1956, such as Danses éphémères, Graphisme and Griffes malicieuses, in which Borduas seemed to want to keep something of the fluidity and graphic quality of the watercolours he had made two years earlier in the medium of oil, at a time in which he was under the influence of New York painting, especially that of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. In Chinoiserie, he sometimes used the painting knife on its edge, instead of using the blade flat on the canvas, to get some linear effects. But sometimes the blade slipped and, instead of
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tracing a line, created subtle “passages”, so to speak, like Paul Cézanne did, which described the melting of one colour into another one. The pictorial area seems open and lines surge from outside the painting’s periphery, especially from the bottom of the canvas. The gentle touch, like skimming on the surface of the white paint, suggested the presence of Chinese landscape in Borduas’s imagination. He had always been fascinated by Chinese painting; he had in his personal library Art of the Far East: Landscape, Flowers, Animals, which included “16 Plates in Colour from the Work of Old Chinese and Japanese Masters” and an introduction by Laurence Binyon. At the end of his life, Borduas wanted to travel to Japan, and was certainly attracted by the minimalism of Oriental art. Nevertheless, the word “chinoiserie” is slightly pejorative in French. It usually designates curios, trinkets or knick~knacks, not necessarily from China, but imitating Chinese style. Probably the choice of this title reflects the lack of pretension that Borduas wanted to convey when competing with the great art of China. Is there any sense in which Borduas’s painting could be said to have some relationship with Chinese art? For one thing, traditional Chinese painting is figurative and not abstract. Is this the reason why the painting was titled Birches, Winter by Laing Galleries on their label on verso? But even in an abstract form, Chinoiserie has one important feature in common with Chinese art. “Chinese painting,” as Norman Bryson explains, “has always selected forms that permit a maximum of integrity and visibility of structure through brushwork,” like foliage, bamboo, ridges of boulders, or mountain formations in the so~called “boned” style, or “forms whose lack of outline…allows the brush to express to the full the liquidity and immediate flow of the ink,” like mist, the theme of still or moving water or aerial distance, in the “boneless” style. Substitute a painting knife for the brush, and oil medium for the ink, and in Borduas’s Chinoiserie you will not be too far from what Bryson explained about Chinese painting. Abstract art, by groping for structure, putting form in question, giving more presence to the painterly gesture in the building of the image, was ~ maybe not always unconsciously ~ going back to the essence of Chinese painting. It is characteristic of Borduas that he could cross that road at the very moment when he was interested in “graphisme”, that is to say, in the graphic or linear quality of his art. We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay. This work is included in François~Marc Gagnon’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work online at http://www.borduas.concordia.ca/en/about/ index.php
E STIMATE : $150,000 ~ 200,000
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PROPERTY OF VARIOUS COLLECTORS
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LÉON BELLEFLEUR CAS PY QMG
1910 ~ 2007
Agnès oil on canvas, signed and dated 1972 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed (le cyclône) 26 x 32 in, 66 x 81.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Upstairs Gallery, Edmonton Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Guy Robert, Bellefleur, The Fervour of the Quest, 1988, page 103 Léon Bellefleur was a member of the Prisme d’yeux group founded in 1948 in Montreal, whose manifesto was to be free of any special aesthetic
and to counteract the rising influence of the Automatists. However, Bellefleur was still interested in Automatism with its use of gesture generated from the unconscious, and this interest extended into the early 1970s. In 1957, Bellefleur had switched from using a brush to a spatula, and a new choreography of gestures ensued. Guy Robert describes Bellefleur’s spatula work as “like a heated session of sabre fencing, with lunges, exchanged hits and audible flourishes, not to mention thrusts and counters, but also the other types of action taken by the painter, stamping, scraping and sponging certain surfaces.” Bellefleur’s work was improvisational, spontaneous, passionate and impulsive, and Agnès is a tour de force of his plastic gestures. Bellefleur’s titles were made in the spirit of improvisation ~ he exhibited with Galerie Agnès Lefort in Montreal, and it is possible that this title refers to her.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ 1924 ~ 2001
Sans titre oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 18 1/4 x 15 in, 46.3 x 38.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Gilles Corbeil, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal Marcelle Ferron left the traditional École des beaux~arts in Quebec in 1944 to experiment with abstraction. Shortly after, she met Paul~Émile Borduas and was greatly influenced by his non~figurative expressions and Surrealism. Consequently, she joined the Automatists in 1946 and
was a signatory of the manifesto Refus global in 1948. Upon the disbandment of the Automatists in 1953, Ferron moved to Paris, and during her 13~year tenure in the capital she had the opportunity to exhibit her work throughout Europe. In 1961, she won the silver medal at the Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil. A product of her successful Parisian period, Sans titre contains thick impasto, which is a further reflection of the work of Borduas, yet contains Ferron’s own distinct colours and gestures. While abroad, Ferron was able to purchase and grind her own pigments, which she mixed with poppy seed oil, resulting in her unique hues of purple, yellow and blue. In Sans titre, warm colour tones are energized with bright blue, and the surface displays the inspired movement of her palette knife.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 25,000
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PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF EDGAR AND DOROTHY DAVIDSON
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PAUL~ÉMILE BORDUAS AUTO CAS QMG RCA
1905 ~ 1960
Ronde d’automne oil on canvas, signed and dated 1953 and on verso titled and dated on the Martha Jackson Gallery label 20 x 24 in, 50.8 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, inventory #1053 Passedoit Gallery, New York Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., London, England Edgar and Dorothy Davidson, Montreal and then moving to Ottawa in 1972
L ITERATURE : Frank O’Hara, Art News, Volume 52, No. 9, January 1954 Rodolphe de Repentigny, L’Autorité du peuple, February 6, 1954, page 7 Paul~Émile Borduas: Paintings 1953 ~ 1956, Martha Jackson Gallery, 1957, unpaginated “Borduas parle…”, Liberté, January ~ February 1962, page 12 Paul~Émile Borduas 1905 ~ 1960, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1962, listed, unpaginated François~Marc Gagnon, Paul~Émile Borduas (1905 ~ 1960), Biographie critique et analyse de l’oeuvre, 1978, pages 323, 327 and 490
E XHIBITED : Passedoit Gallery, New York, Paul~Émile Borduas, January 5 ~ 23, 1954, catalogue #2 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Paul~Émile Borduas 1905 ~ 1960, January 11 ~ February 11, 1962, traveling to the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Toronto, 1962, catalogue # 82 Gallery Arthur Tooth and Sons Ltd., London, England Ronde d’automne appears as #15 on the “Liste des tableaux de Provincetown”, 1953, written by Paul~Émile Borduas probably at the end of a fruitful stay in Provincetown. Borduas had left Canada for the United States on April 1, 1953, although, as he explained to art critic Jacques Folch~Ribas, who published his words after Borduas’s death, “I didn’t leave for New York right away. I left in springtime, in April. I had an old habit of going to the country, and it seemed to me completely absurd to settle in New York for the oncoming summer. So I went instead to Provincetown, which is a charming place.” Indeed, Provincetown, on Cape Cod with sand dunes and the sea nearby, was beautifully situated. It was also known as an artists’ colony. Hans Hofmann, for instance, had his Summer School there, and it is possible that Borduas might have encountered him. However, we do not know that for sure, although
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Borduas seems to have worked a lot in Provincetown. The list we just mentioned contains 35 titles of works. Of these, a group of 18 ~ among them our Ronde d’automne ~ were presented at the first Borduas exhibition in New York at the Gisèle Passedoit Gallery. It was also shown at the great Borduas retrospective held after his death at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, at the National Gallery of Canada and at The Art Gallery of Toronto in 1962. It is an interesting small painting, in which Borduas maintained a difference between the centre and the periphery. The centre is busier than the edges; the movement, sometimes quite syncopated, calms down before reaching the perimeter of the canvas. This was a prolongation of a system already in place in 1952 and indicated how ready Borduas was at that time to adopt the all~overness of American painting, of which he was not yet aware. The colour of the painting was probably responsible for its title ~ its pale green and brown, with a few black and white accents, could be seen as typical autumn colours. Borduas was a master of tonal colour. He did not like simple oppositions between primary or complementary colours, and it is not surprising that this enabled him to suggest atmospheric colours, as he did here. Also, the movement in the work, coming from two directions, could suggest the wind. We do not know how this specific painting was perceived at the time, although it ended up in an extremely fine collection. But we can say that this first showing of Borduas in New York was well received. His exhibition at the Passedoit Gallery, from January 5 to 23, 1954, was well attended. The famous critic and poet Frank O’Hara wrote that “his technique becomes completely abstract in style, similar to much New York work, with great dependence on palette knife and on equality of surface working as well as of tonal distribution.” In other words, the door was open to Borduas in New York. And indeed, this New York period of his work would prove to be a favourite of collectors, especially in Toronto. Robert Motherwell, who was at the opening of the Passedoit exhibition, was supposed to have said of Borduas, “He is the Courbet of the XXth century!” If this is true ~ it was the Canadian critic Rodolphe de Repentigny who reported it in L’Autorité du peuple ~ Borduas could not have had a better assessment. We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay. This work is included in François~Marc Gagnon’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work online at http://www.borduas.concordia.ca/en/about/ index.php
E STIMATE : $125,000 ~ 175,000
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IMPORTANT WORKS FROM A PROMINENT MONTREAL COLLECTION
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Nineteen Ten Remembered oil on canvas, signed and dated 1962 and on verso titled and inscribed Appartient à Anne Sophie Lemieux, Madeleine Lemieux ~ 70 42 x 57 1/2 in, 106.7 x 146 cm P ROVENANCE : Collection of Madeleine Des Rosiers (Lemieux) and Anne Sophie Lemieux, Sillery, Quebec Acquired directly from the family of the Artist by Rosaire Archambault, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Gabrielle Roy, “Les ‘terres nouvelles’ de Jean~Paul Lemieux”, Vie des Arts, Winter 1962 ~ 1963, pages 38 ~ 43, reproduced page 40 Robert Ayre, “Jean Paul Lemieux and the Lonely Land”, Montreal Star, April 1963, mentioned and reproduced, unpaginated Luc d’Iberville~Moreau, Jean Paul Lemieux, Musée des beaux~arts de Montreal, 1967, listed page 77, reproduced page 37 Guy Robert, Jean Paul Lemieux, ou la poétique de la souvenance, 1968, pages 10 and 68, reproduced page 69 Anne Hébert, Jean Paul Lemieux: Moscou, Léningrad, Prague, Paris, Ministère des Affairs culturelles du Québec, 1974, page 10, reproduced front cover and page 23 Jean Paul Lemieux peintre québécois, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1974, page 16 and reproduced front cover Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1975, reproduced front cover and pages 35 (detail), 136 (Musée du Québec 1967 retrospective exhibition photograph), 147 (Moscow 1974 retrospective exhibition photograph) and 200 “16 peintres du Québec dans leur milieu”, Vie des arts, 1978, page 97 Marcel Dubé, Jean Paul Lemieux et le livre, 1988, pages 70 and 80 Marie Carani, Jean Paul Lemieux, Musée du Quebéc, 1992, listed page 276 and reproduced page 177 L’effet Lemieux, Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec, 1992, reproduced page 10 Au fil des évènements, Université Laval, June 11, 1992, reproduced page 13 Ann Duncan, “An Artful Approach to Summer in the City”, The Gazette, June 12, 1993, reproduced, unpaginated Claude Desjardins, “Jean Paul Lemieux, livre, marginal, moqueur et inquiet”, La Voix des Mille~Îles, June 27, 1993, mentioned, unpaginated Christophe Pellet, “Les espaces de Jean Paul Lemieux peintre canadien”, La côté des arts, September 1993, reproduced, unpaginated Gaëtan Brulotte, L’univers de Jean Paul Lemieux, 1996, reproduced front cover Michèle Grandbois, Jean Paul Lemieux au Musée du Québec, Musée du Québec, 2001, reproduced page 109
Jean Paul Lemieux and his wife Madeleine Des Rosiers during the Musée du Québec’s (now the Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec) retrospective exhibition, fall 1967 Gestion A.S.L. Inc., Copyright for Jean Paul Lemieux
John R. Porter, Pierre Théberge, Anne Sophie Lemieux and Madeleine Lacerte, Homage to Jean Paul Lemieux, National Gallery of Canada, 2004, listed page 119 and reproduced page 83 Jennifer Dales, “Alone in the Universe: The Landscapes of Jean Paul Lemieux”, Canadian Medical Association Journal, February 2005, pages 383 ~ 384, reproduced page 383 Nathalie Bondil, All For Art! In Conversation with Collectors, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2007, reproduced page 155 Michèle Grandbois, Jean Paul Lemieux au Musée national des beaux~arts du Quebec, Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec, 2007, reproduced pages 4 (Musée du Québec 1967 retrospective exhibition photograph) and 100 Jean Paul Lemieux ~ Exposition rétrospective, Galerie Jean~Pierre Valentin, 2009, reproduced page 11
E XHIBITED : National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Fifth Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Painting, September 20 ~ October 27, 1963, traveling to the Commonwealth Institute, London, England, the Public Library and Art Museum, London, Ontario, the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, the Musée du Québec and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1963 ~ 1964, catalogue #37 Le Musée des beaux~arts de Montréal, Jean Paul Lemieux, September 15 ~ October 11, 1967, traveling to the Musée du Québec and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1967 ~ 1968, catalogue # 35 Musée du Québec, Jean Paul Lemieux, 1974, traveling to Moscow,
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detail 18
Leningrad, Prague and Paris, 1974 ~ 1975, catalogue #5 Musée du Quebéc, Jean Paul Lemieux, June 3 ~ November 1, 1992, catalogue #60 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Homage to Jean Paul Lemieux, October 22, 2004 ~ January 2, 2005, traveling to the Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, 2005, catalogue #30 The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, All For Art! Our Great Private Collectors Share their Works, December 6, 2007 ~ March 2, 2008, catalogue #191 Galerie Jean~Pierre Valentin, Montreal, Jean Paul Lemieux ~ Exposition rétrospective, September 12 ~ 16, 2009 Jean Paul Lemieux was born in Quebec City on November 18, 1904. His father, Joseph~Flavien, was a traveling salesman and often absent from home. Lemieux’s childhood was spent mainly with his mother Marie~Corinne Blouin, his older sister Marguerite and his younger brother Henri. They had an easy life; during the winter months they
lived in Quebec, but from May to November the family spent time at Kent House, today known as the Manoir Montmorency. This is an elegant hotel situated just above the Montmorency Falls, one of the more spectacular sites in Quebec. Kent House got its name from a romantic episode in the life of the Duke of Kent who spent time there between 1791 and 1793 with Madame de Saint~Laurent. Even if Nineteen Ten Remembered does not show the building, the fact that the title of the painting is in English was probably a way of referring to it. In 1910, the young Jean Paul was a six~year~old child, and it is he and his parents who are portrayed in this 1962 canvas. There exists a photo of him with his younger brother near a fountain at Kent House, in which he wears a similar sailor outfit to the one we see in his painting. In fact, Nineteen Ten Remembered was the first of a series of autobiographical paintings in which the painter had represented himself at different ages: in Les temps passés, 1965, he put himself in the company of people from the past; in L’été de 1914, of the same year (in the collection of the Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec), in which he represented himself at
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the age of 10 near Kent House ~ clearly recognizable this time ~ with his sister Marguerite. There is a well~known painting, Autoportrait of 1974, also in the collection of the Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec, where he has depicted himself three times: as a boy, as an adolescent and as an old man of 70 (his age when he painted this self~portrait). They all face the spectator, and behind them Lemieux showed his own paintings, Le visiteur du soir, 1956 (in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada), and Le cavalier dans la neige, 1967 (in a private collection). Nineteen Ten Remembered, then, is an evocation of the childhood of the painter. Lemieux was quoted by the art critic Guy Robert as saying, “Childhood is light, joy, the age of perfect happiness. You can be happy before 10 years old, and after 50 years old. In between, it is the time of struggle, and bitter fights.” Lemieux ~ it has not been noted enough perhaps ~ was a painter of childhood. One may recall his Ti~Gus, auctioned at Heffel last year (sale of May 26, 2010, in Vancouver), to cite a famous example. But it would be presumptuous to conclude from his statement about the happiness of childhood that his representations of children are sweet and joyful. Most of the time they show some complexities of character that seem to imply that childhood is also not free from struggle and misery. One recalls L’orpheline, 1956 (in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada) or, even more, La mort par un clair matin, 1967 (in the collection of the Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec), which shows a child and her mother in black, mourning their loved one. The child looks sad and determined, facing the unknown but bearing up under the circumstances. If we go back to our painting, the child seems more quiet than happy, and the parents, although facing each other, seem lost in their own thoughts, without much communication between themselves. Maybe the cloud that hangs over the boy is slightly symbolic. It is not the easy portrait of a happy family. The boy is closer to his father in this picture, maybe because he missed him more during that period. Nevertheless, the open space behind them suggests that the scene was taking place near Kent House, above the Montmorency Falls. We also see in the distance a lady in white with a parasol, looking away. Lemieux had a tendency to represent the surroundings of the Manoir as an immense park, which in reality is not so extended. But is it not typical of childhood memory to give unreal dimensions to space, dimensions that correspond more to the feeling of freedom experienced then? This famous painting, often reproduced, was exhibited at Lemieux’s retrospective at the Musée du Québec in 1967. One can see it on the wall in a photo of Lemieux and his wife standing alone in the big exhibition room of the Museum. It was also presented in Moscow in July 1974, as we can see in another photo (less well known than the previous one). It hung there not far from L’été de 1914. Both exhibitions were major presentations of Lemieux’s works and show how widespread the appeal of Lemieux’s work was. Both Quebecers and Russians alike recognized themselves in these landscapes and people. Lemieux was very touched by this reception in both cases. He saw himself rather as a painter of the North than as a painter of a specific territory. He was annoyed by the tendency of certain critics to make of him “le peintre québécois par excellence” and aspired to a broader recognition.
Lemieux retrospective in Moscow, July 1974
Jean Paul Lemieux and his brother Henri at Kent House, summer 1911
As we know, this opposition between the “north” and the “land” was pivotal to the definition of the Canadian identity. The Group of Seven had experienced something of the kind in a previous era. Over time, both Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson felt attracted by the north, where we can say that all our divisions come to an end. Lemieux felt the same, even if he traveled much less than they did. However, to get the right grey sky was more crucial for him than to show mountains or icebergs. We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
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MICHAEL JAMES ALECK SNOW OC RCA
1928 ~
Sideway lucite on aluminum, enamel on wood, steel brackets, nuts and bolts, signed and dated 1962 and on verso signed, dated May ~ June 1962 and inscribed Toronto and The aluminum has been coated with Lucite and the paints are enamel 73 x 30 x 21 3/4 in, 185.4 x 76.2 x 55.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto A Prominent Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : “Michael Snow introduces the Walking Woman” video, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2009, viewable at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO88Yee8nPk (accessed September 14, 2011) Michael Snow is one of Canada’s best~known and most influential living artists. His famous Walking Woman series ~ a remarkably varied array of works that was his focus from 1961 to 1967 ~ remains the icon of his protean oeuvre. The simple silhouetted female form appears about 200 times, solo or in multiple. She graces Snow’s paintings, photography, films and, as in this superb example, his sculpture. In this form she took star turns in art galleries, on the street nationally and internationally, and most famously at Expo 67 in Montreal. Snow memorably rings the changes on the formal and conceptual possibilities of art and our perception of the world with this one image. With it he says something profound about the visual in our consciousness and in our society. The first Walking Woman pieces were exhibited in 1962 at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto. Snow’s description of these works’ inception is disarmingly simple: in the early 1960s he had been occupied with surfaces and planes in abstract painting. He wanted to do something different, to play with the figure, but not in traditional naturalistic ways. He made a large cardboard cut~out of the figure we know as Walking Woman and placed it initially on a gallery wall. But, typical of Snow’s genius, two radical thoughts ensued: first, that his stencil allowed him to reproduce the figure endlessly, making variations inside the form while retaining the recognizable outline; secondly, Snow said that he “realized that [the form] could be anywhere…in the world.” The Walking Woman helped to lead art out of the protocols, securities and privileges of the gallery onto the street. Sculptural versions such as Sideway performed this escape most effectively. Sideway asserts and then plays with its three~dimensionality. It is massively thick or deep, a manifestly physical slab rather than a simple image. Yet by painting the image’s surfaces of the aluminum form in vibrant green and red, Snow takes the sculpture back into the realm of painting. From straight on (rather than sideways), we could be looking at a two~dimensional painting. Snow never lets us rest with one viewpoint; his ethos is one of “both/and”, not “either/or”.
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red façade 19
The social and spatial presence of Sideway are crucial to its potency. We can, of course, move around the walking figure even while she seems to stride towards or away from us. And if we catch a glimpse of her as “just” a painting from one perspective, we are reminded by the assertive platform on which Snow places her that she exists in the round. The social dimensions are again emphasized by the doubleness of Sideway. “She” is a twin ~ but of the fraternal sort, ironically ~ given the difference in colour applied by Snow to the iconic outline. And lest we think that we, the audience, control her through our looking, it is also clear in this classic example of Snow’s wit that she/they could as easily ignore us and simply look at one another. We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE : $130,000 ~ 160,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Grande fête oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed twice, dated 1952 and inscribed on a label masterpiece 39 3/8 x 19 3/4 in, 100 x 50.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Foundation Maeght, Saint~Paul~de~Vence, France Acquavella Modern Art, Nevada, inventory #AMA1614 A Prominent Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Daniel Abadie and Claire Stoullig, Jackson Pollock, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, 1982, page 288 Riopelle, Paintings from the Fifties, Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1989, reproduced, unpaginated Adrien Maeght et al, Jean~Paul Riopelle d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, Foundation Maeght, 1990 Yseult Riopelle, Jean~Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, 1999, reproduced full page colour page 163, catalogue #1952.006H.1952 Paul Maréchal, Connaissance des arts, 2002, page 47
E XHIBITED : Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, Riopelle, Paintings from the Fifties, 1989, catalogue #6, NFS (Not for sale) Foundation Maeght, Saint~Paul~de~Vence, France, Jean~Paul Riopelle d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, 1990, catalogue #6 Grande fête / Great feast indeed! We have all seen the photograph of the young Jean~Paul Riopelle in his Paris studio on Durantin Street in front of a canvas in the style of this work. There is, however, a photograph taken by Denise Colomb in 1953 ~ a year after our painting ~ that seems relevant here. Riopelle is in his working outfit, leaning on the back of a chair in front of a painting quite similar to Grande fête, at least in size and format. Behind him there is a table covered with newspapers where one can see a spatula and the famous palette knife with which most of his paintings were done. At his feet, on the dirty floor, are tin cans, brushes, a bottle of oil (or thinner) and maybe another spatula ~ but no paint tubes! Riopelle is known to have mixed his pigments himself to get purer colours. To the left, a window spattered with paint drops throws light on the scene. Riopelle stands self~assured, looking directly at the photographer with his hand on his hip. At the time this photograph was taken, Riopelle’s reputation in Paris was beginning to gain momentum. He had already attracted the attention of André Breton (the founder of the Surrealist movement, who described him as a “trappeur supérieur”), the critic Georges Duthuit (an habitué as Riopelle was of the Café du Dragon) and later on, the writer Samuel Beckett. In another of the photographs from the same period, he is seen in conversation with Pierre Loeb ~ the Paris gallery owner who launched many painters of the so called “abstraction lyrique” movement such as
Jean~Paul Riopelle, 1953 Denise Colomb (1902 ~ 2004) © Denise Colomb ~ RMN Photo credit: Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine Dist. RMN / Art Resource, NY
Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva, and Zao Wou~ki, and a staunch promoter of Riopelle ~ in his studio in Paris in front of paintings similar to Grande fête. The year before he painted Grande fête, Riopelle participated in Véhémences confrontées, a show organised by the painter Georges Mathieu at Galerie Nina Dausset, from March 8 to 31, 1951. Riopelle already knew this gallery well, since it was there that he had his first one man show in Paris in 1949. As its title indicated, Véhémences confrontées, if not “opposed”, was at least in parallel to American, French and Italian artists of the avant~garde. Riopelle, who was already in contact with American artists living in Paris such as Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, must have liked the idea of this “confrontation”. He wrote a text for a broadsheet published on this occasion, which happened to be one of the rare texts that he published and in which he defined his position of the moment, in particular declaring his distance from Canadian Automatism. “Automatism,” he wrote, “which pretended to be the open door to all possibilities, in fact put a restriction on risk… But only total risk can be creative.” But since he was underlining at the same time the importance of
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“consciousness”, “awareness” and “real control”, it was clear that he was advocating a view far from both monotony and chaos. Monotony could come from too much control, and chaos from total chance or risk, if one were exclusive to the other. We are reminded of a quote attributed to Democritus: “Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.” The astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, whom I heard recently in a public lecture quoting this paradoxical saying attributed to the Greek philosopher, gave snowflakes as an example of his thought. Each snowflake is constructed on the basis of a hexagonal scheme (necessity), but not one snowflake looks exactly like another (chance). Nature seems to like working that way: starting from chaos and randomness and slowly by combination, coalescence or other means, creating structures, order
and harmony. Nature starts with quarks and ends with neurons in the human brain! I am tempted to apply the same idea to Grande fête. Risk has certainly played a role in the elaboration of the painting. How does one make sense otherwise of the red~brown, yellow and blue strokes of the palette knife patiently laid on the whole surface of the painting? They do not seem to follow any specific pattern of their own. When Riopelle was asked if his painting could be described as abstract, his answer was: “Abstract means to come from nature…I would rather say that what I want is to go towards Nature.” On the background of this work, long lines of white and black were superimposed, that indeed structure the initial chaos and create an ordered composition, a harmonious totality. Notice that this is a utilization of line very different from what we see in Jackson Pollock’s
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paintings. In Pollock’s work, the line does not structure anything. Its pure energy is made visible on a background which is the unprimed canvas, precisely to show that the line is an entity in itself, independent of any function of contouring or of shapes detaching from a background. In one of the rare Pollock paintings in a Canadian museum, the mesh of lines was projected on glass, which the support dematerialized even more. I speak, of course, of the painting No. 29, 1950, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. In other words, in the Riopelle painting, the mesh of black and white lines has been thrown like a fish net or a giant spider web on the thickly painted ground. These lines organize the surface, which otherwise would have been difficult to read properly. The format is vertical and the lines work like the traces of fireworks, hence the title: Grande fête. We could say also that this was a solution that Riopelle had already explored in previous works on paper. In these early works, the black lines drawn with the pen were superimposed on less defined areas of colour. He pursued the same idea here, but on a much bigger scale. The result is both satisfying and intriguing, both abstract and readable. On a label in the back of the painting one reads the word “masterpiece”, probably written by Pierre Matisse himself. I believe he knew what he was talking about! We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE : $900,000 ~ 1,200,000
Jean~Paul Riopelle, 1953 Denise Colomb (1902 ~ 2004) © Denise Colomb ~ RMN
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre watercolour and ink on paper on canvas, circa 1946 ~ 1949 11 7/8 x 16 1/8 in, 30.2 x 41 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Collection In December of 1946, Jean~Paul Riopelle and his wife Françoise left Montreal for Paris, where they would live for several months, returning to Montreal in July of the following year for the birth of their first child. Riopelle showed a number of works at the Galerie du Luxembourg while in Paris, and signed the Surrealist manifesto Rupture inaugurale. They moved back to Paris in late 1948; in the interim, the Refus global was
released. It was a time of revolutionary upheaval in Quebec; the asbestos miners’ strike took place in 1949, dividing government support within the Catholic Church in a fundamental manner. At this time, many books were blacklisted by the government. When sending books on the forbidden list to his friends in Quebec, Riopelle used his watercolours as camouflage to cover the jackets of these offending books so that he could safely get them through. This watercolour is an excellent example of his works from this time, in which the vivid underlying colours have a clear structure, yet they read through the thin, loosely washed and concentrated lines of black as entirely abstract. This work will be included as an addendum to Volume I in Yseult Riopelle’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.
E STIMATE : $35,000 ~ 45,000
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JEAN~PAUL ARMAND MOUSSEAU AANFM AUTO CAS QMG 1927 ~ 1991
Sans titre (série Spectrum) pastel on card on board, signed and dated 1958 44 x 27 7/8 in, 111.7 x 70.8 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Pierre Landry, Francine Couture and François~Marc Gagnon, Mousseau, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 1997, reproduced page 106, listed page 147
E XHIBITED : Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Mousseau, January 24 ~ April 27, 1997, catalogue #158 Jean~Paul Mousseau was the youngest member of the Automatists. He came from a working~class background and, restricted by finances, his works in his early years were small and executed in gouache, watercolour and ink. He championed the creation of public, non~figurative art in Montreal in the 1950s, and his commissioned ceramic piece 54 Circles, created for the Montreal Metro in 1966, was a ground~breaking public work. Mousseau worked in many media, including those with three~dimensional possibilities such as fibre, ceramic, glass, jewellery, theatre design and costumes, and was especially interested in new media such as fibreglass and resin, in which he found the possibilities for expressive light and colour very exciting. His interest in the effects of light within his works led to experimentation with pastels in a series of works exploring colour and line, wherein the concentrated pigments of pastels, being suspended in oil, convey colour in a distinct, luminous way.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000 22
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Dans le layon oil on canvas, signed and dated 1967 and on verso signed, titled and dated 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in, 100 x 100 cm P ROVENANCE : Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, inventory #ST~7349 Acquavella Gallery, New York, inventory #AMA2192 Didier Imbert Fine Art, Paris A Prominent Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, page 82 During the 1960s, Jean~Paul Riopelle’s work underwent significant change. He expanded his media, exploring ink on paper, watercolour, lithography, collage and sculpture. He pushed his paintings to the limit, abandoning all ideas of underlying structure and any references to the patterning of Cubism, leaving even the compositional tools of repetition and symmetry behind. He relied only on the paint, and pushed the viscosity and colour of his pigments to perform for him. The grey and grey~white areas in this work are especially interesting. Some have been applied with a palette knife in smooth, fluid motions; others have been gone over with a smaller trowel in a robust, stabbing sort of motion to pull the paint off the canvas in a perpendicular direction. This method would create the most impasto possible, and in looking at these spaces, one can almost hear an audible “smack” as the strands of wet paint were pulled apart. Going back again into this wet surface with his finger or perhaps a small dowel or blunt brush end, Riopelle has divided
41 these areas of prickly impasto by smoothing them with an uneven grid of linear incisions. These smooth lines play against the painted black lines that are somewhat regular in length as they dance, both vertically and horizontally, in an arc across the work. As a painterly surface, the work is varied and compelling. When we draw our eye away from these tactile elements, we can consider the colour. Together with the primary colours of blue, yellow and red that Riopelle has added with a painting trowel, we have a full world of colour here. While not strictly there on the surface of the work, the possibility of a fuller range of colour is implied through the palette we see. Viscous paint and primary colour have been used masterfully. Often, our urge with works such as this is to read concrete imagery into them based on the title that Riopelle has assigned, titles which were often associated with places and things of significance to him. The title of this work, Dans le layon, likely refers to the Layon river in France, a tributary of the Loire. This river is strung with numerous bridges, and we wonder if Riopelle is giving us his impression, fully abstracted, of one of them. The main, central area of coloured visual activity in this work is certainly evocative of the structure of a bridge, and has a further reinforcement in the black and blue areas at the bottom of the painting, which we might read as water reflecting the forms above, caught in the white light of dancing, brilliant reflections at night. While he was in Paris, where this work would have been painted, Riopelle was referred to as an ‘Abstract Impressionist’ due to his admiration of the work of Claude Monet. For Riopelle, and in particular with reference to Dans le layon, the categorization is especially apt. This work will be included in Yseult Riopelle’s forthcoming Volume IV of the catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.
E STIMATE : $100,000 ~ 120,000
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PAUL~ÉMILE BORDUAS AUTO CAS QMG RCA
1905 ~ 1960
Aquarelle no. 4 watercolour and ink on paper, 1954 14 x 18 in, 35.6 x 45.7 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist to a Private Collection, New York Private Collection, Toronto This bright watercolour was done in New York, where Paul~Émile Borduas lived from the fall of 1953 until 1955, after which time he moved to Paris where he remained until his death in 1960. Traveling to the United States during the McCarthy years was not easy for Borduas, as his writings and associations caused the American border authorities to suspect him of
being a communist sympathizer. But once there, he found New York incredibly stimulating. He saw the work of the American Abstract Expressionists and he began to use a palette knife to apply paint, which freed him from the formalism of painting in a remarkable way. This led to an opening~up of space, which resulted in watercolour~and~ink~based works such as Aquarelle no. 4, which is concerned with light, space and colour alone. Ultimately, it is a true abstraction of the simplest type. There is no reference to a subject, other than to define the work by its media as given in the title. This work is included in François~Marc Gagnon’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work online at http://www.borduas.concordia.ca/en/about/ index.php
E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 16,000
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JEAN LEFÉBURE 1930 ~
Champ magnétique oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 and on verso signed, titled and dated 28 5/8 x 36 1/4 in, 72.7 x 92.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Quebec Private Collection, Toronto Jean Lefébure studied at the École des beaux~arts in Montreal, graduating in 1949. He then went on to train under Paul~Émile Borduas and became associated with the Automatists. Following the publication of the Refus global, he participated in a number of group shows with Borduas as well as
showing alongside Marcelle Ferron, Jean~Paul Mousseau and Marcel Barbeau in 1950, 1951 and 1952. Lefébure, like so many avant~garde Québécois artists at the time, was frustrated with the negative reception of his work, and left Canada for Europe. He studied and lived in Paris for a time, working with Henri Goetz and visiting numerous exhibitions. He traveled to Spain and lived a bohemian life, traveling with gypsies while continuing to paint. He exhibited his work in Madrid, then returned to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso. Borduas’s influence was strong, and of all the artists who worked with him, it was Lefébure whose work bore the most marked similarity to Borduas’s. Yet his open, large, troweled~on expanses of paint have a different quality from those of his mentor ~ they are as minimalist as this type of abstraction can be.
E STIMATE : $9,000 ~ 12,000
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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ 1924 ~ 2001
Chandelle oil on canvas, signed, 1959 39 x 58 1/2 in, 99 x 148.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Dr. and Mrs. Otto Bengle, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Gilles Henault et al, Marcelle Ferron de 1945 à 1970, Musée d’art contemporain, reproduced, unpaginated
E XHIBITED : Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal, Marcelle Ferron de 1945 à 1970, April 8 ~ May 31, 1970, catalogue #36 Marcelle Ferron is one of Canada’s most interesting contemporary female painters. Raised in a convent, but having a liberal~thinking father, her world was a dichotomy of societal expectation and personal aspiration. Her early art training in Quebec City under Jean Paul Lemieux had ended with her expulsion after a dispute over the isolated, conservative approach of her professors. She contacted Paul~Émile Borduas, whose work she had seen, having felt an immediate affinity with his non~referential abstract work and his anti~church, anti~faith, anti~establishment ideas. Borduas invited her to enroll at the l’École du meuble where he was teaching. Married by this time, she already had one child. Borduas’s mentorship spurred her work and her commitment to her ideals. She co~signed an open letter to the Spring Salon of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, criticizing their conservative selection of works. This was an ideological precursor to the famous Automatist manifesto that would follow in a few short months, and was, in fact, penned in draft form by this time. She would add her name as a signatory to Refus global when it was published in the summer of 1948. Ferron struggled for acceptance of her work in Canada. She had held her first solo show at the Librarie Tranquille in January of 1959, but this was the same sympathetic venue that had sold copies of Refus global the
45 summer before. Reaction to the manifesto had been strong ~ Borduas had lost his job, and clerics, priests, bishops and Catholic scholars had spoken out against the radical group of painters in the press and through public lectures. Ferron, now with three children, exhibited sculptures and drawings together with Jean~Paul Mousseau in 1950, but the Salon jury of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts had refused to consider her work that same year (she had shown with them before, in 1947 in a non~Salon show). She participated in a protest exhibition Les Rebelles with the other Automatists who had been refused by the Salon, but struggled for acceptance as a serious artist: Quebec society expected her to be a wife and mother instead. In October of 1953, having inherited a modest sum of money, Ferron moved from Montreal to France, taking her children with her. With an open~minded community of artists around her, she painted works of joyous freedom and pure, exhilarating colour. A number of them, such as the vibrant essay of colour that is Chandelle, followed a pattern of some regularity. We see that the paint has been applied in quadrants, with repetition of direction and size of the strokes into a rectangular, halved form. The resulting motif is flag~like, solid and squarish, a motif in and of itself, defined simply by its shape but left undefined by the feeling of openness that it conveys. Ferron ground her pigments by hand and mixed them with poppy seed oil, resulting in vibrant hues. Together with the practice of using a white ground to support them and a wide spatula to apply them, these hand~ground hues are intense, luminous and riveting. In Chandelle, she used an abundance of black, but the result is open, airy and exceedingly light. Ferron’s interest in vivid colour seemed a natural pathway to her interest in stained glass, and in France she trained under the master glazier Michel Blum. Always politically active, Ferron was expelled from the country in 1966 for her association with people the government considered to be radical activists; her blacklisted status in Canada had managed to follow her to France. Ferron was part of the artistic breakthroughs of the time, and triumphed over the challenges that came with them to pursue her artistic passion. This superb 1959 canvas expresses her joyous liberation through abstraction.
E STIMATE : $125,000 ~ 175,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Matosipi oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled on the stretcher, 1975 32 1/4 x 39 1/2 in, 81.9 x 100.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Maeght, Paris Acquired by the present Private Collector, Chicago, April 23, 1976
L ITERATURE : “Riopelle: peintures, sculptures, pastels et gravures”, Derrière le miroir #218, Galerie Maeght, 1976, listed and reproduced #6, unpaginated Jean~Paul Riopelle’s flamboyant palette knife mosaic works are filled with energy and life. This work was painted after Riopelle returned to Quebec from France following the death of his mother. He built a studio near Sainte~Marguerite~du~Lac~Masson in the Laurentians, and began to travel in his home province. He went north and saw stark, monochromatic vistas of ice, water and sky, and painted a series based on this experience. Riopelle’s late work is often categorized as Lyrical Abstraction, as more personal expression and painterly references are allowed to play. In part because of its colour, and in part because of the evocative title, this work is just that. Matosipi (Weeping River) is the Cree name for a small lake in Quebec (other such place names are used as titles in this series). The lightness of the overall colour scheme and the parallels these colours have in the natural world, along with the sound of the word Matosipi, influence our response to it. Included with this lot is a copy of the original Galerie Maeght invoice, dated “Paris, le 23 avril 1976”, and a photograph certificate from Galerie Maeght signed by Daniel Lelong. This work will be included in Yseult Riopelle’s forthcoming Volume V of the catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.
E STIMATE : $125,000 ~ 175,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Orignal bronze, signed, editioned 7/8 and inscribed with the foundry mark Fonderia Art F.LLI Bonvicini Sommacampagna, 1973 ~ 1986 11 3/4 x 10 x 8 1/4 in, 29.8 x 25.4 x 21 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto
E STIMATE : $25,000 ~ 30,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Les voyageurs oil on canvas, signed and dated 1964 39 3/4 x 74 3/8 in, 101 x 189.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Camille Hébert, Montreal Acquired on August 31, 1964 for $1,800 by Edgar and Dorothy Davidson, Montreal and then moving to Ottawa in 1972
L ITERATURE : Marie Carani, Jean Paul Lemieux, Musée du Québec, 1992, a similar 1956 canvas entitled Le train de midi reproduced page 128 Serge Cantin, Nous voilà rendus au sol, 2003, page 34 Two imposing men occupy the foreground of this Jean Paul Lemieux painting entitled Les voyageurs ~ one facing us, carrying an attaché case, and the other shown in profile with dangling arms. On the right, one can see a train from which we assume the man with the valise just disembarked. There is no indication of a station, or even of a road going from the train to the figures. They are left in a completely empty country that is immense and covered with snow. If we assume that the man on the left with a cap is a taxi driver or a chauffeur, we have no indication of any car, or any other means of transport. Evidently, Lemieux was spare with details. Even the faces of the two men are not very clear ~ you have to look carefully to see their expressions. They do not seem to look at each other, or even to exchange a word. If one could imagine that the man with the valise is the boss and the man with a cap, a servant ~ like in the Hegelian opposition of the master and the slave ~ the title does not stress this. Both are called “les voyageurs” (the travelers), without distinguishing between them. The archetype of the numerous train pictures in Lemieux’s oeuvre is the famous Le train de midi (The Noon Train), 1956, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The relationship with Les voyageurs could be questioned, since in Le train de midi, no one is in sight. But things are less simple. In the preparatory sketches of Le train de midi, Lemieux played with the idea of having one or two people added in the foreground of the composition. He decided, I think rightfully, not to follow this lead in Le train de midi, which remains the haunting picture it is today. But the idea of people was not lost. Rightfully again, he decided to give them all his attention, and so we have Les voyageurs, with the train barely visible on the right. The concept of the tourist is often seen as opposite to that of the voyageur. The tourist is said to be a superficial spectator, almost a voyeur, and the voyageur, somebody more deeply involved with the country he visits. But here this opposition is barely applied, since we are obviously speaking of voyageurs who belong to the country where they travel, and are not visiting a foreign country. The purpose of their presence in this vast empty landscape does not seem to have anything to do with tourism. Lemieux
saw himself as a “voyageur” in his own country. He could take a fresh look at the landscape, as if he saw it for the first time, and at the same time have a strong feeling of belonging. We could apply to Lemieux a nice Hasidic story quoted by the French~Canadian philosopher Serge Cantin. Living in Cracow, Poland, the story goes, was a poor rabbi named Eisik. One night, he heard a voice in a dream that he should go to Prague, where he would find a treasure under a bridge. The rabbi was skeptical at first. But he had the same dream the next day, and the day after, so he set out for Prague on foot. Two months later, he was in Prague near the bridge, but he saw that the bridge was guarded. Trying to figure out how to get to the bridge, he attracted the attention of a guard, who asked him politely if he had lost something. The rabbi could not lie, and told him his dream. The guard burst out laughing. He told him that he also had had a dream, telling him to go to Cracow to the house of a certain rabbi, where he would find a fantastic treasure behind the stove. “Reasonable as I am”, the guard told the rabbi, “I would never have obeyed a voice heard in a dream.” The rabbi thanked him and rushed back home to Cracow, looked behind the stove and found the treasure that ended his misery! Lemieux would have loved this story. The real treasure, the one which ends our misery, is not in a far distant country, but at home, inside us. Nevertheless, you often need to go to a foreign country to discover this simple truth. This was the experience of Lemieux, discovering the true appearance of Canada on his return from France. Moreover, somebody met during your trip abroad often makes you realize that you should take a better look at your own country. In the case of Lemieux, we do not know who this person could have been. But all this, which applies to Lemieux and his relationship to the Quebec landscape, does not apply as neatly to the men of Les voyageurs. They are not painters and they do not seem to look at the landscape around them. The tall one, who faces us, could be a businessman, if not a “voyageur de commerce”, as we used to say in the old days in Quebec to describe a traveling salesman. But a “voyageur de commerce” normally would not take a taxi, and would be even less likely to have a chauffeur. He would have his own car and travel alone. So, again, as often in Lemieux’s paintings, we are left with a certain ambiguity. We suspect there is a story behind the scene, something that Lemieux saw that caught his attention, like the priest and his servant sitting far apart on the verandah, as he has told apropos his painting Les noces d’or. But here, we are left to ourselves to reconstruct a story about this painting. There is certainly a distance between the two men, if not a complete alienation of one from the other, but we have no key to progress further. After all this is a painting, not a novel! We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE : $350,000 ~ 450,000
1904 ~ 1990
Les voyageurs
CC QMG RCA
JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX
oil on canvas, signed and dated 1964 39 3/4 x 74 3/8 in, 101 x 189.5 cm
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre oil on canvas, signed, circa 1962 29 1/2 x 29 1/2 in, 74.9 x 74.9 cm P ROVENANCE : The Morris Gallery, Toronto; An Important Private Estate, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Gilles Vigneault, Louis Deledicq and Harry Bellet, Jean~Paul Riopelle, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1991, page 34 Jean~Paul Riopelle had been living in Paris since 1947, and in 1960 had solo exhibitions there at Galerie Kléber and Galerie Jacques Dubourg. In 1960 ~ 1961, he also spent a year living in East Hampton in New York, and was deeply connected to modernist progression in both great centres
of art. Riopelle’s work was evolving in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and as Herta Wescher wrote, “The dense mosaics characteristic of his paintings of ten years ago have been broken up, allowing space to enter from all sides. Now, order and chaos intermingle, diagonals, curves and sharp hooks attach the verticals, voids are trapped at the heart of incredibly crowded centres.” In Sans titre, Riopelle wields palette knife and spatula to produce swirls, broad gestures that sweep through several layers of colour and, on the left, softer strokes reminiscent of his mosaic technique of the 1950s. Contrasting with this almost frenetic slashing and pushing of paint are the white spaces, the “voids”, which act as areas of calm. Bursting with energy, Sans titre embodies Riopelle’s characteristic passion and daring. This work will be included as an addendum to Volume III in Yseult Riopelle’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.
E STIMATE : $70,000 ~ 90,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Mansardé oil on canvas triptych, signed, circa 1969 10 5/8 x 26 1/4 in, 26 x 66.7 cm In addition to the overall measurement above, each individual canvas measures 10 5/8 x 8 3/4 in, 26 x 22.2 cm. P ROVENANCE : Galerie Maeght, Paris Galerie l’Art Français Ltée., Montreal Evelyn Aimis Fine Art, Toronto An Important Private Estate, Toronto
L ITERATURE : “Riopelle 70”, Derrière le miroir #185, Galerie Maeght, 1970, listed, unpaginated Yseult Riopelle, Jean~Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné, Volume III, 2009, essay by Yves Michaud, page 60
E XHIBITED : Galerie Maeght, Paris, Riopelle 70, 1970, catalogue #6 Palais des beaux~arts de Charleroi, Belgium, Jean~Paul Riopelle 1946 ~ 1970, 1971, catalogue #31
In the late 1960s, Jean~Paul Riopelle continued to assert himself as one of Canada’s truly international artists. In 1967 he had a major retrospective exhibition at the Musée du Québec and in 1968 he participated in an exhibition of Canadian art at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris. During this decade, Riopelle’s evolution would lead him not only to new ways of handling paint but also to the suggestion of a subject. As Yves Michaud writes, “What is striking about the oil paintings from the 1960s is the gradual appearance of forms that, superimposed over the profusion of small touches, confer a second organization to the painting and gradually lead to the figure.” So in titling this work Mansardé, a reference to a particular architectural style of roof, the connotation is given of looking through windows, and the strong black lines at the front of the picture plane reinforce this impression. Bold knife work, dense and textural paint, a rich palette and the intriguing suggestion of subject make this a compelling work by Riopelle. This work will be included in Yseult Riopelle’s forthcoming Volume IV of the catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.
E STIMATE : $40,000 ~ 60,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Le croisement oil on canvas, signed and dated 1967 and on verso titled 19 1/2 x 70 3/8 in, 49.5 x 178.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Edgar and Dorothy Davidson, Montreal and then moving to Ottawa in 1972 At first, one thinks of Jean Paul Lemieux’s Le croisement, 1967, as a winter’s night version of one of his paintings from 1956, The Distant City. Lemieux never liked cities; he was happy to move to Île~aux~Coudres in 1965, when he quit teaching. In The Distant City, the foreground is occupied by a large expanse of land, with what looks like two dirt roads bringing us towards the city, indicated by the grey silhouette of a church and indistinct buildings on the left, both treated in the same way. Done just after his return from Europe, The Distant City suggests the horizontality of the land. In Le croisement, things are more dramatic. First, the city seems much more distant. Since we see it at night, its distant architecture is revealed only by tiny specks of lights and a faint glow just above the horizon. If it were not for the marks in the snow, the foreground would have been a familiar one in a Lemieux painting ~ a huge layer of snow covering the whole landscape, seen as a grey mass because of the dark sky. But something different happened in Le croisement. Engulfing the space of the onlooker, starting from behind him at the lowest edge of the canvas, two sets of tracks cross each other (hence the title) and continue to the horizon, marking the immensity of the site. They seem too big to be the tracks of skidoos ~ perhaps they were left by two snowmobiles traveling in opposite directions, at different times. The tracks depicted from the left side of the canvas must represent marks done after the tracks seen starting from the right. There is no suggestion of an encounter in the middle of nowhere ~ the crossing pattern of the marks would not have been so neat. If there was an encounter, it was not in real life, but only in the mind of the painter, fascinated by the idea of these mysterious marks on the snow. In fact, these marks could be seen as a desecration of the whiteness and the purity of the snow. One suspects that Lemieux condemned the noise, the smell, the dirt and the traces that these mechanical beasts left behind them. This snow, which had previously appeared as a formidable presence erasing everything, now reveals its fragility, its vulnerability to machines. We are left with the imprint of something that is not represented, leaving the traces of the extraordinary hubris of man, profaning the silence of the night and the infinity of space. It is not even clear if the tracks are going towards the city, or coming from it to an even more mysterious destination. The marks were made as aimless, futile affirmations of power, nothing else. At the same time, they solicit our curiosity. Who were these people, able to confront such immensity? Why did they have to travel by night? Or is it possible that
these tracks were made some time ago and left undisturbed by a change of weather? To go back to the people, were they fearless or lost, merry or alarmed, innocent or dangerous? What a haunting image, finally, closer to the image of dreams than that of real life! As in a dream, one cannot avoid imagining a narrative when looking at this painting. This is often the case with Lemieux’s paintings. They invite a commentary which sounds like a novel or a short story, as if, in Lemieux, there was the soul of a novelist. This is particularly true of his depictions of people, as they stand as though they are unlikely heroes of a potential novel. But Le croisement demonstrates that it can be true even of his landscape paintings. Lemieux was an extraordinary night painter. It is a subject matter that has tempted many painters before him, but none has succeeded as well as Jean~François Millet in evoking the mystery of a Starry Night (the title of his circa 1851 painting, in the collection of The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven). The landscape is difficult to make out in the pitch darkness of the scene. There is no moon to help us to make out its details ~ one sees fuzzy shadows of trees and perhaps a road starting in the foreground, but nothing more. Nevertheless, there is a feeling of intimacy in that painting. We can imagine the painter setting up his easel close to the scene, and we share his wonder at the sight of this sparkling sky with its shooting stars and numerous constellations. In contrast, the space suggested by Lemieux in Le croisement is pure openness. It expands indefinitely in this elongated horizontal format that he prized so much. There are no stars to be seen in the sky and no trees on either side to frame the composition. Even the land is hidden, covered as it is by snow. The feeling here is eerie, not cozy! As humans, we feel ignored by the land, excluded, negated. It is significant that the tracks in the snow can also suggest speed, or maybe just a will to escape, to take refuge in the distant city. No one has seen the starkness, the desolation of the night, like Lemieux. It becomes, under his brush, the very image of ‘Nothingness’, of which so many philosophers have spoken, from Heraclitus to Jean~Paul Sartre. I have often thought that Lemieux was a metaphysical painter. Le croisement is another proof of his awareness of being and nothingness. In conclusion, a word about the impeccable provenance of the painting. It comes from the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson collection, and was acquired from the Agnès Lefort Gallery in Montreal, a gallery where Lemieux exhibited regularly starting in 1963. In 1972, the Davidsons moved to Ottawa, where the painting was kept until now. We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE : $250,000 ~ 350,000
Le croisement
1904 ~ 1990
JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX
CC QMG RCA
oil on canvas, signed and dated 1967 and on verso titled 19 1/2 x 70 3/8 in, 49.5 x 178.7 cm
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Hommage à la Toscane oil on canvas, signed and dated 1965 and on verso titled on the Roberts Gallery label 29 1/8 x 20 1/2 in, 74 x 52.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto An Important Private Estate, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Guy Robert, Jean Paul Lemieux, ou la poétique de la souvenance, 1968, reproduced page 119 Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1975, pages 148 and 270, reproduced page 271 Jean Paul Lemieux is one of the most venerable and acclaimed Canadian artists of the twentieth century. The simplicity and directness of his signature style ~ secure by the late 1950s and on full display in Hommage à la Toscane ~ is both memorable and beloved. At his retrospective in Leningrad in 1974, for example, a visitor wrote in the guest book: “Once you have seen this artist, you can’t forget him, or mistake him for anyone else.” Lemieux taught at the École des beaux~arts in Quebec City from 1937 to 1967. Celebrated in this post, he nonetheless devoted himself solely to painting at about the time Hommage à la Toscane appeared. By the mid 1960s, his fame had reached a point where he could not only afford to paint full time but was guaranteed a serious and appreciative audience for his work. The restraint characteristic of Lemieux’s style stems from a deep respect for painting’s long tradition and from a certain pensiveness, an inner looking. His homage to Tuscany is a quiet tour de force demonstrating both qualities. Painted after Lemieux visited Italy in 1965, it embraces his abiding attention to masters of the early Italian Renaissance, to the controlled passion of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca and others. The title should deflect us from looking for specific precedents, however. We see an homage to Tuscany, not to an individual or to a specific town, but to the landscape and hill town suggested so delicately to the left and behind the standing figure. While this view into the distance comprises only about a fifth of the painting’s surface, it suggests a more expansive prospect, just as Italian Renaissance painters typically did with similar through~the~window views in their portraits. Part of Lemieux’s homage, then, is to the landscape as a genre, a form in which he was a master. The painting’s surface, if not its overall mood, is commanded by a three~quarter~length portrait of a young man. He wears a softly vibrant red tunic and cap that we can read as a uniform, perhaps, though of an unspecified affiliation. With the exception of his right arm, his form is set against a similarly soft green background. Wall or curtain, this coloured foil both pushes the man close into our viewing space and makes sure that the landscape seems to recede deeply away from us and from him. The
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man looks directly at us with notably small and expressionless eyes. Neither passive nor threatening, his gaze is as memorable as it is difficult to describe. It is this self~contained but never inert expression that uniquely marks Lemieux’s paintings. We could say that, characteristic of Lemieux’s most notable paintings, Hommage à la Toscane ‘gives us space’, not in the clichéd sense of the common expression but by providing room for thought, for the gifts of visual and cerebral exploration. Lemieux’s ascetic means give us just enough information, just enough visual intrigue to bring us into the ambience of the painting. He does not lead or lecture us with a set narrative but instead teaches us to look for ourselves. We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE : $150,000 ~ 200,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Village oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled and stamped Galerie Agnès Lefort, circa 1964 29 3/4 x 19 3/4 in, 75.6 x 50.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Acquired on February 1, 1965 for $550 by Edgar and Dorothy Davidson, Montreal and then moving to Ottawa in 1972
E XHIBITED : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal This kind of aerial perspective has its roots in Jean Paul Lemieux’s work of the 1940s, in which town scenes and views of the City of Quebec were viewed from above, but with far more detail, such as the 1941 painting Lazare, in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. However, Village is Lemieux’s mature style ~ stripped of detail and people, reduced to simple shapes and swirls of vegetation, rendering the image more enigmatic and universal. Adding to this universality are the pointed spires of the churches with their connotation of the sacred in the midst of the secular. A prominent element is the serpentine curve of the road traversing the town which, in Lemieux’s case, is never just a road, but the suggestion of nostalgia due to the absence of travelers. The muted palette of predominantly beige, olive green and greys, and the soft haziness of the paint handling, also contribute to Lemieux’s creation of a still, evocative feeling of space and time.
E STIMATE : $30,000 ~ 40,000
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PROPERTY OF VARIOUS COLLECTORS L ITERATURE : Gerald Hannon, “The Pink Indian”, Toronto Life, September 2011, pages 54 ~ 62, reproduced pages 54 and 55
E XHIBITED : 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, May 12 ~ August 1, 2010
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KENT MONKMAN 1965 ~
Kiss the Sky acrylic on canvas, signed and dated 2010 59 1/2 x 47 1/2 in, 151.1 x 120.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto
Kent Monkman’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, has escorted the artist on his rise to international acclaim. As a recurring figure in Monkman’s work, the chiseled Miss Chief opens up discussions regarding historical paintings and any Eurocentric narratives they may project. In Kiss the Sky, she is dominant amidst the classical background and is accompanied by three winged males, a reference to the Greek mythological tale of Icarus. He attempted to escape from Crete by using wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Disoriented by his attempt to conquer the skies, Icarus disobeyed his father’s instructions and flew too close to the sun, ultimately melting the wax and causing him to fall to his death. The tale is commonly associated with failed ambition ~ a myth Monkman is undeniably making reference to. By contrasting the faltering figures with the heroic, manicured stance of Miss Chief, Monkman (who is of Cree and Irish descent) is questioning the classical representations of the relationship between the native and non~native population. Monkman skillfully presents such questions without lecturing ~ with only a smirk and a gentle nudge.
E STIMATE : $40,000 ~ 50,000
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DAVID BIERK 1944 ~ 2002
A Eulogy to Art and Aspiration ~ Flash Art Summer 1990 & Mondrian oil on board and canvas with steel, initialed and on verso titled and dated 1991 ~ 1992 on the gallery label 33 1/4 x 48 1/2 in, 84.4 x 123.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Wynick / Tuck Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Ontario Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Donald Kuspit, “Homage to David Bierk”, Artnet Magazine, 2005 Born and educated in the United States, David Bierk settled in Peterborough, Ontario in 1972 to take up his first teaching position.
By 1990, he was exhibiting regularly in Canada as well as in Los Angeles and New York, where the energy of the contemporary art world had migrated from the gritty East Village to the more sophisticated Chelsea. Bierk’s paintings subtly comment on the power of the culturati, particularly the buzz created by art magazines, with their influence on art criticism and the burgeoning art market. In this intriguing painting, that influence is represented by the depiction of the summer 1990 cover of Flash Art, being scrutinized by the stony gaze of the great twentieth~century master of Minimalism, Piet Mondrian. In what he termed “a posthumous homage” on the occasion of a 2005 New York exhibition of Bierk’s work, art historian and critic Donald Kuspit wrote, “David Bierk has a tender affection for museum art…[he] has in effect turned Old Master works of art that are symbols of the divine in humans and nature into symbols of the sacredness of art itself.”
E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000
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KENT MONKMAN 1965 ~
Miss Chief: The Emergence of a Legend chromogenic prints on metallic paper, 2006
a) Hunter on verso editioned 8/25 on a label 17 x 14 1/4 in, 43.2 x 36.2 cm
b) Vaudeville Star
conventional portrait genre, which in the past has objectified native populations. Alternatively, Monkman turns the pictorial space into theatre, allowing Miss Chief to perform in different guises that each challenge aboriginal visual history. The title of the series references the construction of an artist’s identity ~ a theme that is dramatically infused into each image. This work consists of five photographs mounted in frames designed by the artist. The dimensions include the frames, which were done by the artist as part of the work.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 12,000
on verso editioned 8/25 on a label 17 x 14 1/4 in, 43.2 x 36.2 cm
c) Cindy Silverscreen on verso editioned 8/25 on a label 17 x 14 1/4 in, 43.2 x 36.2 cm
d) Film Director on verso editioned 8/25 on a label 17 x 14 1/4 in, 43.2 x 36.2 cm
e) The Trapper’s Bride on verso editioned 8/25 on a label 17 x 14 1/4 in, 43.2 x 36.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : David Liss et al, Kent Monkman: The Triumph of Mischief, Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2007, reproduced pages 1, 34, 35 and 36
E XHIBITED : Art Gallery of Hamilton, Kent Monkman: The Triumph of Mischief, June 7 ~ August 26, 2007, traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax, 2007 ~ 2010 Miss Chief Eagle Testickle first introduced herself to the public at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 2004. Since this performance, the alter ego of Toronto~based artist Kent Monkman has frequently rematerialized in his paintings, performances and, as seen here, photographs. Miss Chief: The Emergence of a Legend plays with the detail 37d
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MILLER GORE BRITTAIN CAS CSGA FCA
1912 ~ 1968
Swimmers oil on board, circa 1940 15 x 19 in, 38.1 x 48.3 cm P ROVENANCE : By descent to the present Private Collection, New York Miller Brittain’s most prized compositions date from the 1930s and 1940s, after he had returned home to Saint John, New Brunswick, following his studies at the Art Students League in New York. He remains the Canadian artist most closely associated with the Depression~era American art that celebrated the struggles and joys of the working man
and his family. Mothers pushing baby carriages in the park, amateur actors rehearsing a play, a crush of shoppers in a market or on the street ~ these depictions of his neighbours and friends were Brittain’s focus in the years before he enlisted in the Canadian Air Force. While in the service he produced a series of fine drawings of military life, most of which are now housed in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. As seen here, Brittain was not averse to illustrating the foibles of his subjects while remaining empathetic to their enjoyment of simple pleasures. His facility in handling compositions with multiple figures brought him greatly deserved attention in his monumental mural designs, and this is equally notable in Swimmers.
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Woman in Blue oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled on the Kastel Gallery label and stamped with the Dominion Gallery stamp, circa 1978 ~ 1979 10 x 8 1/8 in, 25.4 x 20.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Kastel Gallery Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1978, page 224
Jean Paul Lemieux painted portraits that were exquisite and tasteful. His refinement as a painter is perfectly reflected in this classic image of a woman in blue wearing a necklace. Since 1956, the artist had painted this leitmotif repeatedly, often challenging ideas of beauty, femininity and vanity. In Woman in Blue, vanity is not simply alluded to through makeup or jewellery; rather it as an instinctive attempt to halt a moment in time. Guy Robert writes, “It becomes a refusal to submit to the ravages of time, an exorcism of the aging process and even the proclamation of a quality of being ~ a singular way to announce one’s person, beautifully and almost poetically…the necklace serves as…a talisman of beauty…rare and therefore precious, like a pearl.” Lemieux described painting as “the art of creating illusions on the surface.” For this intuitive artist, portraits were never just models of a face, but were more complex, an exploration of the ideas of absence and presence, the continuum of time, memory and imagination.
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Personnages dans la nuit oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled on the stretcher and dated 1973 on the gallery labels 14 3/8 x 21 in, 36.5 x 53.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto Galerie Claude Lafitte, Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1975, page 194 In the year 1972, Jean Paul Lemieux stated in an interview: “I know the still of the night well, because I often wake up at night and listen to it.
Silence for me is looking at a star~filled sky and hearing only the faint rustling of a few leaves.” In Personnages dans la nuit, Lemieux’s acute awareness of the hours of darkness is matched by his well~known aversion to cities, which he preferred to observe from a distance. Near the centre of the work, the woman staring outward holds a self~contained expression ~ poignant, yet aware. In the right corner, a man in perfect profile stares directly ahead, past the other figure and beyond. The two figures are aware of each other yet enclosed within their inner atmospheres, and this sense of seclusion approaches a theme that was deeply imbedded in Lemieux’s work ~ the complex relationship between man and the environment. Amidst the darkness of the night ~ the blanket of white snow, luminous horizon and subtle expressions ~ is a unique silence and hyper~awareness of the complex nature of existence that Lemieux observed so acutely.
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THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON CGP CSPWC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 2006
Decolletage & Chantilly Lace oil and collage on canvas, signed and dated 1964 and on verso signed, titled and dated 1963 on the stretcher and on the Canadian Group of Painters exhibition label 48 7/8 x 48 7/8 in, 124.1 x 124.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired from the Artist by the present Private Collector, Toronto
E XHIBITED : Canadian Group of Painters, Annual Exhibition, 1965 Dorothy Cameron Gallery, Toronto Tom Hodgson, one of the younger members of Painters Eleven, was known for his spontaneous, gestural, Abstract Expressionist works.
Beginning with their emergence in the early 1950s and extending into the eventful 1960s, the Abstract Expressionist painters shook up the previously staid Toronto scene. The daring Hodgson was known for his wild parties with his artist friends at his studio, the Pit. In one legendary event, women took off their blouses as Hodgson sketched them; he then posted the drawings on the wall. Hodgson imbued Decolletage & Chantilly Lace with his love of the female form. At first glance, the composition seems chaotic, but soon reveals the subject to be the nude torso and face of a woman. Broad brush~strokes, surface textures and strong dark and light contrasts create a field that seems to leap from the surface. Although the work is abstracted, it makes explicit reference to the eroticism of the female figure and, together with the physicality of the use of paint, is drenched in lyrical sensuality.
E STIMATE : $9,000 ~ 12,000
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GUIDO MOLINARI AANFM LP QMG RCA SAPQ
1933 ~ 2004
Sans titre acrylic on canvas, on verso signed and dated 1963 35 x 29 1/4 in, 88.9 x 74.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Art 45, Montreal; Private Collection, Montreal
L ITERATURE : Louise Letocha, Molinari, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 1979, page 3 Within the vital artistic milieu of Montreal of the 1960s, Guido Molinari, although affected at times by the theories of the Automatists and the Plasticiens, was an individualist who pursued his own course in
abstraction. His goal was liberation from any subject and, as Louise Letocha writes, “The notion of seriality which the artist developed between 1963 and 1970 freed the canvas of any possible reference to nature and secured for the painted surface its own reality.” During the early 1960s, Molinari ~ always acutely aware of the history of painting ~ was interested in the work of Piet Mondrian and his geometric abstractions using squares. In this bold painting, Molinari has taken the geometry of the square and broken it apart, resulting in the parts vibrating against each other, a vibration primarily created by colour. For Molinari, colour was energy, an energy produced by the dynamism of juxtaposed colours. This became a prime focus of his work, as he became aware of how the interface between two colours created a space of its own, a third energetic field.
E STIMATE : $45,000 ~ 65,000
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GEORGE EDMUND ALLEYN 1931 ~ 2004
Agression I acrylic and aluminium on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 1966 51 x 38 in, 129.5 x 96.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Collection of Mrs. Renée Dupuis Angers Private Collection, Montreal
L ITERATURE : National Gallery of Canada, a similar 1966 canvas entitled Icarus reproduced, www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/ artwork.php?mkey=6952 (accessed September 8, 2011)
George Edmund Alleyn studied at the École des beaux~arts in Quebec under Jean Paul Lemieux. Alleyn went to France in 1955, where he lived and exhibited his work until 1971. By the late 1950s his work was gaining widespread international attention. In 1958 and 1960, Alleyn was included in a selection of Canadian paintings featured in a Guggenheim Museum competition, and in 1959 he won the bronze medal at the Bienal de São Paulo. He represented Canada in the Venice Biennale in 1960, and in 1970 exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The National Gallery of Canada has several works by the artist in its permanent collection. Agression I is a fine and rare example of Alleyn’s mid~1960s work. In 1966 the National Gallery purchased a similar work entitled Icarus ~ from the same series of paintings; both works share the same upside~down figure motif.
E STIMATE : $6,000 ~ 8,000
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P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE : Stuart MacCuaig, Climbing the Cold White Peaks: A Survey of Artists in and from Hamilton, 1910 ~ 1950, 1986, page 127
E XHIBITED : Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 1953, catalogue #33 Royal Canadian Academy Exhibition, Montreal, 1954, catalogue #38 Art Gallery of Hamilton, Second Sale of Fine Arts, 1957 Studio Impressions, painted in 1953, is an example of Hortense Gordon’s transitional style from figurative to abstract painting. While there are traces of architectural forms still evident, her direction has clearly progressed to the abstract. The style and quality of this work likely influenced her close friend Ray Mead to invite Gordon into the group Painters Eleven, founded later this same year. This work has been exhibited in Hamilton, Montreal and as far afield as Provincetown, USA. Gordon spent many summers in Provincetown and exhibited with the Provincetown Art Association frequently. She became acquainted with the area while studying at the school of Hans Hofmann and later, exhibiting alongside contemporaries like William Ronald. Gordon was one of the first Canadian artists to learn from Hofmann. As Stuart MacCuaig relates, she was captivated by “his theories of positive and negative areas in painting, of suspension and movement, and of push and pull.” Her use of shape and colour manifests this tension, generating a visual energy in this important Painters Eleven period work by the artist.
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HORTENSE MATTICE GORDON ARCA CSGA P11
1887 ~ 1961
Studio Impressions oil on canvas, signed twice and dated 1953 and on verso signed twice, titled on the stretcher and alternatively titled Afternoon Impressions on an exhibition label and inscribed exhibited at Provincetown, 1958 30 x 22 in, 76.2 x 55.9 cm
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SERGE LEMOYNE 1941 ~ 1998
Sans titre acrylic on canvas, signed and dated 1982 41 1/2 x 60 in, 105.4 x 152.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Montreal Serge Lemoyne was a pioneer in multi~disciplinary work in Quebec, and was later considered to be the province’s first Pop artist. Lemoyne ignored artistic academia and instead asked the viewer to reflect on cultural, social and political events through his paintings, installations and public art.
Incredibly passionate about his work, Lemoyne was committed to exposing his art to as many people as possible. During the period of 1969 to 1980, Lemoyne gained success with his popular Bleu~blanc~rouge series, which was limited to a strict palette of the colours of the flag of France and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. He progressed into a wider palette of colours in the early 1980s, as seen here in the bold use of metallic gold that cascades into the saturated colours below. In the year 1982, Lemoyne was focused on simplistic yet striking compositions featuring triangles, rectangles and colour stripes. This piece is a reflection of his unyielding devotion to his craft and his enthusiasm for creating a discourse between artists and the general public.
E STIMATE : $8,000 ~ 10,000
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FERNAND TOUPIN AANFM LP RCA
1930 ~ 2009
Sans titre mixed media on canvas, signed and dated 1962 and on verso signed, dated and inscribed Montréal and A~42 31 3/4 x 25 5/8 in, 80.6 x 65.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto In 1955, Fernand Toupin was one of the four founding members of Les Plasticiens along with Louis Belzile, Rodolphe (Jauran) de Repentigny and Jean~Paul Jérôme. In the history of art, each successive avant~garde movement was a reaction against the previous movement. Les Plasticiens
was no different; their manifesto was a reaction against the Automatists. From 1955 to 1959, Les Plasticiens outlined their manifesto, one that was opposed to the gestural painting style and free association of the Automatists, and instead proposed a geometric hard~edge painting process. By 1962, the year in which this superb work was painted, Toupin had moved away from his more formal geometric style and began working in a lyrical form of painting. This work is typical of Toupin’s organic abstractions of the period that explored texture, materials and structure. The year 1962 also corresponds with an important solo exhibition of his work at Galerie Agnès Lefort in Montreal.
E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 16,000
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JACQUES HURTUBISE ARCA SAPQ
1939 ~
Sans titre acrylic on canvas diptych, signed and dated 1987 23 7/8 x 40 in, 60.6 x 101.6 cm In addition to the overall measurement above, each canvas measures 23 7/8 x 20 in, 60.6 x 50.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto In 1956, when Jacques Hurtubise was just 17, he enrolled at the École des beaux~arts de Montréal. With the funds from the Max Beckmann Scholarship in his senior year, he was able to travel to New York, where he saw works by Willem de Kooning and Kasimir Malevich. He returned to
Montreal in 1961 and, fresh from his New York experience, had his first exhibition. He was then included in the important 1965 Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil. His colourful graphic work ranges from hard~edge, lyrical and geometric to free~form; he was a bold experimenter. In the late 1980s Hurtubise’s work was created with reference to forms from nature ~ clouds and birds ~ as well as water, which had long played a role in his imagery. He began to experiment with folding and pressing unstretched canvas against itself to create a reverse image. Vivid butterfly~like forms, or dark forms with overtones of masks, bats and birds were the result. Black and white paintings are the one constant in his work; he considered the use of these two simple colours a means to discover new paths.
E STIMATE : $7,000 ~ 9,000
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WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS CAS CGP CSGA CSPWC EGP OC OSA PY RCA 1904 ~ 1974
Still Life with Blue Cloth oil on board, signed and on verso titled, dated 1953 and inscribed 95 20 x 24 in, 50.8 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto Goodridge Roberts was an early modernist in Montreal’s artistic milieu, part of John Lyman’s Eastern Group of Painters and a founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society. He was also a strong individualist and a
sensitive soul who both wrote and read poetry. Known equally for his landscapes, figurative works and still lifes, Roberts painted with a vigorous expressionist, tactile style which imbued his work with energy and feeling. Typical of his still lifes, he included in this work a random selection of items from his studio and home, arranged in a seemingly casual, yet highly conscious array, set against a glowing colour field background. One of Roberts’s favoured motifs was a cloth artfully draped over the table’s edge, which adds a classical reference to the use of folds of drapery in painting through the centuries, re~interpreted through expressionism. It also adds a luxuriant feel to the work with its rich blue pigmentation. Visually complex and sensual, Still Life with Blue Cloth is a superb work from this part of Roberts’s oeuvre.
E STIMATE : $8,000 ~ 10,000
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WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS CAS CGP CSGA CSPWC EGP OC OSA PY RCA 1904 ~ 1974
Path Beside Lake ~ Autumn oil on board, signed and on verso titled on the gallery labels and inscribed 8608 ~ S 29 x 36 in, 73.7 x 91.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto Kaspar Gallery, Toronto An Important Private Estate, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Sandra Paikowsky, Goodridge Roberts 1904 ~ 1974, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1998, page 15
Goodridge Roberts was known for his intensity of vision. Regarding his landscapes, Robert Ayre wrote, “He identifies himself with the earth in a contemplation that is passionate, that goes deep and burns slowly.” Roberts’s landscape subjects were drawn mostly from Quebec ~ from the Laurentians, Lake Orford in the Eastern Townships, his farm at Calumet or locations such as Baie~Saint~Paul in Charlevoix. However, he also painted at Georgian Bay in Ontario as well as in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This quintessential Roberts landscape, in which we are submerged in the forest, drawn along the riverside path while drinking in the radiant inner life of nature, is rich in pigment and lush in its expressionist brush~strokes. Just as much about the handling of paint as the impression of its subject, this vibrant painting radiates a sensual atmosphere in which the sunshine and fluttering of leaves have a tactile immediacy. Robert’s quick, sure movement of the brush defines the very essence of this brilliant day on the turn of summer into autumn.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS CAS CGP CSGA CSPWC EGP OC OSA PY RCA 1904 ~ 1974
Nude oil on board, signed and on verso inscribed 1217 24 x 36 in, 61 x 91.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal Goodridge Roberts spent two years drawing nude models while in New York at the Art Students League in the late 1920s. As a result, he was extremely skillful at depicting the human form and was adept at rendering his nude subjects in a manner that was demure rather than
erotic. This model has a soft gaze and emotes a sense of ease, which is a result of the artist’s relaxed engagement with his subject, which often involved four to five sittings. Her reclining position is a nod to the traditional female nude that was often depicted in Western art history and a classical subject matter that he would have been familiar with after studying at the École des beaux~arts de Montréal and the Art Students League. However, Roberts was able to make this familiar subject matter his own through emotive, expressionist brush~strokes. The model’s skin tone is golden and her contours highly contrasted between light and dark against the muted background. Moreover, an underlying strength demonstrated in Nude is the ambiguity between reality and Robert’s poetic painterly vision.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Family oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled on the Roberts Gallery label 10 5/8 x 9 5/8 in, 27 x 24.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto; An Important Private Estate, Toronto Characteristic of Jean Paul Lemieux’s work, this scene is reduced to a few simple elements ~ three people, a floor, a wall and a chair ~ painted with a monochromatic colour palette of ochre, brown, white and silver. Lemieux sensitively portrays the quiet drama of the life cycle of the
generations as mother and child face forward to the future, while the grandfather faces away, withdrawing. Also present is the intangible ~ a sense of time passing, something also felt, although more abstractly, in his landscapes, such as his paintings of wintery expanses with trains moving in the distance. The figures are at the front of the picture plane, commanding our attention, yet what soon makes an impression on the eye is the wall behind, a beautiful silvery colour field, softly luminous. Space in Lemieux’s landscapes and interiors is depicted with the qualities of the abstract colour field painters. The shimmering silver “wall” can be perceived as cloud or mist, somewhat mysterious ~ emitting a kind of metaphysical dimension that connects each family member.
E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000
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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Storage Tanks at Bones Bay, Cracroft Island oil on canvas, signed and dated 1954 and on verso signed, titled, inscribed with the Dominion Gallery inventory #E1756 (crossed out) and #D6854 and stamped Dominion Gallery, Montreal 18 x 22 in, 45.7 x 55.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal, inventory #E1756 Private Collection, Montreal, April 2, 1954 Dominion Gallery, Montreal, inventory #D6854, May 29, 1969 Private Collection, Vancouver, June 19, 1978
L ITERATURE : Archives of the National Gallery of Canada, Lawren Harris, letter to H.O. McCurry, December 1950 In 1953, E.J. Hughes was asked by the publishers of Standard Oil’s magazine The Lamp to travel up the British Columbia coast on their supply ship, the Imperial Nanaimo. He was to provide illustrations for a story about the ship and its work on the coast. Hughes, who had not had a significant commission since he worked on mural commissions in the 1930s, was advised by his Montreal dealer, Dr. Max Stern of the Dominion Gallery, to agree to the commission, but he also advised Hughes to sell the resulting paintings through the gallery. The contract was arranged through Dr. Stern, and Hughes made a voyage up the British Columbia coast in the summer of 1953. Hughes produced a number of highly detailed pencil drawings on the journey, complete with colour notes. He then submitted the drawings to the editor of The Lamp and five subjects were selected for colour illustrations in the magazine. Hughes then worked up the paintings in the fall of 1953 and early winter of 1954. One of the communities visited was Bones Bay, on West Cracroft Island in Johnstone Strait. From 1928 until 1951, Bones Bay was a thriving cannery run by the Canadian Fish Company. Both gillnetters and seine fleets provided fish for the cannery. By the time Hughes visited in 1953, the cannery operation had been closed, but Bones Bay was still a port for the fishing fleet. Like most of the communities visited by the Imperial Nanaimo, Bones Bay was remote, only accessible by water. The visits of the ship were therefore welcome and vital, but were ~ of necessity ~ brief, the crew concentrating on off~loading the fuel as quickly as possible.
75 Hughes detailed these visits and the role of the Imperial Nanaimo in his paintings. Although he was very conscious of the fact that this was a commission (note the Imperial Oil Limited sign), these works far transcend commercial illustration, and Hughes was careful to balance the sign with two other text elements. The paintings Hughes produced from this trip are remarkable for their ability to suggest something of the character of the communities visited and the life of the ship itself. In Storage Tanks at Bones Bay, Cracroft Island, Hughes has given us the view from the deck of the ship. The only indications of the ship itself are the elements that appear at the lower edge of the painting, the chain~link rail and, at the lower right, a red stack, a white railing and a lifebuoy. Our concentration is clearly meant to be on the activities onshore and Hughes has directed our eyes there in a variety of ways, most notably in the forceful lines of the hoses which lead from the ship, the vector of the railing at the lower right and, at the left, a piece of the ship’s rigging. Indeed, the dock and area around the storage tanks are alive with activity ~ three men at their work and a large black dog to supervise! Although Hughes does not show us the faces of the men in any detail, he has given them each an element of individuality; the uppermost man with his bushy black beard, the green cap of the fellow in the middle and the distinctive “Indian” sweater worn by the man on the dock. Even the oil drums are differentiated in shape and colour. Hughes has also been careful to make the storage tanks themselves slightly different in scale and colour. Each element of the composition contributes to making us believe in the veracity of the scene but, when we take time to analyze how the composition has been put together, we realize that, far from being casual, this painting is the result of great deliberation. For example, to balance the relative busyness of the fore~ and middle grounds, Hughes has made the background of the image serenely calm, with a screen of trees atop a rocky slope, and the trees of the middle ground providing a visual bridge. Hughes has given us much to captivate our eyes, from the shadows of the oil drums on the dock to the view into the storage shed and tiny area of water, but the real wonder of this image is the light that pervades the whole scene. It seems to imbue the world ~ the trees, bushes and ground cover in particular ~ with a great vitality. As in all of Hughes’s best work, Storage Tanks at Bones Bay, Cracroft Island has a timeless quality but is vividly present. As Lawren Harris wrote of Hughes’s work, “It is that kind of painting ~ factual, detailed, accurate, full of interest but its art quality transcends all of these.”
E STIMATE : $175,000 ~ 225,000
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WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
Return to Camp in Winter mixed media on board, signed and dated 1973 and on verso titled on the remnants of a label 48 x 23 1/4 in, 121.9 x 59 cm P ROVENANCE : Marlborough~Godard, Montreal Private Collection, Nova Scotia
L ITERATURE : William Kurelek, Lumberjack, 1974, reproduced plate #24, unpaginated
E XHIBITED : Canada House, London, 1978, exhibited on the occasion of the publication of Lumberjack in the United Kingdom
76 himself, do not see the Madonna. While one lumberjack turns to speak to the man who walks behind him, facing the Madonna as he does so, he still does not see her. He does not experience grace. Kurelek’s religious devotion was very deep; he believed that he had been saved from a life in and out of psychiatric care because of his conversion. In his art and in his writing, when Kurelek looked back on his past, he acknowledged that God was always there but that he had just missed seeing His presence, which was around him all the time in everyday things. With its overall blue cast, this work certainly makes reference to the presence of Mary ~ whose traditional colour is blue ~ just outside of Kurelek’s sight. Kurelek’s final embracing of Catholicism had come after reading Alfred Noyes’s The Unknown God, which helped him to accept the existence of God by seeing the idea of God as manifest in beauty. In this still, cold, very Canadian scene, beauty is indeed manifest.
E STIMATE : $60,000 ~ 80,000
In addition to being one of Canada’s most accomplished and interesting artists, William Kurelek was a published author and frequent illustrator of award~winning books, written both by himself and others. One such book is Lumberjack, written and illustrated by Kurelek and published in 1974 by Tundra Books. In it, Kurelek remarked, “As a painter, I feel very lucky to have experienced traditional lumbercamp living before it disappeared forever.” Indeed, he worked in lumber camps in a time of remarkable change, and saw the introduction of the chainsaw, which replaced the long swede saw and axe that had been used for so many decades. His visually appealing illustrations in this book depict all aspects of camp life, and included this scene showing three lumberjacks walking home after a day’s work. Caught in winter’s late afternoon light, the scene is painted in cool blues. Deep snow forces the lumberjacks to walk in single file, so any conversation had to be conducted over their shoulders. The three men walk back to camp, breathing steam into the frosty air, in a serene and peaceful setting with little evidence of their tree~cutting work ~ only a few stumps press up under the blanket of snow. On the very right edge of the scene, incised into the painting, is a small votive of a mother and child. Kurelek’s art, after his 1957 conversion to Roman Catholicism, was full of religious symbolism and social commentary. He was extremely thankful for his conversion to the Catholic Church, having struggled with depression and the unhappy memories of his childhood. His complicated relationship with his father, his exploration of his Ukrainian roots as an adult and his acceptance of Catholicism are all shaping factors in his mature work. But Kurelek’s time in the bush began in 1946 and ended in 1951 ~ the year before he began to explore Catholicism and in the years when his mental health was in the greatest jeopardy. The illustrations done for Lumberjack were done almost completely from memory, with some reference to sketches and photographs. In these works, which can be seen as a reflection on this time in his life, he has added religious references to many of them, such as the mother and child in this work. Interestingly, the lumberjacks, who we can presume to be representative of Kurelek
detail 53
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ANTONY (TONY) SCHERMAN 1950 ~
Location of Fruit encaustic on canvas, 1990 70 x 60 in, 177.8 x 152.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver In 1973, a professor at the Royal College of Art in London introduced then~student Tony Scherman to encaustic, and subsequently the artist developed into a master of the medium. Scherman’s working method involves scratching, pouring and burning the wax and pigment surfaces into translucent layers. Location of Fruit features noticeable surface
absences which act as a further reminder of the artist’s presence, thus offering the beauty of a simple still life, yet visibly crafted by the hand of man. Typical of Scherman’s work, questions arise after further inspection and identification of the title. Location of Fruit ~ like his other still lifes ~ features the subjects floating against a dark and anonymous background. Therefore, the “location” is unknown and any narrative or context has been disconnected. The nature and reversible qualities of the medium further suggests that the “location” is the concept of change and transformation over the passage of time. Location of Fruit shimmers with a stunning vitality, drawing the viewer to personally investigate and interpret the work.
E STIMATE : $35,000 ~ 50,000
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WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
Two Works a) Blessing of the Easter Paska mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1968 11 3/4 x 14 1/2 in, 29.8 x 36.8 cm
b) Ukrainian Christmas Eve mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1968 11 3/4 x 14 1/2 in, 29.8 x 36.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collector, Toronto William Kurelek’s depictions of traditional Ukrainian religious ceremonies were exact and detailed, as was frequently the case in his work. In the Christmas scene, 12 dishes are laid out on the table in the manner of the Last Supper of Christ on a traditional Ukrainian embroidered tablecloth. The Kalach, or Christmas bread, sits in the middle of the table with a candle in its centre, having just been lit. The candle will be left burning all night to welcome any homeless people to join the celebration. The family would have fasted as a reminder of the hardships that Mary endured on her journey to Bethlehem, and the eager faces of the hungry children tell us they have been waiting with anticipation for this moment. The child at the frosty window has been watching for the first star of the evening, as the meal can only begin after it appears. Kurelek chose to paint the moment just after the child has spotted and pointed out the star and the candle has been lit, a moment full of simple childhood joy. A sheaf of grain stands in the corner, and the religious icon is revealed, framed by its curtains pulled open for the celebration. Kurelek was raised in a hard~working Ukrainian Orthodox farming family. As a young adult, he became an atheist. This, combined with his interest in art, estranged him from his family who were industrious farmers with little time for such dalliances as art. Kurelek’s adult conversion to Catholicism
55b
followed repeated bouts of depression and struggles with his mental health. From 1952 until 1957, during which time he was a patient in a psychiatric hospital, he explored the Catholic faith, taking correspondence classes about the Mass and eventually converting fully. He would then find success in his art, exploring religious themes with considered attention to his own life’s story. These depictions of Ukrainian religious rituals painted in 1968 show us that Kurelek had come full circle. He had less attachment to a specific faith, and was more concerned with the presence of faith itself. The happy times of his childhood were associated with religious holidays, when work was set aside and families came together. By 1968, as a happily married father, he had the perspective that comes with age and had exorcised the ghosts of his childhood. In the Easter scene, we have an interesting combination of religious observance and social commentary. Orthodox Ukrainian Easter Matins begins at midnight and continues through the morning, when the traditional foods for Easter ~ Paska (a sweet, iced bread), eggs, ham, roast pork, lamb, kielbasa sausage, cheese and fresh horseradish root ~ all painted with detail here by Kurelek, are blessed by the priest with willow branches. The kneeling families will then rise and return home to break their fast. Here, the figures in the foreground are in darkness, symbolic of the time Christ’s body lay in the sepulchre, while the figures in the distance, and the farm scene beyond, are in daylight. Kurelek’s work is loaded with symbolism, both religious and personal. The baskets are a symbol of the hope for happiness and prosperity in the year to come. Kurelek’s inclusion of a car, the grain elevators in the distance and a train, presumably loading grain, are a comment on the prosperity that has clearly already arrived. The banner with the face of Christ, held in a processional, is being carried out of the picture. The question Kurelek asks is this: has happiness arrived as well, or simply prosperity? These works were commissioned by the present owner on the advice of his sister, who was a collector and promoter of Kurelek’s work in the late 1950s.
E STIMATE : $40,000 ~ 60,000
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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Revelstoke and Mount Begbie oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 1962 and stamped Dominion Gallery 24 x 35 in, 61 x 88.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Estate of R. Fraser Elliott, Toronto Private Collection, Victoria
L ITERATURE : Leslie Allan Dawn and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994, a similar 1961 canvas entitled Eagle Pass at Revelstoke reproduced page 42 Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 143 Beginning in 1956, E.J. Hughes undertook a number of sketching trips to the Interior of British Columbia, and captured the unique nature of this landscape. Based on Vancouver Island, Hughes was already well known for his stunning West Coast landscapes. The work produced from his Interior trips further established him as one of Canada’s finest landscape painters ~ an artist whose work was rooted in British Columbia but universal in its unique perception and vision of nature. In the summer of 1958, on a Canada Council Fellowship, Hughes traveled to the Okanagan Valley around Penticton and, for the first time, further east to Revelstoke. While there, Hughes made detailed graphite sketches of the landscape so that he could execute paintings in the studio later, as would be the case with this fine painting. As Hughes explained, “I have found that I have now reached a stage where I can do my oils directly from my original little pencil drawings.” He had an elaborate system of coded colour notes that aided him in recreating the scene in oil when back in his studio. In Revelstoke and Mount Begbie, typical of his approach to landscape, he chose a broad vista, establishing a hillside vantage point over the town
81 and across to the towering mountains. Although the scene is lofty, Hughes grounded his viewpoint through the inclusion of the pine tree on the left and the tops of bushes at his feet. Below, brightly coloured rooftops and houses establish the warmth of human presence in the town overlooking the meandering Columbia River. Hughes strikes a harmonious balance between raw nature and human presence; the viewer has a sense that, in spite of the mass of the mountains and the wilderness pressing at its edges, people are living comfortably in the immensity. Hughes’s work of the 1960s is sought after for its rich and deep colour palette and intensity of image. In this beautiful canvas, the deep blues and greens of the forested mountain flanks are contrasted with vivid spots of hot reds, orange and ochre on the buildings in the town. In contrast to the dark density of the mountains, Hughes creates brightness through the turquoise water of the river, the brilliant white of snow peaks and the cool radiance of the overcast sky. In this finely detailed canvas, Hughes creates many points of interest ~ reflections in the river, the driftwood on its small island and the architectural details of the town’s buildings. Many calculations go into making this work visually interesting in every part of the image, such as the shifts in scale from the details of the town to the immensity of the mountain. In atmosphere, Hughes’s image, illuminated by a cool and even light, has a stillness only broken by the flow of the river. It is a scene captured in a serene moment, dominated by the timeless eminence of the mountains. Hughes must have found this view of Revelstoke compelling, as in 1961 he painted another major canvas, Eagle Pass at Revelstoke, from a slightly different vantage point. Revelstoke and Mount Begbie embodies Hughes’s keen perception of British Columbia’s “vast and beautiful Interior” ~ the apt title of the Kamloops Art Gallery’s 1994 exhibition of his Interior work. This majestic panorama was once in the collection of the late Roy Fraser Elliott, a well~known Canadian lawyer and philanthropist. He was recognized as one of Canada’s foremost collectors of both historical and contemporary Canadian and European art.
E STIMATE : $125,000 ~ 175,000
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JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN AANFM RCA
1923 ~ 1999
Laque d’un pays vert oil on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 1972 72 x 72 in, 182.9 x 182.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Marlborough~Godard, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Constance Naubert~Riser, Jean McEwen, Colour in Depth, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1998, page 38 Jean McEwen stated, “A painting is created from rhythm, form, space, light, shade and colour ~ but it is the feeling, the poetry of the painter that produces the harmony.” Central to his work is a sensuality based on rich pigmentation and texture ~ a feeling that the viewer is completely
absorbed by the pure sensation of exploring the properties of colour. McEwen creates pictorial space by superimposing one colour field layer on another ~ here a predominantly green field gives the illusion of floating forward on a background of scumbled monochromatic grey, beige and white visible only at its edges. From the softly glowing surface, which is both transparent and opaque, lighter patches of green colours emerge while darker areas sink back into the depths, giving the impression of dimensionality. While McEwen uses the structure of the square in his paintings, there is no hard geometry, only soft edges. McEwen’s titles emerge from his poetic relationship with colour, thus this title ~ Laque d’un pays vert ~ which translates as “lacquer of a green country”.
E STIMATE : $50,000 ~ 70,000
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HAROLD BARLING TOWN CGP CPE CSGA OC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 1991
Push oil on board, signed and dated 1955 ~ 1956 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed 5748~6 23 3/8 x 25 in, 59.4 x 63.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : David Burnett, Town, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1986, the 1960 canvas Interior Pitch Out reproduced page 104 and the 1960 canvas Pitch Out reproduced page 105
E XHIBITED : Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto, Town: Four Decades, 1990
Harold Town seems never to have experienced a fallow period in the making of vigorous, innovative works of art. His exquisite line drawings such as the Enigma Variations and Movie Stars series; his enormous output of Single Autographic Prints; the playfulness of his Toy Horse drawings and constructions; the audacity of his Snap works and the satiric wit of his paintings of the 1980s ~ these all stand as testament to Town’s prodigious talent. Yet Town is best remembered for his abstract paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, and paintings like Push remind us of the freshness and energy that infused these works. His characteristic graphic elements, particularly the black brush~strokes used to add formal structure to floating colour areas, may derive from motifs the artist admired during his visits to the Oriental collections at the Royal Ontario Museum. Town was a baseball fan, and one may speculate that Push is the nub of at least two other large works from 1960 ~ Interior Pitch Out and Pitch Out ~ which expand on the impelling movement implicit here.
E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000
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LAWREN STEWART HARRIS ALC BCSFA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG 1885 ~ 1970
Calligraph Forming double~sided oil on canvas, circa 1950 ~ 1958 37 x 48 in, 94 x 121.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Estate of the Artist
L ITERATURE : Russell Harper et al, Lawren Harris Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Canada, 1963, listed page 86 Peter Larisey, Light for a Cold Land, Lawren Harris’s Work and Life ~ An Introduction, 1993, reproduced plate 51 Andrew Hunter, Lawren Stewart Harris, A Painter’s Progress, The Americas Society, 2000, reproduced page 70
E XHIBITED : National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Lawren Harris Retrospective Exhibition, June 7 ~ September 8, 1963, traveling to the Vancouver Art Gallery, 1963, catalogue #72
The Elsie Perrin Memorial Art Museum, London, Ontario, catalogue #2 The Americas Society, New York, Lawren Stewart Harris, A Painter’s Progress, September 5 ~ November 5, 2000 During the mid~1950s, Lawren Harris was living in Vancouver, and had become a pillar of the art community there while pursuing new directions in his abstract work. He was contemplating Tantric Buddhist images from Tibet such as mandalas, which ~ though abstract ~ directly related to spiritual thought and practices such as meditation. His intense interest in Theosophy was a continuous thread in his life, and had been his early impetus toward the expression of spirituality in his work while he was in the Group of Seven, ultimately leading him to abstraction. Also at this time, he was examining Abstract Expressionism, which he felt was not a style like Cubism, but “a new realm in which the imagination is released into an illimitable range of new subjects and new visions of old subjects.” From these explorations of disparate spiritual and artistic directions came change. Once again, his work evolved, away from the more geometric and formalized images of the 1940s and into a more fluid, expressive use of line. In fact, line became the central formal element in many works, and could vary in expression from a flame~like energy to a soft, lyrical treatment. These works, like those of the Abstract Expressionists, had more emotional impact than his cool, cerebral works of the 1940s. This
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double~sided work encompasses two directions of the 1950s ~ on the verso, flame~like forms and on the recto, a dance of calligraphic lines. Peter Larisey writes that the title Calligraph Forming is “indicative of this whole long series of variations on the linear themes that Harris chose from his automatic drawings. The paintings are probably meant as new calligraphic signs of Harris’s spiritual and mystical intuitions.” The backgrounds for Harris’s calligraphic forms at this time were often softly modulated abstract fields, but in Calligraph Forming, Harris used distinctive, thickly painted horizontal bands of colour. A precedent from long ago can be seen in the horizontal bands of colour that dominated the structure of the ice house in the 1912 work entitled Building the Ice House, Hamilton. More concurrently, it was seen, although in a more curvilinear style, in Harris’s iconic 1962 canvas Atma Buddhi Manas, reproduced on the cover of the 1985 Art Gallery of Ontario catalogue for an exhibition of Harris’s abstract work. The intense yellow of the background ~ yellow in Theosophical theory being symbolic of active intelligence and mental creativity ~ radiates light. This radiance pushes the calligraphic lines to the front of the picture plane, and makes them vibrate. The colour variation into green also creates a subtle sense of motion, almost like waves gently lapping. The work on verso, with its upward arcing flame~like blue forms, is also dominated by a yellow field, but one more
amorphous and sun~like. It is a fluid and expansive work, more associative of the essence of landscape elements. Calligraph Forming and its verso image are powerful expressions of Harris’s astonishing ability to evolve as an artist into quite radically different visual means of expression and to embody an ethereal spiritual reality ~ originally perceived in his Lake Superior, Rocky Mountain and Arctic works ~ into its purest expression through abstraction. Calligraph Forming was included in two important exhibitions, Harris’s 1963 retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as The Americas Society 2000 exhibition of Harris’s work in New York. This painting is framed as a double~sided work. Included with this lot are the labels from exhibitions at The Elsie Perrin Memorial Art Museum and the National Gallery of Canada retrospective exhibition, on which the painting is titled. This work is documented as LSH Holdings #175.
E STIMATE : $70,000 ~ 90,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Sign acrylic on canvas, signed and dated 1989 and on verso titled and dated on the gallery label 53 x 49 in, 134.6 x 124.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Bau~Xi Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 209 Elements of native imagery had been entering Jack Shadbolt’s work for decades. In some works, Shadbolt had made graphic record of Indian carvings and designs, such as in the 1976 extended series Coast Indian Suite. As far back as the late 1940s and early 1950s, he had been abstracting from native designs and dropping these elements into his abstractions. Sign continues on from this approach. As Shadbolt wrote in his journal, he saw his imagery as transforming “from Indian symbolic suggestion into contemporary abstraction.” The transformational object in Sign conjures various associations ~ a cross, a figure, an upside~down headdress or a fetish object displayed as if on a platform. The arrows pointing away from the object are enigmatic, the meaning of the “sign” unknown, but the image has a powerful presence, conjuring images of ceremony and shamans. Detached from direct reference to any specific native group or use, it resonates as a symbol whose primitive meaning we can only guess, part of Shadbolt’s personal language of abstraction amid the lush painterly surface of this canvas.
E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000
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LAWREN STEWART HARRIS ALC BCSFA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG
1885 ~ 1970
Study for Calligraph Forming oil on board, signed and on verso stamped Lawren Harris LSH Holdings Ltd 9, circa 1958 12 x 15 in, 30.5 x 38.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Estate of the Artist Please note: this work is a study for lot 59 in this sale.
E STIMATE : $3,000 ~ 5,000
MOLLY JOAN LAMB BOBAK BCSFA CGP CPE CSGA CSPWC RCA
1922 ~
Figure in Interior oil on canvas, signed 40 x 48 in, 101.6 x 121.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto During World War II, Molly Lamb Bobak was the only woman to be appointed an official war artist. A fine modernist painter, she is known for subjects such as crowd scenes on city streets and outdoor settings, flowers and interiors. In this lush and light~filled work, Bobak’s sensitive expressionist rendering of surfaces and patterning is outstanding, and her use of perspective interesting; we are looking in, the intrigued observer of the contemplative woman at the end of the room.
E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 15,000 61
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Sea Drift 10 acrylic on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1989 83 x 67 in, 210.8 x 170.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Bau~Xi Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1997, page 50, a similar 1989 canvas entitled Sea Drift 13 reproduced page 90 In the early years of the 1980s, Gordon Smith was working with a warm, bright palette in landscape~based abstractions with a horizontal movement, such as in his Nova Scotia series. He had become restless and was searching for change and a new cycle of paintings. In 1982, Smith retired from the University of British Columbia and within a few years began to take trips into the British Columbia wilderness. He found what he was searching for in the raw forest and seashore of the coast. In 1984, 1986 and 1987 he went to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and in 1989, Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island. Closer to home, he explored Shannon Falls near Squamish in 1985. Corresponding with these experiences, he began a cycle of darker palette works based on inner forest images. Verticality took over from the horizontal, and although he had begun with more direct reference to landscape elements, such as in his Shannon Falls series, his work became more abstract. There was no longer the classic division between foreground and background, with perspective given by the suggestion of a sky. Rather, his works were like abstracted walls of forests or, in this case, a chunk of shore in which you are not sure what is up or down, whether the sea is before you or behind. Before 1984, Smith’s working method with his canvases was to refer to sketches and memory. But in 1984 he began to take photographs to use as a visual reference, and this was another element that assisted his new direction. In a spirit of improvisation, Smith used expressionist brushwork with the kind of abandon that had been present in his work in the 1950s. The source point of Smith’s connection to Abstract Expressionism was his trip to San Francisco in 1951 to attend the California School of Fine Art, where he saw the work of American Expressionists such as Clyfford Still. These previous connections to Abstract Expressionism strongly reactivated with the 1987 works that emerged after his trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands and, as he had first done in Elmer Bischoff’s class in San Francisco in 1951, he would put his canvas on the floor and spill, push and smear pigment on the canvas. His abstraction came directly from the natural world, and in Sea Drift 10, Smith came to the edge of the forest, looking down onto the shore. In this towering, superlative work, Smith shows his mastery of the physicality of paint, as he works the surface with broad expressionist brush~strokes, layering, scraping, incising and dribbling the paint, and leaving behind
89 textural effects. Dark and light intertwine as Smith paints the essence of the contrasting elements of dark rocky shelves and the seawater that foams, pours and sprays over them. From the midst of this drama of dark and light come flashes of bright colours ~ red, orange, mauve, blue and green ~ intimations of organic life and washed~up objects on the shore. These final years of the 1980s into the early 1990s were a significant period of innovation and strength for Smith. Ian Thom writes, “As Jack Shadbolt suggested, Smith appeared to have found his ‘true lyric territory’. Smith was able to take a series of visual cues from the landscape, his viewing of the world, and build an aesthetic which referred to but surpassed the immediate observations of the eye.” Works such as Sea Drift 10 are an expression of the essence of the West Coast, but from a modernist perspective. Visceral and beautiful, Sea Drift 10 is a prime example of why Smith is one of Canada’s most significant and innovative painters.
E STIMATE : $70,000 ~ 90,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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64
64
JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Memory of a Greek Garden oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 and on verso signed, titled, dated, inscribed $300 and $450 and stamped with the artist’s stamp 29 x 39 1/2 in, 73.7 x 100.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver Sold sale of Canadian Art and International Works, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 9, 1995, lot 54 Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Jack Shadbolt, In Search of Form, 1968, pages 97 and 106 Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 86
Jack Shadbolt’s first trip to the Mediterranean was in 1957 ~ primarily to the south of France ~ a transformative experience in which he submersed himself in a hedonistic bliss of colour, warmth and light. His sensory self bloomed, and he was drawn there again by “colour hunger” in 1960. This time, he went to Greece as well as France, sketching on the Cycladic island of Mykonos, often from his balcony overlooking the town. Sun~drenched Greece, with its contrasts of azure skies, whitewashed villages and vivid flowers, delighted him. He stated, “It had been the quiet life of the village of Mykonos which had captured me most…first~hand immersion in the pattern of day~to~day living was a movingly new reality.” The light was so intense that he described the island as existing “in the transfixed radiance of a white, mad dream.” Memory of a Greek Garden is a glorious and voluptuous explosion of colour, rich with texture and vibrating with the energy of impassioned brush~strokes, a tribute to Shadbolt’s life~affirming, joyous experience in the Mediterranean.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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65
65
MOLLY JOAN LAMB BOBAK BCSFA CGP CPE CSGA CSPWC RCA
1922 ~
Santa Arrives, Galiano Island oil on canvas, signed 30 x 40 in, 76.2 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Winchester Galleries, Victoria Private Collection, Vancouver Molly Lamb Bobak’s mother had a waterfront summer resort on Galiano Island called Arbutus Point, acquired in 1942. While an official war artist, Bobak would go home on furloughs, and at the end of World War II, she returned with her husband, artist Bruno Bobak, building a small cottage on her mother’s new Galiano property at Retreat Cove. Bobak moved to
New Brunswick from Vancouver in 1960, but during the ensuing decade often went back to Galiano with her family. This striking image shows her intimate knowledge of social life on the island, and reflects the deep interest in humanity that characterizes her work. She often depicted crowd scenes, focusing on the dynamic shifting rhythms of the figures. Sky, water and ground ~ executed with soft, expressionist brush~strokes ~ are depicted as fluid and reflective, while the figures are substantive and pulsing with life. The cool tones of the coast are contrasted with the vivid colouration in clothing, Christmas lights and the red suit of the protagonist, Santa. This vital painting is packed with engaging elements and is an outstanding example of Bobak’s work.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
92
66
66
GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Snowscape #1 oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled on the frame, circa 1960 28 x 35 in, 71.1 x 88.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Ian Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, pages 1, 28 and 30, a similar 1960 oil entitled Nancledra reproduced page 29 Ian Thom quotes Gordon Smith as saying, “Painting should be a re~creation of an experience rather than an illustration of an experience.” This concept is at the heart of each of his works, as exemplified in
Snowscape #1. In 1960, Smith was awarded a Canada Council fellowship, and took a year to travel and focus on his art. While in England, he rediscovered the works of J.M.W. Turner, which would prove to have a lasting impression on him. Thom notes that Smith was “particularly struck by the freedom of Turner’s technique ~ his willingness to thin and scumble paint, to use any means necessary…to achieve the desired result.” In Snowscape #1, the influence of Turner’s technique can be seen in Smith’s method of conveying light and atmosphere, as he re~creates the experience of a winter landscape through pale, softly modulated colour fields contrasted with precise gestural brush~strokes of colour in the centre. These elements combine to create a work that demands to be seen not as a static illustration but as a moment in time waiting to be experienced once again.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
93
67
67
JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Mythological acrylic on canvas, signed and dated 1986 49 x 49 in, 124.4 x 124.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Bau~Xi Gallery, Vancouver, 1987 Private Collection, Vancouver Jack Shadbolt was prolific and skilled in many mediums ~ printmaking, drawing, watercolor, oil, acrylic and collage. His personal experiences with nature and First Nations art in British Columbia led him to employ native motifs, which manifested throughout his large body of work during his career. In doing so, Shadbolt created his own unique painterly
language, which often contained a Surrealist tone. Mythological contains this otherworldly sense, yet is charged with an almost aggressive energy. Dominating the canvas is an exotic, abstracted dog surveying the desolate, flat landscape in a predatorial manner. The animal is marked with bold yellow and red designs and has an alert stance ~ as if on the hunt for something or someone ~ but seems caught off guard by the viewer and stares directly outward at us. The title does not clarify the environment for the viewer and the “myth” itself is left as a mystery. However, “mythological” is a word that could also be used to describe the artist ~ he was a legendary figure in Canadian contemporary art and had a tremendous influence on artists across the country.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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68
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ROBERT CHARLES DAVIDSON BCSFA OC
1946 ~
Copper with Eagle Design hammered and polished copper and paint, on verso signed and dated 1992 35 x 23 1/2 x 1 in, 88.9 x 59.7 x 2.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Bill McCallum, Victoria The Muchnick Milliren Collection, USA, acquired from the above in 1996 Private Collection, Ontario Traditionally in Haida culture, copper was the ultimate symbol of wealth. Shields inscribed with crest designs were made and exchanged at potlatches, given at wedding feasts and even thrown into the water when important visitors arrived by canoe as a sign of respect (to be recovered on
the tide’s ebb!). The T shape on the lower half symbolizes the backbone or skeleton of the ancestor. Used as markers of wealth, some prosperous chiefs would have owned a dozen or more of these shields. Such was their value that a copper belonging to Albert Edward Edenshaw was sold to a Tsimshian chief for eight slaves, a cedar canoe, 100 elk skins and 80 boxes of eulachon grease. Robert Davidson, great~grandson of renowned Haida artist Charles Edenshaw, is an important artist who has made a significant contribution to revitalizing Haida art. Taking the conventions of Haida art, Davidson transforms them through a contemporary and entirely personal aesthetic. Davidson is known for his refined and masterful techniques, as seen in this exquisite copper inscribed with an eagle crest. This rare and unique work is one of the very few coppers created by Davidson that was not produced in an edition.
E STIMATE : $40,000 ~ 60,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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69
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WILLIAM RONALD (BILL) REID 1920 ~ 1998
Killer Whale on Clan Hat jade patina bronze and mahogany, signed, editioned 3/9 and dated 1986 ~ 1991 20 x 12 1/2 x 6 in, 50.8 x 31.7 x 15.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Buschlen Mowatt Galleries, Vancouver, 1995 Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Robert Bringhurst, The Black Canoe, Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii, 1991, a photograph of Bill Reid carving the Killer Whale form reproduced page 139
One of the principal figures in the revival of Haida art, Bill Reid was a master of form and Haida myth in his jewellery and sculpture, and his work has become legendary. Killer Whale on Clan Hat is one of a few limited edition sculptures produced from elements of Reid’s iconic monumental bronze work The Spirit of Haida Gwaii; in this work Reid uses the killer whale form that was atop the Chief’s staff. The evolution of this form started from drawings in 1986, then in 1991 the developed plaster model of the killer whale for the staff was put aside, and Reid had a new version modelled in wax by George Rammell. One of Reid’s strongest recurrent animal totems, the killer whale is an important figure in Haida mythology ~ a symbol of power and beauty, considered the chief of sea beings in the undersea realm. Carved wooden clan hats with house crests were used by the leaders of the house~group during important ceremonies. This fine sculpture embodies Reid’s use of Haida traditional form expressed through a streamlined contemporary elegance of line.
E STIMATE : $35,000 ~ 45,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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70
DAPHNE ODJIG FCA OC PNIAI RCA WS
1919 ~
Pow Wow Singers acrylic on canvas, signed and on verso titled and dated 1987 30 x 28 in, 76.2 x 71.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Hambleton Galleries, Kelowna Private Collection, Vancouver Daphne Odjig was born in 1919 in the village of Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, of Potawatomi / Odawa / English heritage. Her work is rooted in diverse artistic influences ~ the aboriginal cultures
of Manitoulin Island, the art of the Canadian Northwest Coast, and major European artistic movements of the early twentieth century. In 1973 Odjig co~founded the Professional Native Indian Artists Association (later Incorporation), often referred to as the Indian Group of Seven, alongside Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier. It was the first collective to promote and exhibit First Nations art in mainstream institutions. Odjig is one of the most important and influential First Nations Canadian artists, whose complex oeuvre represents a crucial turning point in the history of contemporary native art in Canada. Her work earned her the Order of Canada in 1986, the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2007 and a major touring retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 2009 ~ 2010.
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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71
71
DAPHNE ODJIG FCA OC PNIAI RCA WS
1919 ~
The Embrace acrylic on board, signed and dated 1973 40 x 30 in, 101.6 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist in Winnipeg By descent to the present Private Estate, Winnipeg Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island was designated one of our Cultural Capitals by the Department of Canadian Heritage in 2006. It is little wonder, then, that so many significant visual and performing artists were born there and profoundly influenced by
their cultural heritage ~ Daphne Odjig being one of those influential artists. Odjig was encouraged to paint and draw from early childhood by her grandfather, who was a stone carver. With no formal training and no pretensions to be a professional artist, she continued to paint after moving to Toronto and throughout her first marriage and motherhood in British Columbia. It was not until the early 1960s, following the reinstitution of the pow wow on Manitoulin Island, that Odjig became more open and secure about her Indian heritage, incorporating Anishinabe motifs, themes and myths into her work. The imagery in The Embrace has its roots in a seminal series of paintings dwelling on the depiction of figures found in the Peterborough Petroglyphs, including mythical heros and teachers such as Nanabijou and Nanabush.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 25,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
73 1909 ~ 1977
Engine House gouache on board, signed and on verso signed twice, titled, dated fall 1943 and inscribed Toronto twice, Haliburton and 54 8 3/8 x 11 in, 21.3 x 27.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, September 1988 Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE : Ken Carpenter, The Heritage of Jack Bush: A Tribute, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1981, a similar work entitled Engine House reproduced page 2 Iris Nowell, Painters Eleven: The Wild Ones of Canadian Art, 2010, a similar work entitled Engine House reproduced page 28 Engine House is an outstanding example of Jack Bush’s work from this time period. Bush must have been particularly pleased with this work as he produced a larger version of this painting also titled Engine House dated 1944. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonnÊ on the work of Jack Bush, being prepared by Sarah Stanners in cooperation with the National Gallery of Canada. Stanners will also be co~curating a Jack Bush retrospective exhibition with Marc Mayer at the National Gallery of Canada, scheduled to open in October 2014.
E STIMATE : $6,000 ~ 8,000
73
JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Griffin Creek charcoal on paper, signed and titled 18 x 24 in, 45.7 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Lacerte & Guimont, Quebec Acquired directly from Guido Molinari by the present Private Collection, Montreal Jean Paul Lemieux used sketchbooks to draft ideas for paintings, to try out variations on themes already painted in previous works or as pictorial notes of a particular place. In this image, he has effortlessly captured the ambience of this village on the shore. If used for a painting, it would be reduced to its simplest elements, as landscapes were never just the recording of a place, but the embodiment of remembrance and time resonant through space.
E STIMATE : $8,000 ~ 10,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
74
99
JOHN GEOFFREY CARUTHERS LITTLE ARCA
1928 ~
Peel Street, Montreal oil on canvas board, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1963 12 x 16 in, 30.5 x 40.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Claude Lafitte, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
75
JOHN GEOFFREY CARUTHERS LITTLE ARCA
1928 ~
Light Ships Wintering at Quebec, Bassin St. Louis
74
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated September 18, 1968 12 x 16 in, 30.5 x 40.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Continental Gallery Inc., Montreal Kastel Galleries, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal John Little became known for his scenes of old Montreal and Quebec City. He worked as a draughtsman in his father’s architectural firm of Luke & Little before he turned exclusively to painting, and had a great reverence for the unique traditional architecture of these cities, some of which has disappeared. Little is at his best in winter, as in this fine atmospheric harbour scene with its sensitive handling of snow effects, unique winter light and the array of colourful boats.
E STIMATE : $7,000 ~ 9,000 75
Thank you for attending our sale of Canadian Post~War & Contemporary Art. Our Fine Canadian Art auction will commence at 7:00 p.m. After tonight’s sale, please view our Third Session ~ November Online Auction of Fine Canadian Art at www.heffel.com, closing on Saturday, November 26, 2011. Lots can be independently viewed at one of our galleries in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, as specified in our online catalogue.
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Robert and David Heffel with their mother Marjorie, May 2007
Canada’s national fine art auction house, Heffel regularly conducts live ballroom auctions of Fine Canadian Art and Canadian Post~War & Contemporary Art in Vancouver during the Spring and Toronto in the Fall, preceded by previews of our sales in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. We also conduct monthly Internet auctions of Fine Canadian and International Art. We have offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, and a representative in Calgary. Our Canadian art experts regularly travel across the country providing free confidential and professional auction appraisals.
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Call 1 800 528~9608 today to arrange for the assessment of your fine art for auction or other purposes, such as probate, family division or insurance. Our experts can be contacted at any of our locations listed above and you may visit our website at www.heffel.com for further information regarding buying and selling with Heffel. When you consign with Heffel your important paintings are marketed globally.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS These Terms and Conditions of Business represent the terms upon which the Auction House contracts with the Consignor and, acting in its capacity as agent on behalf of the Consignor, contracts with the Purchaser. These Terms and Conditions of Business shall apply to the sale of the Lot by the Auction House to the Purchaser on behalf of the
A DEFINED TERMS: 1 PROPERTY Any Property delivered by the Consignor to the Auction House to be placed in the auction sale held by the Auction House on its premises, online or elsewhere and, specifically, that Property described by Lot number in the Auction House catalogue for the auction sale. The Auction House will have the authority to partition the Property into Lots (the “Lots”);
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10 PROCEEDS
OF
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B THE PURCHASER: 1 THE AUCTION HOUSE The Auction House acts solely as agent for the Consignor, except as otherwise provided herein. 2 THE P URCHASER (a) The highest bidder acknowledged by the Auctioneer as the
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OF THE
PURCHASE PRICE
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occur, only upon payment of the Purchase Price by the Purchaser to the Auction House. 6 DESCRIPTIONS
OF
LOT
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102
7 PURCHASED LOT (a) The Purchaser shall collect the Lot from the Auction House
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sale. However, if they are unable to attend, the Auction House will execute bids on their behalf subject to completion of the proper Absentee Bid Form, duly signed and delivered to the Auction House forty~eight (48) hours before the start of the auction sale. The Auction House shall not be responsible nor liable in the making of any such bid by its employees or agents; (c) In the event that the Auction House has received more than
one Absentee Bid Form on a Lot for an identical amount and at auction those absentee bids are the highest bids for that Lot, the Lot shall be Knocked Down to the person whose Absentee Bid Form was received first; and, (d) At the discretion of the Auction House, the Auction House
may execute bids, if appropriately instructed by telephone, on behalf of the prospective purchaser, and the prospective purchaser hereby agrees that neither the Auction House nor its employees nor agents shall be liable to either the Purchaser or the Consignor for any neglect or default in making such a bid. 12 EXPORT PERMITS Without limitation, the Purchaser acknowledges that certain
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property of Canadian cultural importance sold by the Auction House may be subject to the provisions of the Cultural Property Export and Import Act (Canada), and that compliance with the provisions of the said act is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser.
C THE CONSIGNOR: 1 THE AUCTION HOUSE (a) The Auction House shall have absolute discretion as to
whether the Lot is suitable for sale, the particular auction sale for the Lot, the date of the auction sale, the manner in which the auction sale is conducted, the catalogue descriptions of the Lot, and any other matters related to the sale of the Lot at the auction sale; (b) The Auction House reserves the right to withdraw any Lot at
any time prior to the auction sale if, in the sole discretion of the Auction House: (i) there is doubt as to its authenticity; (ii) there is doubt as to the accuracy of any of the Consignor’s
representations or warranties; (iii) the Consignor has breached or is about to breach any
provisions of the Consignment Agreement; or (iv) any other just cause exists. (c) In the event of a withdrawal pursuant to Condition C.1.b.(ii)
or C.1.b.(iii), the Consignor shall pay a charge to the Auction House, as provided in Condition C.8. 2 WARRANTIES
AND
I NDEMNITIES
(a) The Consignor warrants to the Auction House and to the
Purchaser that the Consignor has and shall be able to deliver unencumbered title to the Lot, free and clear of all claims; (b) The Consignor shall indemnify the Auction House, its
employees and agents and the Purchaser against all claims made or proceedings brought by persons entitled or purporting to be entitled to the Lot; (c) The Consignor shall indemnify the Auction House, its
employees and agents and the Purchaser against all claims made or proceedings brought due to any default of the Consignor in complying with any applicable legislation, regulations and these terms and Conditions of Business; and, (d) The Consignor shall reimburse the Auction House in full and
on demand for all Expenses or any other loss or damage whatsoever made, incurred or suffered as a result of any breach by the Consignor of C.2.a and/or C.2.c above. 3 RESERVES The Auction House is authorized by the Consignor to Knock Down a Lot at less than the Reserve, provided that, for the purposes of calculating the Proceeds of Sale due to the Consignor, the Hammer Price shall be deemed to be the full amount of the agreed Reserve established by the Auction House and the Consignor.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 4 COMMISSION
AND
EXPENSES
(a) The Consignor authorizes the Auction House to deduct the
Consignor’s Commission and Expenses from the Hammer Price and, notwithstanding that the Auction House is the Consignor’s agent, acknowledges that the Auction House shall retain the Buyer’s Premium; (b) The Consignor shall pay and authorizes the Auction House to
deduct all Expenses incurred on behalf of the Consignor, together with any Sales Tax thereon; and, (c) The charge for illustrating a Lot in the live auction sale catalogue shall be a flat fee paid by the Consignor of $500 for a large size reproduction and $275 for a small reproduction, per item in each Lot, together with any Sales Tax chargeable thereon. The Auction House retains all rights to photographic and printing material and the right of reproduction of such photographs. The charge for online digital photography, cataloguing and internet posting is a flat fee of $100 per Lot. 5 INSURANCE (a) Lots are only covered by insurance under the Fine Arts
Insurance Policy of the Auction House if the consignor so authorizes; (b) The rate of insurance premium payable by the Consignor is
$15 per $1,000 (01.5%) of the greater value of the high estimate value of the Lot or the realized Hammer Price or for the alternative amount as specified in the Consignment Receipt; (c) If the Consignor instructs the Auction House not to insure a
Lot, it shall at all times remain at the risk of the Consignor who hereby undertakes to: (i) indemnify the Auction House against all claims made or
proceedings brought against the Auction House in respect of loss or damage to the Lot of whatever nature, howsoever and wheresoever occurred, and in any circumstances even where negligence is alleged or proven; (ii) reimburse the Auction House for all Expenses incurred by
the Auction House. Any payment which the Auction House shall make in respect of such loss or damage or Expenses shall be binding upon the Consignor and shall be accepted by the Consignor as conclusive evidence that the Auction House was liable to make such payment; and, (iii) notify any insurer of the existence of the indemnity
contained in these Terms and Conditions of Business; (d) The Auction House does not accept responsibility for Lots
damaged by changes in atmospheric conditions and the Auction House shall not be liable for such damage nor for any other damage to picture frames or to glass in picture frames; and, (e) The value for which a Lot is insured under the Fine Arts
Policy of the Auction House in accordance with sub~clause C.4.b above shall be the total amount due to the Consignor in the event of a successful claim being made against the Auction House.
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6 PAYMENT
OF
PROCEEDS
OF
SALE
(a) The Auction House shall pay the Proceeds of Sale to the
Consignor thirty~five (35) days after the date of sale, if the Auction House has been paid the Purchase Price in full by the Purchaser; (b) If the Auction House has not received the Purchase Price from
the Purchaser within the time period specified, then the Auction House will pay the Proceeds of Sale within seven (7) working days following receipt of the Purchase Price from the Purchaser; and, (c) If before the Purchase Price is paid in full by the Purchaser,
the Auction House pays the Consignor an amount equal to the Proceeds of Sale, title to the property in the Lot shall pass to the Auction House. 7 COLLECTION OF THE P URCHASE PRICE If the Purchaser fails to pay to the Auction House the Purchase Price within thirty (30) days after the date of sale, the Auction House will endeavour to take the Consignor’s instructions as to the appropriate course of action to be taken and, so far as in the Auction House’s opinion such instructions are practicable, will assist the Consignor in recovering the Purchase Price from the Purchaser, save that the Auction House shall not be obligated to issue judicial proceedings against the Purchaser in its own name. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Auction House reserves the right and is hereby authorized at the Consignor’s expense, and in each case at the absolute discretion of the Auction House, to agree to special terms for payment of the Purchase Price, to remove, store and insure the Lot sold, to settle claims made by or against the Purchaser on such terms as the Auction House shall think fit, to take such steps as are necessary to collect monies from the Purchaser to the Consignor and, if appropriate, to set aside the sale and refund money to the Purchaser. 8 CHARGES FOR WITHDRAWN LOTS The Consignor may not withdraw a Lot prior to the auction sale without the consent of the Auction House. In the event that such consent is given, or in the event of a withdrawal pursuant to Condition C.1.b.(ii) or (iii), a charge of, whichever is greater, twenty~five percent (25%) of the high pre~sale estimate or the insured value, together with any applicable Sales Tax and Expenses, is immediately payable to the Auction House, prior to any release of property. 9 UNSOLD LOTS (a) Unsold Lots must be collected at the Consignor’s expense
within the period of ninety (90) days after receipt by the Consignor of notice from the Auction House. Upon the expiration of such a period, the Auction House shall have the right to sell such Lots by public or private sale and on such terms as it thinks fit and to deduct from the Proceeds of Sale any sum owing to the Auction House or to any associated company of the Auction House including Expenses, before
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE remitting the balance to the Consignor. If the Consignor cannot be traced, the Auction House shall place the funds in a bank account in the name of the Auction House for the Consignor. In this condition the expression “Proceeds of Sale” shall have the same meaning in relation to a private sale as it has in relation to a sale by auction;
105
illustrations, photographs or other reproductions of any work provided to the Auction House by the Consignor. The Consignor agrees to fully indemnify the Auction House and hold it harmless from any damages caused to the Auction House by reason of any breach by the Consignor of this warranty and representation.
(b) Lots returned at the Consignor’s request shall be returned at
the Consignor’s risk and expense and will not be insured in transit unless the Auction House is otherwise instructed by the Consignor; and, (c) If any Lot is unsold by auction, the Auction House is
authorized as the exclusive agent for the Consignor for a period of 90 days following the auction to sell such Lot privately for a price that will result in a payment to the Consignor of not less than the net amount (i.e., after deduction of the Auction House Commission and Expenses) to which the Consignor would have been entitled had the Lot been sold at a price equal to the agreed Reserve, or for such lesser amount as the Auction House and the Consignor shall agree. In such event the Consignor’s obligations to the Auction House hereunder with respect to such a Lot are the same as if it had been sold at auction. 10 CONSIGNOR’S SALES TAX STATUS The Consignor shall give to the Auction House all relevant information as to his Sales Tax status with regard to the Lot to be sold, which he warrants is and will be correct and upon which the Auction House shall be entitled to rely. 11 PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS In consideration of the Auction House’s services to the Consignor, the Consignor hereby warrants and represents to the Auction House that it has the right to grant to the Auction House, and the Consignor does hereby grant to the Auction House, a non~exclusive, perpetual, fully paid~up, royalty free and non~revocable right and permission to: (a) reproduce (by illustration, photograph, electronic reproduction, or any other form or medium whether presently known or hereinafter devised) any work within any Lot given to the Auction House for sale by the Consignor; and (b) use and publish such illustration, photograph or other reproduction in connection with the public exhibition, promotion and sale of the Lot in question and otherwise in connection with the operation of the Auction House’s business, including without limitation by including the illustration, photograph or other reproduction in promotional catalogues, compilations, the Auction House’s Art Index, and other publications and materials distributed to the public, and by communicating the illustration, photograph or other reproduction to the public by telecommunication via an Internet website operated by or affiliated with the Auction House (“Permission”). Moreover, the Consignor makes the same warranty and representation and grants the same Permission to the Auction House in respect of any
D GENERAL CONDITIONS: 1 The Auction House as agent for the Consignor is not responsible for any default by the Consignor or the Purchaser. 2 The Auction House shall have the right at its absolute discretion to refuse admission to its premises or attendance at its auctions by any person. 3 The Auction House has the right at its absolute discretion to refuse any bid, to advance the bidding as it may decide, to withdraw or divide any Lot, to combine any two or more Lots and, in the case of dispute, to put up any Lot for auction again. At no time shall a bidder retract or withdraw his or her bid. 4 Any indemnity hereunder shall extend to all actions, proceedings, costs, claims and demands whatsoever incurred or suffered by the person for whose benefit the indemnity is given; and the Auction House shall hold any indemnity on trust for its employees and agents where it is expressed to be for their benefit. 5 Any notice given hereunder shall be in writing and if given by post shall be deemed to have been duly received by the addressee within three (3) business days. 6 The copyright for all illustrations and written matter relating to the Lots shall be and will remain at all times the absolute property of the Auction House and shall not, without the prior written consent of the Auction House, be used by any other person. 7 This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with British Columbia law and the laws of Canada applicable therein and all parties concerned hereby submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the British Columbia Courts. 8 Unless otherwise provided for herein, all monetary amounts referred to herein shall refer to the lawful money of Canada. 9 All words importing the singular number shall include the plural and vice versa, and words importing the use of any gender shall include the masculine, feminine and neuter genders and the word “person” shall include an individual, a trust, a partnership, a body corporate, an association or other incorporated or unincorporated organization or entity. The Purchaser and the Consignor are hereby advised to read fully the Agreement which sets out and establishes the rights and obligations of the Auction House, the Purchaser and the Consignor and the terms by which the Auction House shall conduct the sale and handle other related matters. Version 2011.10, © Heffel Gallery Inc.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
106
CATALOGUE ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS: AAM AANFM AAP ACM AGA AGQ AHSA ALC AOCA ARCA ASA ASPWC ASQ AUTO AWCS BCSFA BCSA BHG CAC CAS CC CGP CH CPE CSAA CSGA CSMA CSPWC EGP FBA FCA FRSA G7 IAF IWCA LP MSA NAD NEAC NSSA OC OIP OM OSA
Art Association of Montreal founded in 1860 Association des artistes non~figuratifs de Montréal Association des arts plastiques Arts Club of Montreal Art Guild America Association des graveurs du Québec Art, Historical and Scientific Association of Vancouver Arts and Letters Club Associate Ontario College of Art Associate Member Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Alberta Society of Artists American Society of Painters in Water Colors Association des sculpteurs du Québec Les Automatistes American Watercolor Society British Columbia Society of Fine Arts founded in 1909 British Columbia Society of Artists Beaver Hall Group, Montreal 1920 ~1922 Canadian Art Club Contemporary Arts Society Companion of the Order of Canada Canadian Group of Painters 1933 ~ 1969 Companion of Honour Commonwealth Canadian Painters ~ Etchers’ Society Canadian Society of Applied Art Canadian Society of Graphic Artists founded in 1905 Canadian Society of Marine Artists Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour founded in 1925 Eastern Group of Painters Federation of British Artists Federation of Canadian Artists Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Group of Seven 1920 ~ 1933 Institut des arts figuratifs Institute of Western Canadian Artists Les Plasticiens Montreal Society of Arts National Academy of Design New English Art Club Nova Scotia Society of Artists Order of Canada Ontario Institute of Painters Order of Merit British Ontario Society of Artists founded 1872
P11 PDCC
Painters Eleven 1953 ~ 1960 Print and Drawing Council of Canada
PNIAI
Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation
POSA
President Ontario Society of Artists
PPCM
Pen and Pencil Club, Montreal
PRCA
President Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
PSA
Pastel Society of America
PSC
Pastel Society of Canada
PY
Prisme d’yeux
QMG
Quebec Modern Group
R5
Regina Five 1961 ~ 1964
RA
Royal Academy
RAAV
Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec
RAIC
Royal Architects Institute of Canada
RBA
Royal Society of British Artists
RCA
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts founded 1880
RI RMS
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour Royal Miniature Society
ROI
Royal Institute of Oil Painters
RPS
Royal Photographic Society
RSA
Royal Scottish Academy
RSC
Royal Society of Canada
RSMA
Royal Society of Marine Artists
RSPP
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
RWS
Royal Watercolour Society
SAA
Society of American Artists
SAAVQ SAP SAPQ SC SCA SCPEE SSC SWAA
Société des artistes en arts visuels du Québec Société des arts plastiques Société des artistes professionnels du Québec The Studio Club Society of Canadian Artists 1867 ~ 1872 Society of Canadian Painters, Etchers and Engravers Sculptors’ Society of Canada Saskatchewan Women Artists’ Association
TCC
Toronto Camera Club
TPG
Transcendental Painting Group 1938 ~ 1942
WAAC
Women’s Art Association of Canada
WIAC
Women’s International Art Club
WS YR
ϕ
Woodlands School Young Romantics Indicates the Heffel Gallery owns an equity interest in the Lot Denotes that additional information on this lot can be found on our website at www.heffel.com
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
107
CATALOGUE TERMS:
HEFFEL’S CODE OF BUSINESS CONDUCT, ETHICS AND PRACTICES:
These catalogue terms are provided for your guidance:
Heffel takes great pride in being the leader in the Canadian fine art auction industry, and has an unparalleled track record. We are proud to have been the dominant auction house in the Canadian art market from 2004 to the present. Our firm’s growth and success has been built on hard work and innovation, our commitment to our Clients and our deep respect for the fine art we offer. At Heffel we treat our consignments with great care and respect, and consider it an honour to have them pass through our hands. We are fully cognizant of the historical value of the works we handle, and their place in art history.
CORNELIUS D AVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work by the artist. ATTRIBUTED TO CORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work executed in whole or in part by the named artist. STUDIO OF C ORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work by an unknown hand in the studio of the artist, possibly executed under the supervision of the named artist. CIRCLE OF CORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work of the period of the artist, closely related to the style of the named artist. MANNER OF CORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work in the style of the named artist and of a later date. AFTER CORNELIUS D AVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a copy of a known work of the named artist. DIMENSIONS Measurements are given height before width in both inches and centimetres. SIGNED / TITLED / DATED In our best judgment, the work has been signed/titled/dated by the artist. If we state “dated 1856” then the artist has inscribed the date when the work was produced. If the artist has not inscribed the date and we state “1856”, then it is known the work was produced in 1856, based on independent research. If the artist has not inscribed the date and there is no independent date reference, then the use of “circa” approximates the date based on style and period. BEARS SIGNATURE / B EARS D ATE In our best judgment, the signature/date is by a hand other than that of the artist.
Heffel, to further define its distinction in the Canadian art auction industry, has taken the following initiative. David and Robert Heffel, second~generation art dealers of the Company’s founding Heffel family, have personally crafted the foundation documents (as published on our website www.heffel.com): Heffel’s Corporate Constitutional Values and Heffel’s Code of Business Conduct, Ethics and Practices. We believe the values and ethics set out in these documents will lay in stone our moral compass. Heffel has flourished through more than three decades of change, proof that our hard work, commitment, philosophy, honour and ethics in all that we do, serves our Clients well. Heffel’s Employees and Shareholders are committed to Heffel’s Code of Business Conduct, Ethics and Practices, together with Heffel’s Corporate Constitutional Values, our Terms and Conditions of Business and related corporate policies, all as amended from time to time, with respect to our Clients, and look forward to continued shared success in this auction season and ongoing.
David K.J. Heffel President, Director and Shareholder (through Heffel Investments Ltd.)
PROVENANCE Is intended to indicate previous collections or owners. CERTIFICATES / LITERATURE / EXHIBITED Any reference to certificates, literature or exhibition history represents the best judgment of the authority or authors named. ESTIMATE Our Estimates are intended as a statement of our best judgment only, and represent a conservative appraisal of the expected Hammer Price.
Version 2008.07, © Heffel Gallery Inc.
Robert C.S. Heffel Vice~President, Director and Shareholder (through R.C.S.H. Investments Ltd.)
Version 2010.10, © Heffel Gallery Inc.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
108
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION FORM
COLLECTOR PROFILE FORM
Please complete this Annual Subscription Form to receive our twice~yearly Auction Catalogues and Auction Result Sheet.
Please complete our Collector Profile Form to assist us in our ability to offer you our finest service.
To order, return a copy of this form with a cheque payable to: Heffel Gallery, 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6H 3G1 Tel 604 732~6505, Fax 604 732~4245, Toll free 800 528~9608 E~mail: mail@heffel.com, Internet: www.heffel.com CATALOGUE S UBSCRIPTIONS ~ DELIVERED
IN
OF
PARTICULAR INTEREST
IN
P URCHASING
OF
PARTICULAR INTEREST
IN
SELLING
1) 2)
TAX INCLUDED
CANADA
One Year ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art Two Year ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art
DELIVERED
ARTISTS
TO THE
U NITED STATES
AND
AT
4) $130.00 5)
O VERSEAS
One Year ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art Two Year ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art
CANADIAN A RT
3) $80.00
AUCTION I NDEX O NLINE ~
$90.00
6)
$150.00
7) 8)
TAX INCLUDED
Please contact Heffel Gallery to set up One Block of 25 Search Results One Year Subscription (35 searches per month) Two Year Subscription (35 searches per month)
$50.00 $250.00 $350.00
9)
ARTISTS
Name
1) Address
2) 3) 4)
Postal Code
E~mail Address 5)
Residence Telephone
Business Telephone
Fax
Cellular
6) 7) 8)
VISA # or MasterCard #
Expiry Date
Signature
Date
9)
Version 2010.05, Š Heffel Gallery Inc.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
109
SHIPPING FORM FOR PURCHASES Heffel Fine Art Auction House will arrange to have Property purchased at the auction sale packed, insured and forwarded to the Purchaser at the Purchaser’s expense and risk pursuant to the Terms and Conditions of Business set out in the Auction Sale Catalogue. The Purchaser is aware and accepts that Heffel Fine Art Auction House does not operate a professional packing service and shall provide such assistance for the convenience only of the Purchaser. Your signature on this form releases Heffel Fine Art Auction House from any liability that may result from damage sustained by artwork during packing and shipping. All such works are packed at the Purchaser’s risk and then transported by a carrier chosen at the discretion of Heffel Fine Art Auction House. Works purchased may be subject to the Cultural Property Import and Export Act of Canada, and compliance with the provisions of the said Act is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser.
Purchaser’s Name as invoiced
Shipping Address
City
Province, Country
Postal Code
E~mail Address
Residence Telephone
Business Telephone
Fax
Cellular Telephone
Credit Card Number
Expiry Date
Sale Date Please indicate your preferred method of shipping below All Charges are Collect for Settlement by the Purchaser SHIPPING OPTIONS Please have my purchases forwarded by: Air
Surface or
Consolidated Ground Shipment to (when available): Heffel Vancouver CARRIER
OF
Heffel Montreal
Social Security Number for U.S. Customs (U.S. Residents Only)
LOT NUMBER
LOT DESCRIPTION
in numerical order
artist
1) 2) 3)
CHOICE
Please have my purchases couriered by: FedEx
Other
Carrier Account Number OPTIONAL INSURANCE YES, please insure my purchases at full sale value while in transit. Heffel’s does not insure frames or glass. (Please note: works under glass and some ground shipments cannot be insured while in transit) NO, I do not require insurance for the purchases listed on this form. (I accept full responsibility for any loss or damage to my purchases while in transit) SHIPPING QUOTATION YES, please send me a quotation for the shipping options selected above. NO shipping quotation necessary, please forward my purchases as indicated above. (Please note: packing charges may apply in addition to shipping charges)
4)
AUTHORIZATION
FOR
COLLECTION
My purchase will be collected on my behalf
Individual or company to collect on my behalf
Date of collection/pick~up
Signed with agreement to the above
Date
Heffel Fine Art Auction House 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5R 2E1 Telephone 416 961~6505, Fax 416 961~4245 E~mail: mail@heffel.com; Internet: http://www.heffel.com Version 2010.09, © Heffel Gallery Inc.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
110
ABSENTEE BID FORM Please view our General Bidding Increments as published by Heffel.
Sale Date
LOT NUMBER
LOT DESCRIPTION
in numerical order
artist
MAXIMUM BID Hammer Price $ CAD (excluding Buyer’s Premium)
1) Billing Name
2) 3)
Address 4)
City
Province, Country
5) 6)
Postal Code
E~mail Address
Daytime Telephone
Evening Telephone
7) 8)
Fax
Cellular
I request Heffel Fine Art Auction House to enter bids on my behalf for the following Lots, up to the maximum Hammer Price I have indicated for each Lot. I understand that if my bid is successful, the purchase price shall be the Hammer Price plus a Buyer’s Premium of seventeen percent (17%) of the Hammer Price of each Lot, and applicable GST/HST and PST. I understand that Heffel Fine Art Auction House executes absentee bids as a convenience for its clients and is not responsible for inadvertently failing to execute bids or for errors relating to their execution of my bids. On my behalf, Heffel Fine Art Auction House will try to purchase these Lots for the lowest possible price, taking into account the reserve and other bids. If identical absentee bids are received, Heffel Fine Art Auction House will give precedence to the Absentee Bid Form received first. I understand and acknowledge all successful bids are subject to the Terms and Conditions of Business printed in the Heffel Fine Art Auction House catalogue.
Signature
Date Received ~ for office use only
Confirmed ~ for office use only
Date
To be sure that bids will be accepted and delivery of lots not delayed, bidders not yet known to Heffel Fine Art Auction House should supply a bank reference. All Absentee Bidders must supply a valid Mastercard or VISA # and expiry date.
MasterCard or VISA #
Expiry Date
Name of Bank
Branch
Address of Bank
Name of Account Officer
Telephone
To allow time for processing, absentee bids should be received at least 24 hours before the sale begins. Heffel Fine Art Auction House will confirm by telephone or e~mail all bids received. If you have not received our confirmation within one business day, please re~submit your bids or contact us at: 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5R 2E1 Telephone 416 961~6505, Fax 416 961~4245 E~mail: mail@heffel.com; Internet: http://www.heffel.com Version 2010.05, © Heffel Gallery Inc.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
INDEX OF ARTISTS BY LOT A/B/C ALLEYN, GEORGE EDMUND 43 BELLEFLEUR, LÉON 15 BIERK, DAVID 36 BOBAK, MOLLY JOAN L AMB 61, 65 BORDUAS, PAUL~ÉMILE 14, 17, 24 BRITTAIN, MILLER GORE 38 BUSH, JACK HAMILTON 9, 72 D/E/F
LEMOYNE, SERGE 45 LETENDRE, R ITA 2, 6, 13 LITTLE, JOHN GEOFFREY CARUTHERS 74, 75 M MCEWEN, JEAN A LBERT 5, 12, 57 MOLINARI , GUIDO 42 MONKMAN, KENT 35, 37 MOUSSEAU, JEAN~PAUL ARMAND 22
DAVIDSON, ROBERT CHARLES 68 FERRON, MARCELLE 16, 26
N/O
G
P/Q/R
GAUCHER, YVES 11 GERVAIS, LISE 10 GORDON, HORTENSE MATTICE 44
REID, WILLIAM RONALD (BILL ) 69 RIOPELLE, JEAN ~PAUL 20, 21, 23, 27, 28, 30, 31 ROBERTS , WILLIAM GOODRIDGE 48, 49, 50
H HARRIS, L AWREN STEWART 59, 62 HODGSON, THOMAS S HERLOCK 3, 41 HUGHES, EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) 52, 56 HURTUBISE, JACQUES 47 I/J/K/L KURELEK, WILLIAM 53, 55 LEFÉBURE, JEAN 25 LEMIEUX , JEAN PAUL 18, 29, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 51, 73
ODJIG, DAPHNE 70, 71
S SCHERMAN, A NTONY (TONY) 54 SHADBOLT, JACK LEONARD 60, 64, 67 SMITH, GORDON A PPELBE 8, 63, 66 SNOW, MICHAEL JAMES ALECK 7, 19 T/U/V/W/X/Y/Z TOUPIN, F ERNAND 46 TOWN, H AROLD BARLING 1, 4, 58
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Fall Live Auction Highlight Previews VANCOUVER AND MONTREAL
Vancouver Preview Saturday, October 29 through Tuesday, November 1, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm
Montreal Preview Thursday, November 10 & Friday, November 11, 11:00 am to 7:00 pm Saturday, November 12, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Please visit our live auction online catalogue at www.heffel.com for specific details designating which Lots will be available for our Vancouver and Montreal previews.
2247 Granville Street Vancouver, BC V6H 3G1 Telephone: 604 732~6505 Toll Free: 800 528~9608 Facsimile: 604 732~4245
1840 rue Sherbrooke Ouest Montreal, Quebec H3H 1E4 Telephone: 514 939~6505 Toll Free: 866 939~6505 Facsimile: 514 939~1100
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CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
NOVEMBER 24, 2011
V ISIT
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
www.heffel.com VANCOUVER
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
ISBN 978~1~927031~02~5
SALE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2011, 4PM, TORONTO
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