HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
MAY 15, 2013
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
V ISIT
www.heffel.com VANCOUVER
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TORONTO
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MONTREAL
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
ISBN 978~1~927031~08~7
SALE WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2013, 4PM, VANCOUVER
OTTAWA
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3/15/2013, 4:34 PM
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3/15/2013, 4:35 PM
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
AUCTION WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2013 4 PM, CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART 7 PM, FINE CANADIAN ART VANCOUVER CONVENTION CENTRE WEST BURRARD ENTRANCE, ROOM 211 1055 CANADA PLACE, VANCOUVER PREVIEW AT GALERIE HEFFEL, MONTREAL 1840 RUE SHERBROOKE OUEST THURSDAY, APRIL 25 & FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 11 AM TO 7 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 11 AM TO 5 PM PREVIEW AT HEFFEL GALLERY, TORONTO 13 HAZELTON AVENUE THURSDAY, MAY 2 & FRIDAY, MAY 3, 11 AM TO 7 PM SATURDAY, MAY 4, 11 AM TO 5 PM PREVIEW AT HEFFEL GALLERY, VANCOUVER SATURDAY, MAY 11 THROUGH TUESDAY, MAY 14, 11 AM TO 6 PM WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 10 AM TO 12 PM HEFFEL GALLERY, VANCOUVER 2247 GRANVILLE STREET, VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6H 3G1 TELEPHONE 604 732~6505, FAX 604 732~4245 TOLL FREE 1 800 528~9608 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 Limited VANCOUVER 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G1 Telephone 604 732~6505, Fax 604 732~4245 E~mail: mail@heffel.com, Internet: www.heffel.com T ORONTO 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E1 Telephone 416 961~6505, Fax 416 961~4245 M ONTREAL 1840 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, Quebec H3H 1E4 Telephone 514 939~6505, Fax 514 939~1100 OTTAWA 451 Daly Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6H6 Telephone 613 230~6505, Fax 613 230~8884 C ALGARY Telephone 403 238~6505 C ORPORATE BANK Royal Bank of Canada, 1497 West Broadway Vancouver, British Columbia V6H 1H7 Telephone 604 665~5710 Account #05680 003: 133 503 3 Swift Code: ROYccat2 Incoming wires are required to be sent in Canadian funds and must include: Heffel Gallery Limited, 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3G1 as beneficiary. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chairman In Memoriam ~ Kenneth Grant Heffel President ~ David Kenneth John Heffel Auctioneer License T83~3364318 and V13~155938 Vice~President ~ Robert Campbell Scott Heffel Auctioneer License T83~3365303 and V13~155937
HEFFEL.COM DEPARTMENTS F INE CANADIAN ART canadianart@heffel.com APPRAISALS appraisals@heffel.com ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE BIDDING bids@heffel.com SHIPPING shipping@heffel.com SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions@heffel.com
CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTIONS Heffel Fine Art Auction House and Heffel Gallery Limited 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 120 of this catalogue. AUCTION PERSONNEL Audra Branigan ~ Client Services and Accounts Lisa Christensen ~ Calgary Representative Jasmin D’Aigle and Max Meyer ~ Digital Imaging Kate Galicz ~ Director of Appraisal Services Andrew Gibbs ~ Ottawa Representative Brian Goble ~ Director of Digital Imaging Jennifer Heffel ~ Auction Assistant Patsy Kim Heffel ~ Director of Accounting Elizabeth Hilson and Anthea Song ~ Administrative Assistants François Hudon ~ Client Services Lindsay Jackson ~ Manager of Toronto Office Lauren Kratzer ~ Director of Art Index and Manager of Shipping Bobby Ma, John Maclean and Anders Oinonen ~ Internal Logistics Alison Meredith ~ Director of Consignments Jill Meredith ~ Director of Online Auction Sales Jamey Petty ~ Director of Shipping and Framing Kirbi Pitt ~ Director 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 C ATALOGUE PRODUCTION Lisa Christensen, Dr. François~Marc Gagnon, Lindsay Jackson, Lauren Kratzer, Joan Murray, Natalie Ribkoff, Judith Scolnik, Dr. Sarah Stanners and Rosalin Te Omra ~ Essay Contributors Brian Goble ~ Director of Digital Imaging David Heffel, Robert Heffel, Iris Schindel and Rosalin Te Omra ~ Text Editing, Catalogue Production Jasmin D’Aigle and Max Meyer ~ Digital Imaging Jill Meredith and Kirbi Pitt ~ Catalogue Layout and Production C OPYRIGHT 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 Limited. Follow us @HeffelAuction:
P RINTING Generation Printing, Vancouver ISBN 978~1~927031~08~7
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AUCTION LOCATION
PREVIEW
AUCTION
Heffel Gallery
Vancouver Convention Centre West,
2247 Granville Street, Vancouver
Burrard Entrance, Room 211
Telephone 604 732~6505
1055 Canada Place, Vancouver
Toll Free 1 800 528~9608
Saleroom Cell 604 418~6505
Call our Vancouver office for special accommodation rates, or email reservations@heffel.com Please refer to page 124 for Toronto and Montreal preview locations
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 5 5 5 5 7 108 110 112 118 119 119 120 120 121 122 123
S ELLING AT AUCTION B UYING AT AUCTION G ENERAL BIDDING INCREMENTS FRAMING, RESTORATION AND SHIPPING W RITTEN VALUATIONS AND APPRAISALS CANADIAN POST~W AR & CONTEMPORARY ART CATALOGUE H EFFEL SPECIALISTS N OTICES FOR C OLLECTORS T ERMS AND CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS CATALOGUE ABBREVIATIONS AND S YMBOLS CATALOGUE TERMS H EFFEL’S C ODE OF BUSINESS CONDUCT, ETHICS AND PRACTICES ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION FORM COLLECTOR PROFILE F ORM S HIPPING FORM FOR PURCHASES ABSENTEE BID FORM I NDEX OF ARTISTS BY LOT
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
SELLING AT AUCTION Heffel Fine Art Auction House is a division of Heffel Gallery Limited. 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 122 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 Buyer’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 INCREMENTS $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
FRAMING, RESTORATION 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 Buyer, 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. Buyers who acquire items that require local delivery or out of town shipping should refer to our Shipping Form for Purchases on page 121 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 Limited, the client will be refunded the appraisal fee, less incurred “out of pocket” expenses.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE VANCOUVER
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TORONTO
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The Buyer 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 Buyer 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 112 through 119 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 PDT. 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 122 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 1.00 US dollar, 0.78 Euro, 0.67 British pound, 97 Japanese yen or 8.10 Hong Kong dollars as of our publication date.
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CATALOGUE
Featuring Works from An Important Montreal Collection A Prominent Montreal Family Estate The Collection of Belle Burke The Estate of James M. Brickley The PSBGM Cultural Heritage Foundation The Rennie Collection & other Important Private Collections
SALE WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 13, 2013, 4:00 PM, VANCOUVER
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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L ITERATURE : Marjorie M. Halprin, Jack Shadbolt and the Coastal Indian Image, UBC Museum of Anthropology, 1986, page 26 Jack Shadbolt was introduced to Emily Carr in 1930 in Victoria, and was struck by her powerful paintings of First Nations villages and totems. By the mid~1930s, Shadbolt was sketching native masks in Victoria’s BC Provincial Museum (now the Royal BC Museum), such as this remarkable watercolour of a compelling Raven with Human Face mask. The cracks from weathering in this marvellously detailed mask make its beauty all the more fragile and evocative. Shadbolt wrote of the importance of such images, “The Indian mode of expressing things from inside out, out of deep interior identification with the spirit of the image portrayed, gave me my inventive impetus as well as helping me to my personal mode of abstraction.” He would continue to integrate native imagery into his work throughout his career because, as he wrote, “Their imprint is on my mind. Whenever I look out on our wilderness I am haunted by evocations of their memory…they give my view of nature a deeper solemnity, a nostalgia for the oneness with a wild world ~ and a reproach to aspects of our pragmatic environment.”
E STIMATE: $7,000 ~ 9,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Bella Bella watercolour and crayon on paper, signed, titled, dated August 28, 1939 and inscribed Head~dress, Raven with Human Face, Victoria Museum and on verso inscribed Indian masks 1 20 1/2 x 16 in, 52.1 x 40.6 cm P ROVENANCE : By descent to the present Private Collection, British Columbia
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L ITERATURE : Alex Colville: The Splendour of Order, The National Film Board of Canada, 1983, featured and discussed in the video. A copy of this video in VHS is included with this lot. David Burnett, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983, the 1981 canvas entitled Night Walk reproduced page 211
E XHIBITED : Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver, Alex Colville, October 1989, catalogue #13 Alex Colville’s art is complex and intriguing, and the diagram at the top of this work shows how carefully planned his compositions are. The artist has divided the work into vertical quadrants, and a central circle is marked out into a five~pointed star. The vanishing point of the sidewalk is also clearly drawn. These are the balancing points of the composition, the points that move our eye around in the work. The central part of the work is filled with trees shrouded in darkness, and all of the visual weight of the work is at the right in the steadily advancing man and dog. We see in the diagram that a vertical line runs directly through both of their breastbones. Thus, in their movement towards us, they move as one. The theme of a blind man on a night walk is composed differently in other drawings and in the final 1981 masterwork by Colville. This poignant drawing speaks of the man’s visual isolation and the mystery of his experience of his internal night within the night surrounding him.
E STIMATE : $18,000 ~ 22,000
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ALEXANDER COLVILLE PC CC
1920 ~
Night Walk IV mixed media on paper, dated November 23, 1981 twice and on verso inscribed 22 12 x 9 in, 29.8 x 22.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver
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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Near the Forest Museum, Duncan watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1998 and on verso signed, titled and dated 20 x 24 in, 50.8 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal The Estate of Dr. Max Stern, Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 187 As Ian Thom states, “By 1980, E.J. Hughes was the most important landscape painter working in British Columbia”, and he is now considered to be one of the most important landscape painters in Canada. Living in Duncan on Vancouver Island, Hughes focused on the surrounding Cowichan Valley for his subjects, this scene being
particularly close to him. The BC Forest Museum, now called the BC Forest Discovery Centre, chronicles the history of logging in British Columbia on a 100~acre site with indoor and outdoor exhibits, and includes forest with nature trails and a heritage railway. True to Hughes’s customary style, nature dominates the scene, with the more subtle evidence of man’s interactions with it signified by the presence of the sign and small houses in the background. By 1991 Hughes had turned his full attention to watercolour, a medium he was a master of, exhibiting fine attention to detail and seemingly effortless washes. In Near the Forest Museum, Duncan, Hughes captures the atmosphere of tranquility that is so much a part of the Cowichan Valley through the lush green vegetation, softly glowing sky and serene waters.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Above Okanagan Lake, Penticton watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1960 and on verso titled on the Dominion Gallery label 12 x 16 in, 30.5 x 40.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Leslie Allan and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994, the 1958 graphite drawing entitled Above Okanagan Lake reproduced page 50 and the 1960 canvas entitled Above Okanagan Lake reproduced page 53 Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, the 1960 canvas entitled Above Okanagan Lake reproduced page 154 Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album, The Paintings Volume I, 1932 ~ 1991, 2011, the 1960 canvas entitled Above Okanagan Lake reproduced page 31
In 1958 E.J. Hughes was awarded a Canada Council fellowship to sketch around British Columbia, and he traveled to the Interior where he executed the pencil sketch that this beautiful watercolour and an outstanding 1960 canvas were based on. Hughes’s style ~ which had evolved through his coastal subjects ~ was fully developed, and the same essential elements can be seen in the Interior works: his attraction to a stunning panoramic view, his sensitivity to the unique elements of the landscape and a heightened awareness of colour. Here he focuses on such striking elements as the Ponderosa pine, the deep blue of Okanagan Lake and the unique clay cliffs above its shores. His attention to detail is manifest in his depiction of the short bunchy grasses in the foreground and the sage and other vegetation growing on the slopes above the lake. In Above Okanagan Lake, Penticton, Hughes adeptly captures not only the physical uniqueness of the area, but also the light~drenched and dreamy atmosphere of the Mediterranean~like Okanagan Valley.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 12,000
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P ROVENANCE : Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Edmonton By descent to the present Private Collection, Edmonton Jack Bush’s upbeat abstracts are primarily concerned with issues of colour, and in this regard he is a fine master. Here, with this lively, controlled, yet about to spring off the picture plane image, we can see his ability in spades. The ground has been sponged on ~ a certain shade of yellow, mottled and organic, it is deeply layered yet seems thin. Against this ground, the angled, crossing form is rendered in three colours vertically and two horizontally. This form crosses, cuts and flies against the yellow~gold ground, caught in space, still yet moving, alive and vibrant. Painted in July of 1974, Cross Over is the original work for a run of serigraphs produced by Theo Waddington, and as a result is signed on verso. Without the distraction of anything at all in the margins of this lovely work, it seems, somehow, to be even more free than its soaring forms already suggest. The Tate Britain in London has a Cross Over serigraph in their collection. This work will be included in Sarah Stanners’s forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné.
E STIMATE : $30,000 ~ 40,000
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
1909 ~ 1977
Cross Over gouache on paper, inscribed 1.30 and on verso signed, titled, dated July 1974 and inscribed Toronto / B0821 / DG3698 29 3/4 x 22 1/4 in, 75.6 x 56.5 cm
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P ROVENANCE : Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Edmonton By descent to the present Private Collection, Edmonton
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, page 123 Charles Millard relates that, by 1970, Jack Bush had “discovered that if the thinly rolled paint of the grounds contained a certain amount of unassimilated pigment, the result was a pleasing modulation that produced a yielding, although not atmospheric, foil for the flat shapes on top of them.” The blue ground in this work varies nicely in its saturation, containing hints of the deeper pigment from which this pleasant, rather oceanic blue comes, and areas of delicate greenish translucency at its edges. Created as the basis for a serigraph in 1974, Pink Moon shares elements with lot 5, Cross Over, in the diagonal slashing form, the sponged~on ground of layered colour and the joyous, vivid sense of life that it contains. The moon motif reminds us of the hook motif, a recurrent form in Bush’s mid~1970s works. Like Cross Over, Pink Moon is signed on verso, which allows the image complete freedom from any referential text, allowing further breathing room into this already light and open work. This work will be included in Sarah Stanners’s forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné.
E STIMATE : $30,000 ~ 40,000
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
Pink Moon gouache on paper, inscribed 1.30 and on verso signed, titled, dated July 1974 and inscribed Toronto / B0823 / DG3699 30 x 22 1/4 in, 76.2 x 56.5 cm
1909 ~ 1977
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Red Beach oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled and dated 1965 on the gallery label 36 x 40 in, 91.4 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal An Important Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Anthony Emery, Ten Years of Painting by Gordon Smith, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia, 1966, unpaginated
E XHIBITED : Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal, Gordon Smith, 1965 By the time Gordon Smith painted this vibrant canvas, he was a well~established presence on the national art scene. He had trained in Winnipeg, Vancouver and San Francisco, and his painting Structure with Red Sun, 1955, had won first prize at the National Gallery of Canada’s First Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Painting and been acquired for their collection. He was already an important teacher, working since 1956 at the University of British Columbia and teaching in Banff, Jasper and elsewhere. In 1957 he had served as the president of the Canadian Group of Painters, and in the same year had one~man exhibitions at both the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Widely traveled, he had studied art history at Harvard University, and later spent much of 1960 in England and Europe on a Canada Council senior fellowship. He had regularly been exhibiting his work in both juried and commercial shows in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal; he first exhibited with Galerie Agnès Lefort in Montreal in 1963. He had also, in the beginning of his career, worked with architects on large~scale pieces, producing a mosaic mural of considerable size for architect Arthur Erickson’s Simon Fraser University in 1964. Red Beach was shown in his third exhibition at Galerie Agnès Lefort in 1965. It reveals Smith as an accomplished and confident painter. Comfortable with the language of abstraction, something he had explored extensively in the summer of 1951 when he trained with Elmer Bischoff in San Francisco, Smith was also deeply interested in the
15 landscape, having bought his first boat in 1958 to explore the coastline around Vancouver. He had developed a visual language that was contemporary, but at the same time retained some connections to the natural world. Smith had also employed, since the 1950s, a system of grids, notably in works such as Structure with Red Sun and Wet Night (collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery). The dialogue between the order represented by the grid and Smith’s relish in the disorder ~ the messiness of paint ~ gives works such as Red Beach a sense of energy and excitement. Produced at the same time as the well~known Red Wizard Red (in a private collection), Red Beach combines a vivid use of colour, a strong linear design and bold brushwork. The title alludes to the natural world, and the image may depict the chance amalgamation of flotsam on a beach, but for Smith the “subject” of the work is secondary to our experience of colour and paint and how they are applied to the surface. The work is deliberately explosive; the grid is only just able to restrain the forms, which seem ready to move ~ in which direction we cannot tell. Red Beach is not a quiet painting, nor was it intended to be. Smith was aware that it would be shown in Montreal, the home of Guido Molinari, Yves Gaucher and other important abstractionists: if his work was to succeed in that environment, boldness and conviction were required. These qualities are clearly evident in Red Beach. The following year, Smith had the first major survey exhibition of his work, Ten Years of Painting by Gordon Smith. Organized by Alvin Balkind for the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, it traveled nationally and was an outstanding success because, as Balkind wrote at the time, Smith was “a man who has, for well over ten years, consistently produced some of the most notable and striking ~ and strikingly handsome ~ paintings that Canada has seen in recent decades.” Almost 50 years after it was painted, “strikingly handsome” remains an apt and accurate description of Red Beach.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Trees in Winter acrylic on canvas, signed 30 x 40 in, 76.2 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Robert Enright, Gordon Smith: Entanglements, Equinox Gallery, 2012, page 5 Surrounded by forest in his studio and with easy access to wilderness on Vancouver’s North Shore, Gordon Smith has used a modernist approach to his observations of nature in winter. Robert Enright states, “Smith is easily the finest painter of the range and subtleties of snow that this snow~bound country has ever produced. The subject has demanded
from him close observation and detailed mark~making. All landscape painters share a common problem; how to find the combination of gestures, marks, colours, textures and forms that convincingly render the landscape they are looking at and hope to approximate. In this regard, Smith’s snow paintings are the white gold standard.” In Trees in Winter, our first impression is of black and white, but on closer examination gorgeous notes of mauve, green, blue and orange~brown emerge. The work demonstrates Smith’s acute awareness of the abstract properties of his subject and the qualities of paint itself. Vertical black lines of trunks contrast with criss~crossed fine branches and the horizontal patterning of snow on undergrowth. Beautiful and ethereal, Trees in Winter is one of Smith’s most exquisite snow paintings.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
WF a mixed media on paper, signed and on verso titled on a label and dated 2005 21 x 30 in, 53.3 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Robert Enright, Gordon Smith: Entanglements, Equinox Gallery, 2012, page 5 To this important West Coast modernist, paint and the quality of the surface itself is as important as the natural scene he is depicting. In WF a, Gordon Smith makes us aware of the space below the surface ~ the
presence of the growth under the blanket of snow. He insinuates what lies beneath by letting the green bleed up in soft smudges ~ suggestions of mosses, grasses and ground cover. The bare branches in the foreground reflect his attraction to certain patterns; as he stated, “I’ve always loved tangles, that crossing over of things.” WF a adeptly recreates Smith’s experience in the landscape through its painterly surface of dark marks and lines against a luscious snow surface glowing with delicate colour tones. As Robert Enright points out, “over the course of his 75 year long career he has made paintings employing that procedure of looping and overlapping, the movement of line into line, texture into texture and colour into colour. Painting is the trace of the inside of his head to the outside world, using nature as the subject of that complicated disentanglement.”
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 12,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
TransCanada oil on canvas on board, signed, circa 1965 11 3/4 x 39 7/8 in, 29.8 x 101.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist in 1974 by the present Private Collection, France
L ITERATURE : Francine Brousseau, Jean Paul Lemieux, His Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1998, page 13
In discussing the enduring appeal of Jean Paul Lemieux’s work, Francine Brousseau ascribes the artist’s appeal to his use of pictorial organization, light and perspective, and “the emotion and the strange sense of complicity we feel when confronted with his images [so] that we never tire of these paintings…The artist speaks a language understood by all and invites us to look beyond.” Painted during the artist’s mature period, this work bears witness to Lemieux’s multilayered skill as an artist, his total economy of means, and his ability to depict a complex idea through a scene of utter simplicity. Here, in an apparently motionless landscape, we are witnessing the clash of civilizations, the point of no return between two eras and the rift between two different lifestyles. As the train ~ the mechanized world ~ rushes into the scene, the horse and rider ~ from a more traditional world ~ are caught in the near right corner of the composition. On the far left and opposite side, a train approaches, white smoke billowing, huffing, breaking the silence and inexorably interrupting any inner thought. The train has a purpose, it must hurry, it cannot linger nor waste any time. The rider and the train are each going in different directions in the apparent stillness of the work. The rider comes from our space, reminding us of our link to nature and the less hurried, less rushed and perhaps less efficient world where, from the vantage of the horse’s back,
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detail 10
we are capable of appreciating nature’s overwhelming beauty, especially as represented by Lemieux’s magnificent and enigmatic, timeless and austere landscape. The train comes from a distant horizon, perhaps a city, but certainly a place of commerce. So much is conveyed by so little in Lemieux’s depiction of the train. The triangle of grey smoke is barely visible against the grey sky, and the length of the train is uncertain, yet we know the train is moving quickly towards an impatiently waiting destination, somewhere off to the left of our view. The horse and rider, by contrast, move slowly, perhaps even pause, as their half~brown, half~red colours echo those of the train. There is a sense of spiritual discord and contrast between the horse and rider and the train. It is not a matter of right or wrong, but more a matter of a simple difference, and underscores the artist’s ability to note, hint at, and ever so subtly suggest that we consider this difference. Upon closer analysis, the rigorous composition of this work further demonstrates Lemieux’s artistic skill. The work can be divided into three
detail 10
parts, one part land and two parts sky. The moving horse and train contrast with the motionlessness of the landscape and are separated almost equally by the horizon. One horizontal, the other vertical, the rider and the train both occupy the landscape equally, yet their relationship to it is completely different. Additionally, while the train runs parallel to the horizon, the horse and rider cross it, giving the work balance and opposition, push and pull. Further, we are drawn into the work in an active manner, as we follow the rider’s path. Lemieux’s paintings, at once subtly nuanced and fascinating, have an astonishing spiritual appeal. His winter scenes, rife with solitude, have contributed to the painter’s eminence. This masterpiece of Canadian art, whose location was previously unknown, has now been re~discovered and returned to Canada.
E STIMATE: $125,000 ~ 175,000
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ROY ARDEN 1957 ~
Basement 10 silver gelatin prints and 10 C~prints, on verso initialed, titled on a label, editioned A.P. 2/2 and dated 1996 17 1/4 x 21 3/4 in, 43.8 x 55.2 cm each P ROVENANCE : Acquired from Patrick Painter Editions, 1998 Rennie Collection, Vancouver
E XHIBITED : Oakville Galleries, Roy Arden, Selected Works 1985 ~ 2000, February 2 ~ April 7, 2002, traveling to VOX Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal, August 29 ~ October 27, 2002 Roy Arden’s photographs of Vancouver have documented the changing city in large~scale format since the early 1990s, and he is one of the city’s
most respected artists, contributing to Vancouver’s reputation as an important centre for photography. Works from Arden’s 1996 Basement Series are perhaps his most personal, exploring as they do Arden’s own cast~off belongings ~ and those of his neighbouring tenants ~ that fill the basement of his apartment block. The images appear as if just discovered in a modern archaeological dig ~ objects yet to be entombed, but still just as forgotten as ancient artifacts, as the speed of casting off is much faster in modern times. The 20 images in Basement are half in black and white, half in colour, each depicting the cluttered objects in a clinical, documentary manner. Objects repeat from print to print, suggesting a panoramic approach on Arden’s part. Identifiable objects like frying pans and long~play records, once likely prized for their newness, have lost their fleeting consumer appeal, a consideration to which Arden has always been sensitive to in his work.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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JUDY RADUL 1962 ~
Describe Video HD video on DVD, VHS and portable hard drive, 2007 16 minutes 17 seconds P ROVENANCE : Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, 2007 Rennie Collection, Vancouver Judy Radul’s work as an artist in audio/video, installation, performance pieces and performance readings has been exhibited at numerous venues, including the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, The Banff Centre in Alberta and internationally at the Generali Foundation in Vienna and Digital Media City in Seoul. This short narrative, Describe Video, uses conventional camerawork and editing to bring the viewer to the point of view of the characters ~ two sighted work partners played by blind actors. Over the
soundtrack of dialogue, ambient sound and music is an additional “described video” audio track, a voice~over typically used in television and movies, that attempts to translate the visual image into spoken words as an aid for the visually impaired. Radul’s works are concerned with concepts of gender, the body, speech and the idea of authentic and inauthentic expression. In Describe Video, she concentrates on this latter idea, exploring the visual disconnect of her actors with their dubbed~over speech, the truth of this speech, and the dichotomy this disconnect creates.
E STIMATE: $5,000 ~ 7,000
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
1909 ~ 1977
Snow Day acrylic polymer on canvas, on verso signed, titled, dated Dec. 1972 and inscribed acrylic polymer W.B., December 1972 ~ March 1973 80 3/4 x 65 1/4 in, 205.1 x 165.7 cm P ROVENANCE : David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto Coopers & Lybrand (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Private Collection, Alberta
L ITERATURE : Jack Bush Diary for 1972 and 1973, Jack Bush Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario The arc of Jack Bush’s career, from the early days of oil sketches en plein air to his international success in New York and London with large~scale canvases, is paradigmatic of the evolution of Canadian painting from European approaches to modernist motives. Bush’s bold but articulate use of colour in the 1960s fostered a steady demand for his work by dealers and collectors. By the 1970s, Bush was recognized as a world~class painter, worthy enough to open the new contemporary wing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1972 with a solo show of his work. It was a coup ~ a Canadian artist opening a newly built section of the MFA in Boston purposed to celebrate the best in contemporary art. Just ten years previously, Bush had landed the first of his solo exhibitions in New York City. The show opened on April 17, 1962 at the Robert Elkon Gallery on Madison Avenue with peers such as Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Robert Murray and Clement Greenberg in attendance. Bush startled gallery~goers with a selection of his 1961 “thrust” paintings. Forceful, solitary bars of colour or, in some cases, unpainted shafts of canvas, culminated in a burst of colour and expressive form. They are undeniably sexy. The rigid bars of the “thrust” paintings are born again in the artist’s work of the early 1970s such as Snow Day, but this time with daring new grounds. Bush kept a daily diary, and each day opened with a note about the weather. The winter of 1972 / 1973 was notably snowy. Snow Day is signed by the artist on the back of the canvas with a date of December 1972. The artist also kept very careful records of all of his paintings in three neat notebooks, complete with small thumbnail sketches for nearly all of the abstract paintings. His note for Snow Day bears an extended date: “Dec. 1972 ~ Mar. 1973”. The thumbnail sketch also reveals that the painting had only five horizontal bars in its original inception. Considering the artist’s extensive journaling habits, his remarkably comprehensive record books and his 41 years spent as a leading commercial illustrator, it is not a stretch to say that Bush had an editorial eye. As with many of the artist’s paintings, Snow Day was decidedly improved upon. The diaries reveal that the artist, in his words, began “editing” a number of his paintings in March 1973. Bush regularly reviewed his paintings with
Installation 13 Heffel Gallery, Vancouver, March 2013
peers, his wife Mabel and Clement Greenberg. Greenberg visited with Bush in the first few days of March. Discussing what worked and did not work, what surprised and what nagged, was typical studio talk. Like drafts for written work, clarity was gained with the participation of another’s eye, and perspective was gained with the passage of time. After discussing possible alterations to be made on a number of paintings made over the winter, Bush noted that Greenberg remarked, “You’re going to have fun playing around with those ~ I envy you.” Bush’s sensitivity to the life of a painting, how it might read differently from one day to the next, is what makes paintings like Snow Day feel so very fresh even today. His work is ever contemporary. We thank Dr. Sarah Stanners for contributing the above essay. Stanners is an independent art historian currently directing the Jack Bush catalogue raisonné project. She is also a guest curator with the National Gallery of Canada where she is co~curating a major Bush retrospective exhibition with the Gallery’s director, Marc Mayer, which is scheduled to be on view from October 31, 2014 to January 15, 2015. Stanners regularly teaches Canadian art history at the university level and is now affiliated with the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. Snow Day will be included in the forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné. For more information on this project, or to submit details of a painting, please go to www.jackbush.org
E STIMATE: $90,000 ~ 120,000
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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF BELLE BURKE (NÉE NOTKIN)
Belle Burke in the Restaurant des Saints~Pères, rue des Saints~Pères, Saint~Germain~des~Prés, Rive Gauche, Paris, circa 1952 ~ 1954, during the time that she was involved with Jean~Paul Riopelle
In 1948, the same year he signed Paul~Émile Borduas’s manifesto Refus global and kick~started Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, Jean~Paul Riopelle married dancer Françoise l’Espérance; they moved to his Montparnasse studio in Paris, where he had established himself in 1946. Paris was in the midst of recovering from the ravages of the Second World War and was flooded with displaced people, while at the same time Montparnasse was reclaiming its place as the centre of the cultural avant~garde in Paris. The community there was accepting, open and interested in anything new, odd, different or challenging. It was quickly becoming the meeting ground for artists, writers and creative post~war minds. Riopelle was entering one of the most productive periods of his prolific artistic life, working long hours at painting with a feverish intensity. Moving in circles filled with vibrant personalities and creative minds stimulated his work.
He associated briefly with the Surrealists, and had the distinction of being the only Canadian ever to have exhibited with them. The milestone of his first solo exhibition also came in 1948. Riopelle had been producing spidery abstractions in ink and watercolour, using automatic drawing methods as a jumping~off point. He moved from these into larger oils with patches of ink and dripping paint, and experimented further with the palette knife. He was introduced to the artists Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung and Georges Duthuit (Henri Matisse’s son~in~law) through Paris art dealer Pierre Loeb. Another dealer, Pierre Matisse (Henri Matisse’s son) opened even more doors for him in Paris, so much so that Riopelle claimed to have associated with André Breton, Jean~Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti. He enjoyed his growing reputation and did not protest becoming known
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as “un trappeur supérieur”. The cultural bohemians of the avant~garde Paris art world saw him as a wild colonial artist who had burst onto the Paris art scene straight out of the wilderness of Canada. He liked this, and his obsessive work habits and intense, brooding personality fit this stereotype. Hélène de Billy, who has written extensively on Riopelle, describes him as “very handsome and enormously appealing to women”. It was an incredibly heady time.
Burke in New York with her dog Ebonite (which she brought back from Paris), circa 1955
Burke in New Jersey, before attending Columbia University circa 1946
Belle Burke (Belle Notkin as she was then) was born in 1928 in New Jersey, and spent the winter and spring of 1948 and 1949 living in Paris. After going home to complete her degree at Barnard College at Columbia University, where she majored in French and Literature, she returned to Paris and continued her studies at the Sorbonne (now l’Université Paris~Sorbonne). She took apartments in various locations including rue Lomond, rue Mederic, rue Daubenton and Blvd Montparnasse. Using her language and writing skills, she worked at various freelance jobs as both a translator and an editor. She met Riopelle at a party, and it was the beginning of an intense relationship, during which Riopelle gave Burke many works of his art, including a sketchbook and numerous oils and watercolours. He was smitten with her, and would pen love notes on gallery announcements that he gave her. Guy Viau describes Burke as “very delicate and kind. She had a tiny waist, the voice of a bird, and owned a poodle named Ebonite. Jean~Paul was in love with her. He was still living with Françoise at the time, but he was increasingly being seen with Burke.” The affair lasted several years, during which Riopelle wanted to marry Burke, but she was not interested. “He told me about his affair with Belle,” Joan Mitchell ~ an American artist with whom Riopelle would later develop a long~standing relationship ~ stated. “Apparently, he wanted to marry her but she did not.” Burke and Riopelle’s relationship became increasingly volatile, and Burke tried numerous times to break things off. The situation deteriorated further, and became, Burke felt, “destructive, even violent”. Finally, in 1954 or 1955, in order to end the affair, she decided to return to New York. Still, Riopelle did not want to let her go, and went to great lengths to dissuade her, so much so that she would later describe her flight from Paris as “running away from Jean~Paul”. After Burke left Paris for New York, Riopelle continued to write to her there, attempting to rekindle their capricious relationship. Eventually, he followed her to the United States (he had two solo shows at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1954 and 1955), but to no avail, as Burke finally ended the relationship. Riopelle then returned to Paris. In 1955, Mitchell was also living in Paris. While she was aware of Riopelle’s recent “passionate and chaotic affair with another woman” and the fact that he was still living with his wife and two daughters, she too would become involved with him. Their relationship would last almost 25 years. Burke lived for many years in Venice and New York, and traveled back to Paris often. She met David Burke in Europe and they married in 1967. Through her work as a translator and her involvement in the arts, she developed close friendships with many artists and writers including Floriano Vecchi, Tobias Schneebaum and Norman Mailer, the latter of whom served with Burke’s brother Sam Notkin in the Second World War. She also knew and corresponded with the wealthy collector Peggy Guggenheim. Burke’s work as a translator included books such as the classic Penguin Island by Anatole France, Amorous Initiation by O.V. de L. Milosz and Merlin: Priest of Nature by Jean Markale. She also wrote on the topic of culture for several European newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune. This fine selection of works by Riopelle, lots 14 ~ 21, was given to Burke by the artist during their relationship.
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14
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre oil on canvas, circa 1954 23 1/3 x 28 1/2 in, 59.3 x 72.4 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
L ITERATURE : Hélène de Billy, Riopelle, 1996, page 370 It is always tempting to seek in the life of an artist for a key to explain their art. Two of the Jean~Paul Riopelle paintings offered now at Heffel, this lot and lot 17, come from the personal collection of Belle Burke, née Notkin, a young American student of French literature at the Sorbonne who was Riopelle’s mistress in Paris during the end of his marriage to Françoise l’Espérance. Regarding Burke, we are told by Riopelle’s biographer Hélène de Billy that, “incapable of facing the end of this relationship, Jean~Paul was exhausting himself trying to hold her back. The game was turning out to be destructive, even violent and sometimes resembled a nightmare.” Among the things that Riopelle did to keep her was to give her a number of his works: oils, watercolours and a sketchbook containing 19 smaller watercolours (17 of these will be offered in Heffel’s Third Session ~ May 2013 Online Auction of Fine Canadian Art). But we will seek in vain in this Sans titre (and lot 17) for the slightest allusion to Riopelle’s and Burke’s tumultuous affair. Not only are the paintings abstract, they are also rather serene and well composed, beautiful in colour and harmony. They belong to another world ~ not the world of common passions, but the world of art. Since at Véhémences confrontées, an exhibition organized by the French painter Georges Mathieu at Galerie Nina Dausset in Paris, Riopelle had declared that “seul peut~être fécond un hasard total (only a complete reliance on chance can be fruitful)”, we cannot see his painting as a reflection of his life. This element of chance made all the difference. Now, each painting was the result of an extraordinary array of choices made to control the flow of movement going in so different directions. Order is
27 here obtained not from the exterior ~ including the life of the artist, his liaisons and ruptures ~ but from the process of painting, from the inside, so to speak. Riopelle had long since abandoned the traditional idea ~ which had its root in theology ~ that an intention had to preside over the execution of a painting in order for it to conform to the artist’s vision and planning. I speak of theology, because the model previously defended for art making was to compare the artist to God, and to see in his work an example of premeditated good design, a world in miniature, as it were. But this was no longer the case ~ this argument of good design was obsolete. For a long time, the world had not been perceived as a perfect machine proving the existence of its creator. For the painter, there was no plan, no aim, no objective defined in advance for a good painting. Even Riopelle’s own life could not be of any help in the definition of his art. The artist was no longer interested in the why of creation, but in the how. There was no final cause such as beauty or love, only a final abstract creation made by tools and paint, to use the vocabulary of Aristotle. The result was amazing. Suddenly a painting could be seen as full of risks taken by the painter, full of disorganization conquered step by step to achieve a completely satisfying structure, with movements converging, with zones of greater or lesser density, with combinations of colours never seen before. Our Sans titre is a magnificent example of the mastery Riopelle was able to achieve in this highly successful period of the 1950s. The result is almost lyrical, symphonic; completely abstract, this painting is not without relation to music. 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 as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/
E STIMATE: $100,000 ~ 150,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre watercolour and ink on paper, signed, circa 1953 14 3/4 x 18 1/4 in, 37.5 x 46.3 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard and Ray Ellenwood, The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal 1941 ~ 1960, 2009, page 61 Jean~Paul Riopelle’s watercolour and ink abstractions often have, by way of the translucence of the watercolour and the opaqueness of the ink, an innately balanced depth of field. In Sans titre, push and pull, solid and soft
contrast in a very pleasing way. Further, in the case of this dancing, musical work, Riopelle’s choice of colours, which are primary and secondary colours in various levels of saturation, provide additional visual balance and a sense of harmony. Roald Nasgaard states that Riopelle “neither started with nature, nor was he an abstract painter in any absolute sense.” The framework within which he painted, his structures and grids, the lines of ink and fine splatters of colours, work together to suggest to us rather than tell us, to hint at something rather than state it. These charged, vibrant works from the 1950s, when he was producing paintings at a frenetic pace in Paris, speak of the creative ferment of the time and the place. There is a certain joy in this work, a sense of excitement, stimulus and energy. This work is included as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/
E STIMATE: $25,000 ~ 35,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre watercolour and ink on paper on card, signed, circa 1955 6 3/8 x 19 1/2 in, 16.2 x 49.5 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York During their tumultuous affair in Paris in the mid~1950s, Jean~Paul Riopelle gave this lyrical, sparkling watercolour and ink work to his lover, Belle Burke. In it, Riopelle has used thinned primary colours as the visual ground for the composition, applying them with a light touch, even
spattering them on in places. This supporting layer of delicate colour is held in place and given compositional structure by the black ink, resulting in a balanced work with an energetic push and pull. Riopelle’s work with watercolour can be as compelling as his work with oil paint straight from the tube, and his use of black is often the reason why. Here, the black ink daubs, fingerprint~like in their shape, move across the work with a rhythmic energy that both follows and breaks away from the directional movement of the finer ink lines. This work is included as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 25,000
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17
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre oil on canvas, circa 1954 ~ 1955 23 1/4 x 28 1/4 in, 59 x 71.7 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York At the time this painting and lot 14 were produced, there were discussions among the Surrealists and their friends about abstract art. It seemed impossible to give primacy to the unconscious and at the same time not to reject the calculating reason that seems to be at work in geometric abstraction. Certain critics, like Charles Estienne, a close friend of André Breton, suspected abstract art to be a “new form of academism”. And indeed, abstract painters like Auguste Herbin and Georges Vantongerloo, by rejecting the slightest allusion to the natural world in their paintings in order to affirm the spiritual world of geometry, ended up in repetitive and decorative patterns of little interest. But there were other ways to abstraction. Estienne later defended the so~called “abstraction lyrique” movement with which Jean~Paul Riopelle has often been associated. Riopelle, who was part of these discussions, defended the possibility of a non~figurative art to be as unpremeditated as the dream~like work of Salvador Dali or René Magritte. He was not the only one, of course, to defend this position. Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages and many others were all with him on this. One could find the same inventiveness in an abstract painting done without pre~conceived ideas as in a painting depicting a dream. And you could be abstract without being geometric. The moment we become more aware of the technique used by Riopelle, as in this Sans titre, we are better able to understand why. He had discarded long brushes and was exclusively using painting knives. When he used that tool, each trace left on the canvas more or less retained its shape. This could be seen as a matter of small importance, but I do not think that is the case. The painting knife has the particular ability to hide the pigment, the medium underneath it, at the very moment when it applies the paint on the canvas. This is a thing we could not say of
31 brushes, and even less of pen or crayon. The knife introduces in the process of painting moments of surprise when the instrument is lifted from the surface of the canvas. At that very moment, Riopelle was confronted with a situation he could not completely predict and had to proceed from there, dealing with the new situation. Thus, the element of unpredictability is introduced. The apparent order of the finished work of art is, in fact, the result of an incredible number of decisions made by the artist. The result is never guaranteed in advance ~ the painting could end up in total chaos. That the opposite happens confirms the mastery of Riopelle. The result is amazing, and again, as with lot 14, life and movement are the key elements of the work. We have often noticed that black is used as a colour in a Riopelle painting, never the absence of light. It gives strength to the red, blue, yellow and white ~ which are particularly brilliant in this striking painting ~ as a kind of supportive background. In fact, it helps to control the unpredictable effects of the application of paint. With Riopelle, one can speak in the same breath of hazard (chance) and control. The element of chance is at the core of creativity, but it makes the use of control necessary ~ in Riopelle’s art, a non~preconceived idea required the use of conscious decisions in the process of painting. One last note on the size of this work and lot 14. Looking at the photographs of these paintings, one could easily imagine each being larger than they actually are. One cannot say that of all works of art, but with Riopelle, his paintings have a monumental impact no matter what the scale. 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 as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/
E STIMATE: $80,000 ~ 120,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre watercolour and ink on paper on board, signed, circa 1955 14 3/4 x 40 7/8 in, 37.5 x 103.8 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York As with his thickly painted drip and palette knife works, Jean~Paul Riopelle’s work in the aqueous medium of watercolour and ink also experiments with mark~making. In this horizontal format work, Riopelle has applied black ink onto a surface already washed with chromatically related hot reds and yellows. Large blots of ink, probably applied with a brush, are extended by spidery radiating lines and slashes. It is the
application of these latter ink marks, with their vibrant energy, that makes this work so interesting. What tool has Riopelle used to give us these erratic, yet forceful marks? They are too solid to have been made with a brush, too controlled to have been dripped on, too tight to have been splattered. It is as if they have been applied with a stick, or perhaps an old paint~clogged brush that still has some softness to it, but which breaks and cracks the lines as they are applied to the paper’s surface. In looking closely at them, it is easy to be drawn into their organic energy, just as Riopelle was at the moment he made them. This work is included as an addendum in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/
E STIMATE: $35,000 ~ 45,000
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Jean~Paul Riopelle, 1953 Denise Colomb (1902 ~ 2004) © Denise Colomb ~ RMN
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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ 1924 ~ 2001
Sans titre oil on canvas 16 x 20 in, 40.6 x 50.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist By descent to the present Private Collection, Montreal Of all of the Automatists, Marcelle Ferron remained truest in her style to the original approach of the group throughout her career. She was deeply interested in colour, and the gestural swathing~on of paint ~ Jean~Paul Riopelle and Georges Duthuit in front of Pavane, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, circa 1954
characteristic of the Automatists ~ was something she explored in remarkable depth. She worked with a long palette knife, blending her carefully selected colours on the surface of her works in a rhythmic, free~flowing manner. She continued to grind and mix her colours herself, despite the readily available and less expensive options available to her in Paris, where she spent much of her career. This intense interest in colour no doubt affected the way she blended her paints on the surface of her canvases, with an almost innate attention to bringing out all of their subtle hidden hues. Additionally, she often set her compositions against backgrounds of black or white, the latter being the case with Sans titre, and the creamy white she uses here is a delicious ground from which her other luminous colours emerge.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre ink, gouache and graphite on paper, signed and dated 1955 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 in, 26.3 x 21.6 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York During the early 1950s, Jean~Paul Riopelle became deeply immersed in the Parisian cultural milieu. Through various exhibitions and his association with dealer Pierre Loeb, Riopelle became connected to other artists working in Paris at the time such as Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung and Wols, in addition to receiving the continued support of
Surrealist leader André Breton. In 1954, his international status was solidified by his first exhibition with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and also by his representation at the Venice Biennale. His global exposure continued at the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in 1955, which further established him as one of Canada’s most important Abstract Expressionists. The optimism and excitement of the period are captured in lots 19, 20 and 21 through the refreshing palette of blue, yellow and red, which is anchored by the black ink, characteristic of his paperworks from this period. All figurative references were eschewed through the black spidery lines woven between patches of colour, resulting in these organically vital works. The swatches of colour and black also draw a connection to the fragmented mosaic tiles he was creating in his larger paintings. However, unlike those sprawling, dense surfaces, these
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36 20
paperworks leave the surface layer exposed, allowing the colour and ink to breathe across the plane. Produced during his most significant period, these lots are sought~after examples from one of Canada’s most important artists, with arguably the greatest international stature.
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre
These works will be included as addenda in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/.
ink and gouache on paper, signed and dated 1955 11 x 8 1/2 in, 27.9 x 21.6 cm
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
20
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre ink and gouache on paper, signed and dated 1955 11 x 8 1/2 in, 27.9 x 21.6 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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PROPERTY OF VARIOUS COLLECTORS
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JACK HAMILTON BUSH ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11
1909 ~ 1977
Triple with Blue, Green, Yellow gouache on paper, signed and dated September 1971 and on verso signed, titled and dated 22 x 29 1/2 in, 55.9 x 74.9 cm P ROVENANCE : David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Jack Bush: Works on Paper, New York Studio School, 2009, essay by Karen Wilkin, “Jack Bush on Paper: A Selection”, http://www.nyss.org/ exhibitions/jack~bush/, accessed February 5, 2013 Jack Bush’s early training and long experience as a graphic designer made it natural and most comfortable for him to work out many of his ideas on paper and on a smaller scale than his powerful, large canvases. Bush’s superb handling of watercolour and gouache allowed him the freedom to
experiment with and develop the abstract motifs that brought him both national and international attention as a significant abstract artist. One notable experiment, begun around 1971, was Bush’s use of three distinct sections of ground colour, most evident in Triple with Blue, Green, Yellow. As Karen Wilkin states in her essay for the New York exhibition, Jack Bush on Paper: A Selection, Bush’s works on paper were not studies for larger images but “independent, accomplished works of art in their own right” and that he “often seems particularly inventive and especially uninhibited on paper.” As with other fine paintings of this period, Triple with Blue, Green, Yellow evinces not only the joy and exuberance of the artist’s emotions but the wit and inventiveness of his best works. This work will be included in Sarah Stanners’s forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné.
E STIMATE: $25,000 ~ 35,000
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LOUIS BELZILE AANFM ARCA LP
1929 ~
Composition mixed media on board, signed and dated 1958 and on verso titled and dated on a label and stamped with the artist’s stamp 23 1/2 x 30 1/4 in, 59.7 x 76.8 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist to the present Private Collection, Montreal Louis Belzile was a founding member of the Plasticiens movement whose members, after the revolution started by the Automatists, broke even further away from modes of traditional painting and created works concerned purely with the most basic, formal elements of art: line and colour. Their artistic concerns were with the relationship between these
two elements with the resulting play of contrasts and form, and our perception of them. In Composition, Belzile is playing with all of these things: creating and defining spaces ~ a box with depth, a floating circle ~ and then deconstructing them with line, changing the perceived spaces into illusions of perceived spaces, and never allowing us to rest on such simple solutions when looking at his work. The Plasticiens admired the work of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, and considered his (and their) geometric approach to painting a form of artistic perfection. Belzile’s work differs somewhat from the other original members of the Plasticiens ~ Jauran (Rodolphe de Repentigny), Jean~Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin ~ in that his works often include areas of textural treatment, and that he drew his geometry freehand.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 10,000
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Things on a Table oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled, circa 1962 40 x 40 in, 101.6 x 101.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist By descent to the present Private Collection, Vancouver The 1960s were a formative period for Gordon Smith. At the beginning of the decade, Smith gained international exposure by showing at the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in 1960, and was awarded a Canada Council fellowship to travel and study in Europe that same year. Also at this time he was teaching at the University of British Columbia, and a fellow faculty
member acquired Things on a Table directly from him. One of Smith’s many strengths as an artist is his unique ability to transform any subject matter into individual, painterly expressions, as exemplified in this work. The “things” themselves are not entirely clear ~ perhaps some fruit, other foods, a plate ~ that are abstracted through varying planes of colour and shape. The central forms hover with bright energy against the dark background, drawing parallels to his non~representational works of the early 1960s. Things on a Table is clearly a still life, as the title suggests, yet exudes a unique complexity through his brilliant use of paint and its properties. This balance of definition and abstraction continues to play an important role throughout his body of work ~ notably in his landscapes ~ to the present day.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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LISE GERVAIS QMG
1933 ~ 1998
Indian Summer oil on canvas, signed and dated 1965 and on verso signed and titled 48 x 60 in, 121.9 x 152.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Gallery Moos, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto In this hot, shimmering work, Lise Gervais’s understanding of her colour palette is readily apparent. It is a luscious painting that speaks of summer warmth and autumn ripeness, and Gervais has conveyed the idea of heat through her glowing hot reds with their different translucencies, and through the slickness of her palette~knife application of paint, which feels completely fresh. Suggested by the title of Indian Summer, the shapes
in the work might evoke the idea of an ancient wall or another type of architectural ruin, caught under the heat of the fall sun. The swathes of purple, here a royal colour indeed, seem to command centre stage, while the inky blacks set everything off brilliantly. Gervais had a masterful command of colour, and her ability to use reds that tend to orange as well as ones that tend to black and to apply them in such brilliant harmony as she has done here, is part of the appeal of her vibrant, enthralling works.
E STIMATE: $25,000 ~ 35,000
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YVES GAUCHER ARCA
1934 ~ 2000
Danse carrée: Once Upon a Square oil on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated November ~ December 1964 ~ January 1965 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Martha Jackson Gallery, New York An Imporant Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Nathalie Garneau, Collection 1: Yves Gaucher, Les Danses carrées, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, 2005, page 1 In 1964, Yves Gaucher set out to redefine his art with the support of his galleries. By temporarily abandoning printmaking in favour of painting,
he developed a new visual language focused on hard edge line, bold colour and playful shapes. Gaucher’s inspiration for the Danse carrée series was derived from the movements of dancers in formation. This motif is essential to understanding the work Danse carrée: Once Upon a Square. Nathalie Garneau comments, “On this he arranged the elements that would henceforth characterize his formal vocabulary: lines and marks of varying lengths and thicknesses, as well as diamond shapes.” In 1965, Gaucher’s visionary Danse carrée paintings convinced dealer Martha Jackson of New York to feature two of them in the group show Vibrations 11. Jackson was impressed and gave the artist a solo show the subsequent year. It was an incredible accomplishment for the young Canadian artist, who was now poised to burst onto the world stage. Shortly after, Gaucher was selected to represent Canada at the XXXIII Venice Biennale, together with Sorel Etrog and Alex Colville.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
Le train oil on card, signed and on verso signed, circa 1965 4 1/2 x 8 3/4 in, 11.4 x 22.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Clarence Gagnon, Montreal Private Collection, Quebec Jean Paul Lemieux’s mastery of the subtle, scrubbed surface and limited palette is especially effective in this fine work. The train, a repeated subject of interest for Lemieux, speeds into our space from a distant horizon, rushing toward us with all of its mechanized intensity, barely contained by the right edge of the work. Yet the tones of the painting ~ grey, brown, white and red ~ and the chalky, drybrush method of applying paint at which Lemieux was so adept, serve to nullify the threat implied by the speeding train. The train simply approaches, charging out of the hoary, frozen air in a sweeping line that conveys a sense of vast, empty distance. And though the engine looms near to us, it is tethered into the distance of the scene by the small patch of corresponding colour on the left side of the work. Further, and quintessentially Lemieux, while the train tracks lead directly into our space as viewers, this intrusion and its threatening psychological effect have been skilfully negated by Lemieux’s decision to paint this work in a diminutive format.
E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 30,000
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JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX CC QMG RCA
1904 ~ 1990
La veuve gouache, watercolour and india ink on paper, signed and titled 24 x 19 in, 61 x 48.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Marlborough~Godard, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto Jean Paul Lemieux filled numerous sketchbooks throughout his career, the contents forming the basis for what were to become major drawings and paintings. He began by using mostly pencil, then pen and ink, and eventually felt pen; these mediums allowed him to create ever~larger
works on paper. In 1972 Lemieux added washes of watercolour and ink to his graphic repertoire, resulting in more gestural spontaneity over the white paper ground, but without any loss of his outstanding control of pictorial space. There is always a natural, unstudied symbiosis between the artist’s human subjects and the settings he creates for them. Whether a lone figure on a beach, in a field or emerging from a nest of city buildings, Lemieux’s quiet human forms speak volumes to the viewer. In La veuve, the high~ceilinged room the widow occupies may be brightly lit and open; nonetheless, she sits there as if awaiting her release. Here the artist demonstrates, with simple means, his subject’s physical and psychological isolation.
E STIMATE: $18,000 ~ 24,000
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RITA LETENDRE ARCA OC QMG
1928 ~
Confluent oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 and on verso signed, titled and dated 26 x 29 in, 66 x 73.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, page 180
Rita Letendre is one of the important Abstract Expressionists in Canadian art, and her early work from 1953 to 1963 established her national and international reputation. Confluent is a keynote of her oeuvre, one with a powerful design punch and terrific painterly passion. An incredible sense of dynamism that is at once highly specific and incipiently abstract accrues from the dancing shapes, which cross the surface to create a sense of movement. The title of the work reveals the essential magic of the composition: confluent ~ a flowing or coming together, a meeting of forms, a junction of great energies. As Roald Nasgaard points out in Abstract Painting in Canada, here and in other works of 1961, Letendre created a “sense of turbulent drama… intensified by brighter colours pushing, as if seeking liberation, against masses of black.”
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Throughout her painting life, Letendre has pursued an art whose primary materials are colour, light and space. Her work has matured impressively, gaining pictorial weight achieved with tactile surfaces and a rich palette, combined with a subtle sense of space ~ sometimes composed of planes which seemingly reflect rays of light and divisions in space. Hers has been a narrative about beauty, and her images reflect an instinctive formal elegance. Despite her work’s ostensible simplicity, the results are satisfying as well as informing, intent on not simply repeating the past.
P ROVENANCE :
This painting, with its back~to~basics abstraction characterized by simple forms, bold colour and an emphasis on process through the use of the palette knife as a paint tool, expresses the soaring joy of Letendre’s path. The result, along with several of her other well~known works painted the same year such as Victoire, in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and The Realm of the Samurai, in the collection of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, is one of the high points of her work.
Of Coast Salish origin, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is well known for expressing his political views about the environment and the treatment of First Nations people through his art. The ovoid is a central motif in Haida art, used repeatedly in their stylized depictions of form. Yuxweluptun is reclaiming this motif in his own terms, removing it from its traditional context and taking it into the post~modern world, incorporating elements of Minimalism and Colour Field painting. However, politics are never far from Yuxweluptun’s consciousness. In 2009, the National Gallery of Canada held an exhibition of Yuxweluptun’s Ovoid series. In the exhibition catalogue, he included a “Manifesto of Ovoidism”, in which he stated that he considered that his ovoids were the basis of “a philosophy to think about such things as land claims, Aboriginal rights, self determination and self government, social conditions and environmentalism, Native reason and Native philosophy…to express Native ‘modernalities’ and to intellectualise place, space and Native reason.” Furthermore, In the Morning features a simplistic palette of black, red and white, colours commonly found in Haida imagery.
We thank Joan Murray for contributing the above essay.
E STIMATE: $25,000 ~ 35,000
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LAWRENCE PAUL YUXWELUPTUN 1957 ~
In the Morning acrylic on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 2008 31 1/4 x 60 in, 79.4 x 152.4 cm
Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : George Harris, Confronting Colonialism, Vancouver Art Gallery, http:// projects.vanartgallery.bc.ca/publications/75years/exhibitions/2/1/artist/ 43/96.27/bibliography/323, accessed March 2, 2013
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Mediterranean Forms oil on canvas, signed and dated 1958 and on verso titled, dated and inscribed J.L. Shadbolt 461 N Glynde Ave., Vancouver BC 40 x 30 in, 101.6 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Collection of Janet and Pierre Berton, Kleinburg By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Recent Canadian Painting, The National Gallery of Canada and The National Museum Warsaw, 1962, reproduced, unpaginated Colin S. MacDonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 8, 2006, page 405
E XHIBITED : The National Museum, Warsaw, Poland, Recent Canadian Painting, January 5 ~ April 1962, catalogue #42 Jack Shadbolt’s artistic influences were varied and rich. He was familiar with the work of the Group of Seven as early as 1925, and had met Emily Carr in 1930 and Lawren Harris in 1933. He saw the works of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne in Paris in 1937 and 1938, and shared their interest in primitive sculpture, vibrant, dancing colour and fractured form. While Shadbolt’s style varied dramatically over the course of his prolific career, what always comes through in his work is a powerful sense of his personal insightfulness. And, as his work is often described as having dreamlike beauty, he must have dreamed of interesting things. This stunning, brilliantly coloured work was inspired by his travels in 1956 to 1957. After representing Canada at the Venice Biennale, Shadbolt traveled through the Mediterranean region of France, visiting small villages along the French Riviera. With the support of a Canada Council
45 Overseas Fellowship and a Canadian Guggenheim International Award combined, he spent a month at the small Spanish~influenced fishing village of Collioure, which lies in a beautiful circular harbour some 24 kilometres north of France’s border with Spain. Surrounded by ancient buildings, colourful architecture and vibrant people, all set against the backdrop of the blue Mediterranean Sea and lit by the heat of the sun, Shadbolt’s passion for colour changed hue, as his work was warmed by the glowing tones of the region. Mediterranean Forms is rendered in a blocky patchwork style that immediately brings to mind an ancient brick wall set with a figurative mosaic. Faces, forms, eyes and arms all seem to be present in this dancing work. Instantly appealing, this work seems to glow with the very warmth of the place it depicts. Shadbolt made two trips to the Mediterranean, the second in 1960, and his response to the region by way of mosaic~like fracturing, the patchwork style, and his affection for hot, burning, ember~like colours would remain present in his work long after the trips took place. Of particular note is the fact that this work was selected for inclusion in the important show Recent Canadian Painting, held in Poland in 1962 and organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Alex Colville’s Man on Verandah (sold by Heffel in November 2010 ~ a record for a work by a living Canadian painter sold in Canada) was also selected for inclusion in this notable show. Further, Mediterranean Forms once belonged to one of Canada’s famous sons ~ author, television host and journalist Pierre Berton. Berton and Shadbolt were both distinguished alumni of Victoria College (now the University of Victoria) in British Columbia (although over ten years apart). They both had great pride in Canada and her history, and shared an interest ~ Berton as an historian and Shadbolt being an official Canadian war artist ~ in the after effects of World War II. In addition to the cover art that Shadbolt produced for MacLean’s magazine while Berton was on the editorial staff there, MacLean’s acquired Shadbolt’s work for its corporate collection.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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P ROVENANCE : Louis and Rose Melzack Collection Private Collection, London, England
L ITERATURE : William Kuhns and Léo Rosshandler, Sam Borenstein, 1978, reproduced page 65
E XHIBITED : Art Gallery of Hamilton, Sam Borenstein, September ~ October, 1974 The mid~1950s brought great change for Sam Borenstein, both artistically and personally. William Kuhns wrote, “As Borenstein’s work of the fifties evolved, his strokes grew bolder, his colours more vivid, the effect more volatile… Perspective, so elaborately achieved in the earlier landscapes, often had a seething, insecure quality ~ as though the spaces themselves were vulnerable to the eruptions going on within a canvas.” On a personal level, his two daughters, Joyce and Maxine, were born during difficult financial circumstances. Borenstein and his wife, Judith, were impoverished at the time and Borenstein was forced to ask his friend, Montreal entrepreneur Louis Melzack, for assistance. Melzack and his wife, Rose, owned Classic Bookstore, a popular bookstore on St. Catherines Street, which also served as a cultural hub in Montreal. Melzack acquired 40 Borenstein paintings, which were hung and sold in the store, and as a result, the artist’s work was introduced to a wider, elite audience. All the Borensteins in this sale, including Falling Red Leaves, are from the important Melzack collection.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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SAMUEL BORENSTEIN CAS QMG
1908 ~ 1969
Falling Red Leaves oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled and dated 1955 on a label 30 x 22 in, 76.2 x 55.9 cm
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SAMUEL BORENSTEIN CAS QMG
1908 ~ 1969
Downtown Montreal oil on canvas, signed and dated 1943 and on verso titled on a label 23 x 31 in, 58.4 x 78.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Louis and Rose Melzack Collection Private Collection, London, England
E XHIBITED : Art Gallery of Hamilton, Sam Borenstein, September ~ October, 1974 After surviving the war years in Lithuania, Sam Borenstein immigrated to Canada in 1921. Upon arrival in Montreal, he worked as a furrier and fabric cutter before pursuing painting, and applied in about 1926 to the
École des beaux~arts in Montreal, but was rejected. Nevertheless, he was committed to his practice and attended evening art classes for two years. However, his greatest education came from fellow Montreal artists ~ Adam Sherriff Scott, Herman Heimlich and Fritz Brandtner, amongst others. By the early 1940s, he was increasingly involved in the Montreal artistic milieu, but as exemplified here, his individual expression was gaining clarity. Great movement is beginning to sweep across the sky, almost pulling the trees away with it and thus acting as a sign of the expressive eruptions to follow in his later paintings. The shades of blues and purples and the almost deserted street evoke a moody atmosphere, as if a storm is brewing on the horizon. Downtown Montreal demonstrates a stage in Borenstein’s gradual yet unbridled development in becoming one of Canada’s most distinct Expressionists.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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48 The rural Quebec landscape served as a great inspiration for Sam Borenstein throughout his career. In particular, the Laurentians were a subject that he would continually return to, first traveling there in the 1940s under the guidance of art dealer William Watson. He also traveled further northeast to the Laurentian Mountains, a region near the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. Pier by the Sea, Laurentian Mountain radiates with bold colour and movement, and in its strength, the work is vividly reminiscent of Borenstein’s greatest influence, Dutch Post~Impressionist master Vincent van Gogh. Similar to van Gogh, Borenstein searched for his own painterly language and expression to portray the landscape he was so clearly moved by. The influence of van Gogh is palpable here, as Borenstein allows his enthusiasm for his subject to override formal technique. The water is particularly stirring, as the deep, greenish abyss of blue is highlighted by bold, textural accents of white and yellow. The final result is an emotionally charged, almost volatile work that exudes a vigorous energy.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 25,000
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SAMUEL BORENSTEIN CAS QMG
1908 ~ 1969
Pier by the Sea, Laurentian Mountain oil on canvas, signed 24 x 20 1/4 in, 61 x 51.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Louis and Rose Melzack Collection Private Collection, London, England
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L ITERATURE : William Kuhns and Léo Rosshandler, Sam Borenstein, 1978, page 39 Sam Borenstein offered a unique painterly perspective on the Canadian landscape and cityscape. He was particularly influenced by the explosive, chaotic work of European masters Maurice Utrillo, Chaim Soutine and Vincent van Gogh. In relation to such inspirations, Borenstein wrote in his autobiographical notes: “It dawned on me that it would be necessary for me to create an alphabet and a language, a language that I also discovered would be foreign to anyone but me…People began to say he has talent but is uncontrolled. How does one control himself when one is so enthusiastic about what one sees?” By the mid~1940s, Borenstein was beginning to distance himself from his earlier representational works and develop this new “alphabet and language”. In this work, his excitement for his surroundings is obvious through the passionate ~ almost flamboyant ~ brush~strokes and ignited colour palette. A painterly earthquake is starting to rumble beneath the surface as the figures, trees and streets begin to sway. A Montreal Street serves as an important pre~cursor to the wildly Expressionist paintings that would emerge in the following years.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 25,000
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SAMUEL BORENSTEIN CAS QMG
1908 ~ 1969
A Montreal Street oil on canvas, signed and dated 1945 26 x 18 in, 66 x 45.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Louis and Rose Melzack Collection Private Collection, London, England
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Composition oil on canvas, on verso titled on the Marlborough~Godard label, 1955 24 3/4 x 80 3/4 in, 62.9 x 205.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Marlborough~Godard, Toronto Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection
L ITERATURE : Hélène de Billy, Riopelle, 1996, page 155 Yseult Riopelle, Jean~Paul Riopelle Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II, 2004, reproduced page 212, 1955.073H.1955, titled as Sans titre This well~known painting, entitled Composition (also known as Sans titre and reproduced in the catalogue raisonné), belongs to Jean~Paul Riopelle’s important period of the 1950s. It is a completely abstract work, giving the feeling of an all~over composition (with no hierarchy between the elements and no points of focalization on the entire surface) but is not completely flat, since the superposition of white strokes on the darker background creates an illusion of some depth. In fact, this minimal characterization does not acknowledge the subtleties of colours one sees here and there, especially as we progress from left to right. It is as if this predominantly black and white painting could give a sign of illumination in the course of its own development. Riopelle wrote in a text prepared for his 1951 presentation at Véhémences confrontées, an exhibition organized in Paris at the Galerie Nina Dausset, in which the painter Georges Mathieu was hoping to “confront” the French and American (even Italian, but represented there only by Giuseppe Capogrossi) avant~garde with the idea that the only issue open to the painter was the “hasard total” (total hazard or chance). This meant that the painter should not know in advance how his painting would develop, but instead should proceed by responding to the new situation created at each stroke of the painting knife applying colours on the canvas. Hazard or chance in this situation is not opposed to consciousness and control. In the process of making the painting, the artist remains conscious of the situation created (or modified) by each of his interventions and intends to control the whole. It is not surprising that Riopelle liked to work without witnesses around him when he was painting. They would only have disturbed the extreme concentration necessary to make the work. I know of only one case of someone who has seen him painting. The bookseller Robert Keane, who owned a barn at Long Island, witnessed him painting, and wrote: “I will never forget this scene. First, he did not paint with a brush but rather with what looked like a putty knife. Second, judging by the hundreds of empty tubes that lay at his feet, he was using a phenomenal quantity of paint. He did not unscrew his tubes. He decapitated them in one move with his knife without ever using the cap. Red, blue, or green: the colours appeared suddenly at the tip of his fingers. Because that is how he was doing it: he held all the tubes (say three or four or as many as his hand could hold) in his fist and then either poured them directly on the canvas or managed to have one colour mixing with the next by pressing the tubes
detail 36
detail 36
in a certain way”. This description perfectly applies here and gives us a hint of Riopelle’s dexterity and his amazing control of technique. Technique is important, but it is not all. The result is the main issue, and here we can say that the result is completely satisfying. The liveliness, the dynamism of this painting ~ which one dreams could continue endlessly on the left or on the right ~ is the best proof of this. Let us hope that this masterpiece might end up in a public collection, where everybody could enjoy it, though I know some collectors see themselves as “custodians” of what they own and are conscious of their responsibility to the general public. 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: $600,000 ~ 800,000
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36 20
paperworks leave the surface layer exposed, allowing the colour and ink to breath across the plane. Produced during his most significant period, these lots are sought~after examples from one of Canada’s most important artists, with arguably the greatest international stature.
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre
These works will be included as addenda in Yseult Riopelle’s online catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work at http://www.riopelle.ca/.
ink and gouache on paper, signed and dated 1955 11 x 8 1/2 in, 27.9 x 21.6 cm
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
20
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre ink and gouache on paper, signed and dated 1955 11 x 8 1/2 in, 27.9 x 21.6 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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Jean~Paul Riopelle, 1953 Denise Colomb (1902 ~ 2004) © Denise Colomb ~ RMN
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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ 1924 ~ 2001
Sans titre oil on canvas 16 x 20 in, 40.6 x 50.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist By descent to the present Private Collection, Montreal Of all of the Automatists, Marcelle Ferron remained truest in her style to the original approach of the group throughout her career. She was deeply interested in colour, and the gestural swathing~on of paint ~ Jean~Paul Riopelle and Georges Duthuit in front of Pavane, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, circa 1954
characteristic of the Automatists ~ was something she explored in remarkable depth. She worked with a long palette knife, blending her carefully selected colours on the surface of her works in a rhythmic, free~flowing manner. She continued to grind and mix her colours herself, despite the readily available and less expensive options available to her in Paris, where she spent much of her career. This intense interest in colour no doubt affected the way she blended her paints on the surface of her canvases, with an almost innate attention to bringing out all of their subtle hidden hues. Additionally, she often set her compositions against backgrounds of black or white, the latter being the case with Sans titre, and the creamy white she uses here is a delicious ground from which her other luminous colours emerge.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA
1923 ~ 2002
Sans titre ink, gouache and graphite on paper, signed and dated 1955 10 3/8 x 8 1/2 in, 26.3 x 21.6 cm P ROVENANCE : A gift from the Artist in Paris in the 1950s to Belle Burke, New York During the early 1950s, Jean~Paul Riopelle became deeply immersed in the Parisian cultural milieu. Through various exhibitions and his association with dealer Pierre Loeb, Riopelle became connected to other artists working in Paris at the time such as Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung and Wols, in addition to receiving the continued support of
Surrealist leader André Breton. In 1954, his international status was solidified by his first exhibition with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and also by his representation at the Venice Biennale. His global exposure continued at the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil in 1955, which further established him as one of Canada’s most important Abstract Expressionists. The optimism and excitement of the period are captured in lots 19, 20 and 21 through the refreshing palette of blue, yellow and red, which is anchored by the black ink, characteristic of his paperworks from this period. All figurative references were eschewed through the black spidery lines woven between patches of colour, resulting in these organically vital works. The swatches of colour and black also draw a connection to the fragmented mosaic tiles he was creating in his larger paintings. However, unlike those sprawling, dense surfaces, these
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LÉON BELLEFLEUR CAS PY QMG
1910 ~ 2007
Signes sur l’eau no. 1 oil on canvas, signed and dated 1962 and on verso titled 39 1/4 x 31 7/8 in, 99.7 x 81 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Dresdnere, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal In 1958, Léon Bellefleur returned to France, where he had been several times since 1954. While there, he explored in depth his long~held interest in the work of the Surrealists and the creative subconscious as a source of inspiration. He was also particularly interested in the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, whose work was heavily influenced by music, and who resonated with Bellefleur because of his ideas on spiritualism in
art. Spain’s Surrealist Joan Miró was also a source of inspiration. Bellefleur endeavoured in his work at this time to respond to the creative dictates of the subconscious, and to search for the completely spontaneous. His work is automatic painting, wherein he approached the canvas without any preconceived idea as to what he would paint, simply responding to his subconscious. He subscribed to the Surrealist theory on objective accidents, and believed that these accidents, which happened when painting in this unplanned manner, would shape the composition and define the work. He also embraced graphic automatism, a type of free~flowing drawing, wherein he allowed his subconscious to guide his hand.
E STIMATE: $12,000 ~ 16,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Bird Skeleton / Harbour, Mykonos Island (verso) double~sided oil on board, signed and dated 1947 36 x 24 in, 91.4 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Claude Bouchard, Ottawa Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, reproduced page 51 In 1946, after his time as an official Canadian war artist, Jack Shadbolt remained haunted by the things he had witnessed during the war. In London, he had walked through bombed streets on his way to his job filing photographs taken by the army during their advance into the camp at Buchenwald, and he was traumatized by the horrors that he saw. In Canada, he began a series of works exploring his unease, using animals, including birds, as subjects. The following year he would work at Buccaneer Bay on North Thormanby Island, executing another series using themes of driftwood and skeletal forms, some beautiful, others dealing with the difficult imagery that remained in his mind. In Vancouver, he sketched the architectural forms of the city, using rusted bridges and derelict buildings as metaphors for the carnage of war. Bird Skeleton has elements of each of these things; the skeletal rib cage of the bird is as bleached as the driftwood at Buccaneer Bay, and the bird’s massive, predatory form clings with red talons to a rusted steel girder. It is a profoundly powerful image ~ primitive, supernatural and frightening. Shadbolt’s choice of setting the bird against a gold~toned, mosaic~like background furthers the sense of the terrible power that it conveys, seeming to reign, as it does, over some rich yet apocalyptic domain. We know from Shadbolt’s letter (which accompanies this lot), that “The Bird Skeleton was done in 1947…at that time, I had not too much money for art materials so I often painted on the backs of boards or paper or canvases…This work was done just before I went to New York to study at the Art Students League in 1948.” Shadbolt then goes on to say, regarding the other side of this double~sided work, “In 1960 I went to Greece and painted there, on Mykonos Island, a series of heavily pigmented sketches of the port. When I returned home again I was still in this mood and reaching for any surface I had handy to make quick memory impressions of the mood of Greece before I forgot. So, obviously, I must have used the back of this other work of the Bird Skeleton ~ though I cannot think how I was so foolish to do so as I came to regard the Bird Skeleton as one of the best works I had done to date. And, curiously, though I had forgotten this impression of Greece, when I see it now I realize that it is far better than I must have thought at the time. In fact, I think it is bold and expressive painting.” Shadbolt has certainly described his work well, the bold expressiveness of the day’s catch caught in a black
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tangle of net is in vivid contrast to the delicate, for Shadbolt at least, harbour scene of Mykonos in the distance. The work has immediate impact, and is boldly calligraphic in an expressionist manner. The simple, pure, primary colours that Shadbolt has used to depict the idea of a trapped creature struggling to free itself seems somehow to underline and emphasize the primal struggle between life and death. In both the Bird Skeleton and the Mykonos image, we have two fine examples of brilliantly expressive, powerful works of art by one of Canada’s most respected painters. Accompanying this lot is a copy of the letter from the artist regarding this painting.
E STIMATE: $60,000 ~ 80,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Threnody for Deep Summer oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed and titled on a label, 1961 28 3/4 x 39 1/2 in, 73 x 100.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 78 In 1960 Jack Shadbolt went to Europe for a second year~long trip, traveling to the Côte d’Azur and Greece. Once again Shadbolt plunged into a hedonistic exploration of colour, exemplified by the chromatic intensity of Threnody for Deep Summer, aflame with warm colours. Threnody means a song or poem of lamentation ~ one can imagine how Shadbolt might mourn for the passing of the radiant summers of the Côte
d’Azur or Greece. The southern heat and light and relaxed lifestyle was an incredible personal and artistic release for Shadbolt. On his first trip to France, he exclaimed, “To be given this is the gift of life…I am beginning to feel now the rediscovery of my human self ~ tastes, smells, touch, texture, sun…following instinct rather than plan” ~ a liberating experience for this intellectual West Coast modernist. Expressionist strokes of multi~coloured paint swirl over the dark central form anchored in a field of glowing orange, pink and red, creating a rich and sensuous atmosphere. Threnody for Deep Summer is the essence of the deep summer day that Shadbolt poignantly longs for.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Dark Expelled oil on canvas, signed and dated 1960 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed Painted at Menton, 1960 45 1/2 x 35 in, 115.6 x 88.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
E XHIBITED : National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Fourth Biennial Exhibition, 1961, catalogue #75 The Elsie Perrin Williams Memorial Art Museum, London, Ontario, 1968, catalogue #75 The hot, charged colour palette and sun~drenched, abstracted landscape present in this richly painted work derive from Jack Shadbolt’s 1960 return trip to Europe, when he visited Mediterranean medieval towns
and painted at Menton and Collioure. The inscription notes that this work was produced at Menton in the Côte d’Azur region of France. Shadbolt was drawn to this sensual environment of heat and colour, and paintings such as this reflect the hedonistic delight and sense of freedom he experienced there. Also during this time, Shadbolt was experimenting with automatic techniques of mark~marking, producing expressionist ink and acrylic washes on paper dominated by strong, black calligraphic forms. Forms like this are present here, and in his title Shadbolt intimates a struggle between these dark, potent forms and the rich hot reds, oranges and yellows ~ possibly symbolizing different impulses of the psyche. Transformation, manifestation of the unconscious, dynamic tension and spontaneity were at the core of Shadbolt’s painting, and are manifest in Dark Expelled. Chosen for the National Gallery of Canada’s Fourth Biennial in 1961, this is an outstanding work from this period.
E STIMATE: $12,000 ~ 16,000
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WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
Foxes Have Holes mixed media on board, signed and on verso titled and dated 1963 and inscribed This illustrates St. Matthew, Chapter 8, line 20 on various labels 8 1/4 x 30 1/2 in, 21 x 77.5 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Roberts Gallery, Toronto Sold sale of Important Canadian Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Books and Prints, Sotheby & Co. (Canada), October 21, 1974, lot 85 Private Collection, Toronto
where to lay his head.” In Foxes Have Holes, the Christ~like figure represents the son of man without faith ~ thus having no spiritual home. While the birds in the leafless tree have nests and the fox has its den, eternal life for the son of man is represented by the fully leafed~out tree in the distance ~ Kurelek’s metaphor for salvation.
E STIMATE: $40,000 ~ 60,000
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JOHN GEOFFREY CARUTHERS LITTLE ARCA
1928 ~
Little Hockey Players oil on canvas board, signed, 1962 10 x 16 in, 25.4 x 40.6 cm
L ITERATURE :
P ROVENANCE :
William Kurelek, Someone With Me, 1980, page 152
Continental Galleries, Montreal The PSBGM Cultural Heritage Foundation
Prior to converting to Catholicism, William Kurelek undertook a comprehensive four~year study of the religion “to make sure the wool wasn’t being pulled over my eyes.” He even made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Spain in 1956. An intensive period of Bible study took place in the months before Kurelek was baptized, and his knowledge of scripture, particularly relating to the life of Christ, was thorough. In his works concerned wholly with religious subjects, Kurelek often depicted scenes from the life of Christ, especially those he understood as modern parables ~ admonishments to the pitfalls of present~day society. Matthew 8:20 (KJV) reads: “And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not
As David Blackwood is renowned for images of the East Coast and William Kurelek for scenes of the Prairies, John Little is synonymous with painting the streets of Montreal. However, Little Hockey Players is atypical of Little’s usual imagery, as he moves the viewer away from his archetypal sidewalks and into a more rural countryside. The children at play are embracing the winter season in a quintessentially Canadian game of hockey, strongly evoking Little’s admiration for his beloved province of Quebec. Little balances this element of play by including the working horse and its master in the background, ploughing through the winter elements. This charming work includes the artist’s distinctive colour
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palette dominated by cream, olive, ochre, grey and brown, and is subtly highlighted by the young players’ jerseys in the foreground. The muted colour palette and overcast sky emphasize the briskness of the day; yet, clothes are still hanging on the line. Little’s characteristic expressionist brush~strokes successfully capture his warm appreciation for this environment, exemplifying the artist’s unique vision that is so sought after today.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 12,000
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WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
The King Farm House mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1974 and on verso signed and titled on a label 10 1/4 x 12 in, 26 x 30.5 cm
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P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto William Kurelek, raised in a Ukrainian family on farms in Alberta and Manitoba, had a keen interest in farm structures, and the King family farmhouse was a well~built and prosperous one. He also knew the behaviour of animals well. Within this idyllic depiction of a farmhouse is a subtle drama ~ a pure white cat is watching the birds on the lawn, its intent most likely that of the hunter.
E STIMATE: $12,000 ~ 16,000
45
SAMUEL BORENSTEIN CAS QMG
1908 ~ 1969
Ste. Marguerite Station mixed media on paper, signed and dated 1943 21 1/8 x 28 7/8 in, 53.7 x 73.3 cm
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P ROVENANCE : Louis and Rose Melzack Collection Private Collection, London, England
L ITERATURE : William Kuhns and Leo Rosshandler, Sam Borenstein, 1978, the related 1942 canvas entitled Ste. Marguerite Station reproduced page 91 Sainte~Marguerite Station is located in the Laurentians, a region beloved by Sam Borenstein. In the early 1940s, he began to travel there frequently, painting rural villages and landscapes. The quaint station, approaching train and delicate winter palette make this piece a charming example of his earlier work.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 12,000
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KAROO ASHEVAK 1940 ~ 1974
Drum Dancer whalebone, caribou antler, stone, inset eyes, signed with syllabics, circa 1970 22 x 10 x 10 in, 55.9 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
E XHIBITED : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto, Karoo Ashevak, solo exhibition, 1972 Inuit artist Karoo Ashevak is celebrated for his carvings depicting people, spirits, shamans, animals and birds. Combining the power of imagination with advanced carving skills, Ashevak transformed his personal visions 46
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into unique works of art. During a very brief period of production that lasted from 1969 until his death in 1974, the artist created approximately 250 works of art and inspired generations of artists. Ashevak was born in 1940 in the Kitimeot Region of Nunavut. The artist spent his early years in an environment in which people hunted and fished as a means of survival. This traditional way of life was challenged in the 1950s and 1960s; various factors, including climate change that altered animal migration patterns and a decline in the external demand for fur pelts, had an adverse effect on hunting income. The introduction of mandatory education and access to health care resulted in many families relocating from seasonal camps to live in more permanent settlements. In the mid 1960s, Ashevak moved with his family into Taloyoak. As part of their objective of providing the Inuit residents of Taloyoak with much~needed employment, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development established an arts and crafts program in the early 1960s. Ashevak participated in the government~sponsored program hoping to supplement his hunting income with revenue from the sale of artworks. Encouraged by his teacher Algie Malkauskas and his uncle, the sculptor Charlie Ugyuk, Ashevak excelled at carving. Many of Ashevak’s sculptures, including this Drum Dancer, serve to document aspects of the traditional way of life or communicate legends and stories that were passed down from community elders. An important ritual, drumming was performed at numerous celebrations in Inuit culture. Throughout his career, Ashevak favoured whalebone for his carvings, a choice that might have been necessitated by an absence of stone deposits in the region. In order to provide the raw materials required for carving, government representatives organized expeditions to collect aged whalebones that were scattered over the tundra. These materials were transported by dog sled or flown in by chartered plane to Taloyoak where they would be transformed into works of art. Ashevak’s artistic process involved searching out a piece of whalebone with a form that would lend itself well to the subject matter that he wished to create. In this sculpture, the back of the drum dancer takes advantage of the natural curve of the bone, allowing the viewer to experience the movement of the dancer’s parka as he sways to the beat of the drum. Once the basic shape of the carving was established, Ashevak concentrated on the finishing touches, adding unusual details such as the highly realistic eyes of the figure that are made of either ivory or bone, and which include pupils made from metal nails. The use of incised graphic lines such as the circular shape on the figure’s back is another distinctive characteristic of Ashevak’s compositions. Resembling the shape of an eye, this detail may have been included to communicate the presence of a spirit or shaman. It was these painstaking details and finishing touches that differentiated Ashevak’s works of art from others. Drum Dancer was included in the one~man exhibition that was held at the Inuit Gallery in Toronto in March of 1972. Featuring approximately 30 of
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Ashevak’s carvings, this exhibition, organized by Avrom Isaacs, helped to launch Ashevak’s artistic career. His reputation was strengthened by the success of the exhibition entitled Karoo Ashevak: Spirits, held at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York in January 1973. In 1977, the Winnipeg Art Gallery celebrated the life and work of Ashevak with a major retrospective and catalogue. We thank Natalie Ribkoff for contributing the above essay. In her position as the Curator of Visual Art at the TD Bank Group from 1988 ~ 2011, Ribkoff was responsible for the management of the TD Inuit Art Collection. She was the co~curator of ItuKiagâtta!, an exhibition of Inuit sculpture that was organized and circulated across Canada by the National Gallery of Canada in 2005.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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JOSEPH HECTOR YVON (JOE) FAFARD OC RCA
1942 ~
Diego
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48
JOSEPH HECTOR YVON (JOE) FAFARD OC RCA
1942 ~
Frida
bronze sculpture with patina and acrylic paint, signed, editioned 7/7 and dated 2001 35 x 12 1/4 x 8 in, 88.9 x 31.1 x 20.3 cm
bronze sculpture with patina and acrylic paint, signed, titled, editioned 6/7 and dated 2001 26 3/4 x 10 7/8 x 17 in, 67.9 x 27.6 x 43.2 cm
P ROVENANCE :
P ROVENANCE :
Private Collection, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal
L ITERATURE :
L ITERATURE :
Terrence Heath, Joe Fafard, National Gallery of Canada and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2007, page 128, reproduced page 196
André Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 1928, English translation 1972 / 2001, page 144 Terrence Heath, Joe Fafard, National Gallery of Canada and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2007, page 128, reproduced page 197, listed page 222
E XHIBITED : National Gallery of Canada, Joe Fafard, February 1 ~ May 4, 2008, traveling in 2008 ~ 2009 to the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, same image, catalogue #63 Diego Rivera was a prominent Mexican painter, known for his extraordinary murals and his socially and politically conscious subject matter ~ he was a founder of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, and a member of the Mexican Communist Party. His was a tumultuous and passionate life ~ and he was, of course, the husband of Frida Kahlo, the subject of lot 48 in this sale. Rivera was well known internationally, and in 1931 a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is not surprising that this trail~blazing and charismatic artist would have attracted Joe Fafard while he was working on his series of portraits of artists in his foundry in Pense, Saskatchewan. Terrence Heath writes, “In his portraits of these artists, Joe explores not only their likenesses and the life experiences that have moulded their features, posture and stance, but also the way they painted.” In Diego, Fafard embodies Rivera’s warmth, stout physicality and confidence, brilliantly capturing a visceral and alive presence in bronze.
E STIMATE : $30,000 ~ 40,000
E XHIBITED : National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Joe Fafard, February 1 ~ May 4, 2008, traveling in 2008 ~ 2009 to the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, same image, catalogue #64 In the early 1980s Joe Fafard began to create portraits of well~known artists in clay and bronze, such as Dutch Post~Impressionist Vincent van Gogh. He had read van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, and the insight into van Gogh’s intense struggle as an artist profoundly affected him. After reading the letters, Fafard stated, “I felt a bit like a novice studying the lives of the saints.” This could also apply to the subject of this powerful sculpture, Frida Kahlo, renowned Mexican painter and wife of artist Diego Rivera, whose passion for painting and life transcended the physical suffering she endured from an accident while a teenager. Kahlo often painted self portraits, and her work was a raw and uncompromising expression of the female experience. The power of her images was such that André Breton, initiator of the Surrealist movement, described her art as “a ribbon around a bomb”. In this bronze, she wears her customary traditional Mexican clothing, and holds a paintbrush, indicating her dedication to painting. Fafard sought to portray the inner life of the artist and, in Frida, captures a living essence that is arresting.
E STIMATE: $30,000 ~ 40,000
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48
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PROPERTY FROM A PROMINENT MONTREAL FAMILY ESTATE
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CHARLES GAGNON ARCA
1934 ~ 2003
Southern oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1963 30 x 34 in, 76.2 x 86.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Camille HĂŠbert, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
E XHIBITED : Concordia University, Montreal, Alumni Collects, May 20 ~ June 17, 1981 During the 1950s when most young Montreal artists looked to Paris, Charles Gagnon lived in New York, studying graphic art and interior
design at the Parsons School of Design, as well as painting at the Art Students League. His first one man show was mounted shortly after his return to Montreal in 1960, and was followed by many others over the course of his prolific career. While painting and photography had been at the heart of his art~making practice, he had experimented with and produced work in many other media. His interest in sculpture coincided with his work in paint on canvas, and simultaneously he began to work with the box as both a three~dimensional construction and as a subject for painting. He started using a particular shade of viridian green in 1962, and explored further the form of a square ~ the box as a figure ~ using variations on this green plus a few other signature colours. The results are spatially ambiguous, as the works use both splashed~on and painted~on colours that each seem to sit at different depths, causing us to consider space and form, and their relationship to the painterly plane.
E STIMATE: $30,000 ~ 50,000
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GUIDO MOLINARI AANFM LP QMG RCA SAPQ
1933 ~ 2004
Parallèles bleues acrylic on canvas, on verso titled on the labels 36 x 29 7/8 in, 91.4 x 75.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Ladies’ Committee Sale of Contemporary Canadian Art, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, page 188 In the 1960s, Guido Molinari executed a series of works known as Stripe Paintings using vertical bands of equal width and differing colour in repeating, fixed patterns. It was the reign of hard~edge painting, and
Molinari took maximum advantage of the hardest of edges, placing near~total reliance on colour to energize these works. There is much variation in the width of the vertical bands in the individual Stripe Paintings; in Parallèles bleues they are quite wide, while some works have their verticality broken by shorter, horizontal blocks, or are offset by uneven widths, and are even diagonals. It was, however, a depiction of the innate energy of each colour that he sought. He wanted to paint the colour~interaction, with the character of each interaction determined by the width and placement of the colour bands. Roald Nasgaard writes, “Released into play across a field of successive visual experiences, colour in the Stripe Paintings established a ‘fictive space,’ as Molinari called it, of rhythmic scanning, always fleeting and always advancing, each attempt of the viewer to fix an order as quickly destroyed as it is succeeded by another.”
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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PAUL~ÉMILE BORDUAS AUTO CAS QMG RCA
1905 ~ 1960
Sans titre oil on canvas, on verso inscribed Antagonismes 29/1/60, 1959 28 3/4 x 23 1/2 in, 73 x 59.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Agnès Lefort, 1963 A Prominent Montreal Family Estate Sans titre shows a remarkable control of the gesture. One of the small drawings from 1959 done on Gitanes cigarette packages (see catalogue raisonné #2005~1397) seems to be the preparatory sketch for this painting, and is also quite close to Composition no. 27, 1959 (see catalogue raisonné #2005~1378) but more free~handed. It belongs to a series of well~known calligraphic paintings that play on the cross motif, as in Composition 44, 1959, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Abstraction in Blue, 1959, at The Art Gallery of Toronto. Here, the pictorial space is crossed by three movements from top to bottom and bottom to top. It is, of course, a work like this one that has given the idea of a rapprochement with Franz Kline’s painting. But as much as this Borduas painting is more calligraphic ~ almost Japanese in its inspiration ~ it must be distinguished from Kline, who rejected the idea of his own painting being calligraphic. “You don’t make the letter ‘C’,” wrote Kline, “and then fill the white in the circle. When people describe forms of painting in the calligraphic sense they really mean…the design of black against a form of white.” Borduas would not have had any qualms in describing his paintings as calligraphic, especially since he was dreaming of visiting Japan after his stay in Paris. Now what about the story of this painting? It was presented to us as being titled and dated on the back as Antagonismes, 29/1/1960. In fact, that is inscribed on the stretcher, but the writing is not Borduas’s. We believe that Antagonismes is not the title of the painting, but the name of the exhibition where it was presented in February 1960, the month of Borduas’s death in Paris. Antagonismes took place at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris and a catalogue was published. A Borduas painting is reproduced in this catalogue, but it is not our painting. It is rather a painting that belonged to Robert Élie, a close friend of Borduas, and which is now in the hands of a Montreal collector. It is quite possible that Borduas changed his mind at the last minute (January 29, 1960 was the eve of the opening of the show) and decided to exhibit this more recent and more vibrant painting than the one belonging to Élie. But then the catalogue was already printed and there was no way to reproduce the actual painting presented by Borduas ~ our Sans titre, 1959. I admit this is all a little speculative but it is not the only example known of a painting reproduced in a catalogue that was
Portrait de Paul~Émile Borduas dans son atelier de Saint~Hilaire (Portrait of Paul~Émile Borduas in his Saint~Hilaire studio),1951 Silver print, Rolleicord. Photograph: Maurice Perron Collection Musée national des beaux~arts du Québec
replaced at the last minute by a better and more significant one. It remains that this is a remarkable painting, a rare event when we think that very few black and white paintings of the Parisian period have been seen recently on the market, and none dated so late, so close to Borduas’s death. The work of Borduas shows a constant progress from his early Automatist paintings to these last black and white paintings. Borduas always felt the need to renew himself. In Paris, he was attracted by the more advanced ideas, like Lucio Fontana’s slashed paintings or Yves Klein’s monochrome painting and monochord music performances. Borduas kept his own style, but remained open to what was happening in the art world around him, both in New York and in Paris. 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: $100,000 ~ 150,000
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P ROVENANCE : Galerie Camille Hébert, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Family Estate Jean~Philippe Dallaire worked in a variety of styles, drawing on elements of Cubism and Surrealism, and often used humour and caricature in his work. His palette, like his style, was equally wide~ranging. In this brilliantly~hued portrait of an official, Dallaire exaggerates the official’s hat and gives him a ridiculous moustache. The gaudily~painted uniform seems more costume~like than official, and the fact that Dallaire shows him holding a bouquet distracts from and undermines his role as a member of the bureaucracy. Dallaire often commented in a humorous, tongue~in~cheek manner on politics and French society in his works, using riotous colours and a fine painting technique that allowed his many layers of careful underpainting to show through one another. The official’s clownlike face and wavering figure contribute to the comment that Dallaire is making on authority, officials and societal relationships.
E STIMATE : $40,000 ~ 60,000
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JEAN~PHILIPPE DALLAIRE QMG
1916 ~ 1965
Le fonctionnaire oil on canvas, signed, titled and dated 1957 and on verso signed, titled, dated 13 Sept. 1957 and inscribed Ville St~Laurent, P. Qué., Canada 34 x 26 in, 86.3 x 66 cm
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JEAN~PHILIPPE DALLAIRE QMG
1916 ~ 1965
Qui est coupable? gouache on paper, signed, titled, dated 1948 and inscribed Canada 17 1/4 x 24 5/8 in, 43.8 x 62.5 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Family Estate Jean~Philippe Dallaire worked as an animator for the National Film Board of Canada, and had a strong interest in tapestry~making. He was also interested in Pablo Picasso, the Surrealists, and playing with fracturing and distorting the human form. His complex, imaginative, sometimes macabre works show signs of all these things, yet the circumstances of his life ~ having spent four years in an internment camp outside of Paris during World War II ~ give us cause to inquire more deeply into his imagery. In Qui est coupable? (Who is Guilty?), a man and a woman sit on
chairs under a feathery sun. It seems to be a beach scene, as indicated by their hats and the gaily~wrapped pole. This work was painted just three years after Dallaire’s release from internment. Perhaps we are looking at the artist and his wife ~ she was also interned ~ reflecting on their experiences during the war? Their gaze toward each other tells us little, so perhaps it is a simpler scene, having less to do with the politics of war and more about the politics between men and women.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ 1924 ~ 2001
Otsatot oil on canvas, signed and dated 1962 and on verso signed twice, titled Otsatot / Ostatot / Ostatsu on three labels and inscribed by the artist Paris and Tableau extrêmement frais, ATTENTION / ne pas toucher la surface peinte 45 3/4 x 35 in, 116.2 x 88.9 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
L ITERATURE : Evan H. Turner, Contemporary Canadian Painting and Sculpture, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, 1963, reproduced, unpaginated
E XHIBITED : Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 79th Annual Spring Exhibition, 1962, titled as Otsatot Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, New York, Contemporary Canadian Painting and Sculpture, January 25 ~ February 24, 1963, titled as Ostatot Interest in the work of Marcelle Ferron, one of Canada’s most compelling contemporary painters, has grown steadily over the past few years. Her strict religious background ~ she was raised in a Catholic convent ~ was countered by the support of her liberal father, and it was his influence, along with the support of important teachers, that enabled Ferron to overcome the narrow societal expectations placed on a Catholic woman in the 1940s. She was, despite marriage, family and intense pressure to place those things first in her life, able to fully achieve her own aspirations as an artist. Ferron initially trained in Quebec City under Jean Paul Lemieux, but was expelled from the École des beaux~arts as a result of her refusal to adhere to a suitably conservative subject and style. Her inclinations resonated much better with those of Paul~Émile Borduas, who suggested she become a student of his at l’École du meuble. There, her work flowered and her commitment to her ideals solidified. She would sign both the open letter to the Spring Salon of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Automatist manifesto Refus global in 1948. When Borduas lost his job as a result of the manifesto, support for the work of his compatriot painters, including Ferron, dwindled. They had been labeled radicals in the press, and when Ferron, now a mother of three, was refused by the Salon jury of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1950, she participated in a protest exhibition. In addition to being considered a radical, her struggle for acceptance as a serious artist chafed with Quebec society at large, which expected her to be a wife and mother instead. A small inheritance in 1953 came as an artistic salvation, and she moved her family to France where she was accepted into the creative ferment of post~war Paris. Her work at this time took a turn toward the joyous, and became filled with a sense of freedom, openness and the use of startlingly brilliant colour. The influence of Borduas is still apparent, as it was
71 throughout her oeuvre, but the colour, tactile surface and composition is distinctly Ferron. In Paris, Ferron developed an interest in stained glass, training under a master glazer, eventually patenting her own technique in this medium and working with it to execute important public commissions. Her understanding and appreciation for the interaction of colour and light and how they work together underlines her paintings and marks them instantly as being by her hand. There are elements of regularity in her work too; paint is often applied in quadrants and she uses consistently large swatches of colour, sometimes creating motifs of flags or simple squared~off shapes. These geometric forms contrast beautifully with the open airiness of her paintings. Ferron was an obsessive technician and ground her unique pigments by hand, using poppy~seed oil as a binder (linseed oil is generally used) because it gave her colours the luminosity she was seeking, making them reminiscent of the effect of coloured light coming through stained glass. She often used the high~chroma blue that we see here in Otsatot, which, when blended with less intense colours such as the oranges and greens she has used to set off the blue here, adds depth and movement to her compositions. There is a certain push~pull, a struggle for dominance of colour in her works that comes from the play of a wonderful, imagined light shining up through her colours and turning them into jewels.
E STIMATE: $50,000 ~ 70,000
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PAUL VANIER BEAULIEU RCA
1910 ~ 1996
Sans titre oil on canvas, signed and dated 1963 31 3/4 x 39 1/4 in, 80.6 x 99.7 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Family Estate Paul Beaulieu owned a studio in Montparnasse, Paris and was living there, surrounded by the creative ferment of the Parisian art scene, when the Nazis invaded in the city in 1940. Along with Jean~Philippe Dallaire, Beaulieu was arrested and interned at the St~Denis camp just outside the city. At the end of the war he was released, briefly returning to Canada, where he secured Dr. Max Stern of the Dominion Gallery as his dealer, and
thus was able to send works created in France back to Canada. He then reclaimed his original Paris studio, working there until 1973. Beaulieu’s work reflects the influence of Expressionist painters Georges Rouault and Bernard Buffet. His non~objective abstracts are revered for their richness of colour and boldness of form. Sans titre is a perfect example of this, being composed of a number of hot, deeply saturated colours set against a layered, neutral, yet fully alive ground. Evocatively figural, this work has a fine tactile surface and a pleasing sense of balance.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 10,000
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HENRIETTE FAUTEUX~MASSÉ AANFM AUTO
1924 ~ 2005
Gardiens de la lumière oil on canvas, signed and dated 1962 and on verso signed and titled 16 x 28 in, 40.6 x 71.1 cm P ROVENANCE :
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A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
E STIMATE: $5,000 ~ 7,000
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TONI (NORMAN) ONLEY BCSFA CPE CSPWC RCA
1928 ~ 2004
Column oil and canvas collage, signed and dated 1963 and on verso titled 27 3/4 x 27 3/4 in, 70.5 x 70.5 cm P ROVENANCE : The Ladies Committee Sale of Contemporary Canadian Art, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
E XHIBITED : Concordia University, Montreal, Alumni Collects, May 20 ~ June 17, 1981
E STIMATE: $6,000 ~ 8,000
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CHRISTOPHER PRATT ARCA CSGA OC
1935 ~
St. John’s Centre graphite and ink on paper, signed and dated March 1969 15 x 11 in, 38.1 x 27.9 cm P ROVENANCE : A Prominent Montreal Family Estate
E STIMATE: $4,000 ~ 6,000 58
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HAROLD BARLING TOWN CGP CPE CSGA OC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 1990
Cornucopia oil and lucite on canvas, signed and dated 1958 ~ 1959 and on verso signed, titled on the gallery label and dated 24 3/4 x 30 3/4 in, 62.9 x 78.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Jerrold Morris Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto By descent to the present Private Estate, Toronto Harold Town’s collage~like works employ every possible approach to laying paint down on a canvas. He stained, dripped, splattered, scrubbed, knifed and brushed on his paints. Additionally, he used a great many
types of line, blocks of colour, geometric and organic forms and both opaque and translucent paint. His skill in using this diversity of approaches was making paintings like Cornucopia make sense. In works such as this, it is a question of balance. Our eye roams over the imagery, looking for something to settle on, finding a familiar shape here or there, a line that borders something nicely or cuts through it handily, a colour that defines or belies a form ~ complementing another incongruous colour and setting off a visual spark with yet another colour. Scrubby lines play with clean lines, layered grounds peek through in some areas, while other areas of interesting underpainting are obliterated, hinted at only by their edges. Town’s ability to make all these elements work together, to make everything somehow make sense, is why we find him so appealing and so visually right.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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LAWREN STEWART HARRIS ALC BCSFA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG
1885 ~ 1970
LSH 138 oil on board, on verso signed, dated 1958, inscribed F. 114 and stamped Lawren Harris LSH Holdings Ltd 138 30 1/8 x 22 in, 76.5 x 55.9 cm P ROVENANCE : The Art Emporium, Vancouver, 1976 Private Collection, Vancouver Lawren Harris’s transformative journey to abstraction began after he left Toronto in 1934 for Hanover, New Hampshire, and later Sante Fe, New Mexico, where he became involved with the Transcendental Group of Painters. Before he left Canada, his landscapes, reduced to their essentials
and radiant with light, reflected his deep interest in spirituality through his involvement with Theosophy, and showed the beginnings of his revolutionary leap to abstraction. In 1940 he returned to Canada, settling in Vancouver late that year. He was soon established as a prominent figure in its art scene, and in 1958 was appointed Honorary Vice~President and Guarantor of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Harris’s abstract work continued to evolve through successive stages, and his work was influenced in the mid~1950s by the symbolism in Tantric Buddhist images from Tibet. Around this time, he was using calligraphic lines, often in a vertical format, as in this elegant work. Lines dance in a harmonious rhythm, contained within the painting’s edges, yet free within that containment. The colour palette is light and radiant, a manifestation of Harris’s creation of transcendent spiritual states through his paintings.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 25,000
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MARY FRANCES PRATT CC OC RCA
1935 ~
Study for Blue Bath Water V watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1984 and on verso titled on the gallery label 30 1/4 x 22 1/2 in, 76.8 x 57.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto An Important Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Maurice Yacowar, “The Paintings of Mary (vs. Christopher) Pratt”, Dalhousie Review, Volume 68, Issue 4, Winter 1988 ~ 1989, page 396 Mary Pratt’s first realist painting of a female nude was produced in 1978, after her husband, painter Christopher Pratt, had shown her a collection of photographs he had taken of the young woman who was his model and
muse, Donna. Mary continued to work with these images and subsequent photographs in poses that she specifically requested for over a decade, in works that are both intimate and sensual. Mary stated, “Women can be erotic, in a sense, about other women. I mean, women are just plain beautiful. That woman in the Blue Bathwater picture (1983) is a kind of pearly, lush, warm and sensuous thing…I think I dare to be sensuous because this is what I feel about women. I know what it’s like to be a woman.” In Study for Blue Bath Water V, the young woman, in an unusual pose, is only partially submerged, her attention absorbed by the swirling water rising to engulf her. Sensual, soft and painterly like a Pierre Bonnard bath scene, delicate colour tints suffuse the model’s skin, evincing Pratt’s fascination with light effects.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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ALEXANDER COLVILLE PC CC
1920 ~
West Cappelle, Belgium watercolour and graphite on paper, signed, titled, dated 2 Nov 1944 and inscribed with colour notations in graphite 11 1/4 x 9 in, 28.6 x 22.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Ontario Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Tom Smart, Alex Colville: Return, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2003, page 24 In May of 1942, Alex Colville enlisted in the Canadian Armoured Corps. After two years of army service, he was appointed a Canadian war artist in
the spring of 1944, recording the events of World War II. Stationed in England, he trained to work with watercolour, bringing to his subjects the cool and observant eye for which he would become so well known in his Realist paintings. In October of 1944 he was transferred to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, on its way to Belgium, Holland and Germany. Colville made drawings and watercolours in the field, and this fluid, atmospheric watercolour is from a more peaceful time in his war experience when, as he related, “everyday I would go out with this jeep and driver, and anything I saw that was interesting I would make a drawing or watercolour of it.” Once Colville had crossed Holland’s Nijmegen Bridge, a more sombre mood dominated, as he and his company entered the zone of the war’s destruction. Much of Colville’s work as a war artist is in the collection of the Canadian War Museum, making this watercolour rare to the market.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Leopard Moth acrylic on matt board triptych, signed and dated 1977 on the right panel 60 x 120 in, 152.4 x 304.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Bau~Xi Gallery, Vancouver Canadian Paraplegic Association, Ontario Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 9, 2000, lot 309 Private Collection, USA
L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 149, a similar 1976 triptych entitled Transformations #5 reproduced page 148 and a similar 1977 ~ 1979 triptych entitled Evening Valley Flight reproduced page 178 Jack Shadbolt was an influential second~generation West Coast modernist. During the 1930s and 1940s, he had been keenly interested in emerging art movements in Europe and the United States, and had assimilated influences from Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, aspects of Surrealism and early Abstract Expressionism. After World War II, he emerged as a leader in Vancouver’s modernist community of artists, architects and planners. Shadbolt’s profound connection with nature in British Columbia, expressed through the use of biomorphic form, created a body of work that, considered as a whole, was an explosion of creative ideas that continued to evolve decade after decade. He was an artist intimately linked with the images of the West Coast while being connected to a world view of emerging art movements and theories. His work was universal in its merging of the conscious and unconscious, its infusion of psychological yearnings and potentialities and primitive potency. One of Shadbolt’s most extraordinary and sought~after motifs is that of the butterfly or moth, which first made its appearance in the early 1970s.
79 Shadbolt explained the genesis of his fascination with them: while in the Swiss Alps in 1969, he was standing in a meadow when there appeared “up from the gentians, in front of our eyeballs, two zig~zagging fritillaries flip~flopping out over the space. Nothing much, but their event seemed momentous ~ demented, dangerous, memorable.” The abstract design of their wings was a rich source of patterning for Shadbolt’s complex images of organic form. One prominent aspect of this motif was its life~affirming connection with freedom and celebration. In Leopard Moth, the insect’s gorgeous wings float over an abstracted background containing drifting fragmented shapes that echo elements of their patterning. Shadbolt uses soft, modulated colour fields, with the darker palette suggesting the nocturnes the moths inhabit. Moths are mysterious, associated with the moon, and often used as symbols of intuition and psychic perception. Through their soft and languorous flight over an open atmospheric background, these moths create a dream~like world devoid of tension. Their large scale contributes to the dream~like quality that pervades the work ~ it is as if we have gone through the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland and inbibed the pill that makes us smaller ~ and they loom before us. In the 1970s, Shadbolt worked on his Butterfly Transformations series, which ranged from works such as this, with large forms on abstracted backgrounds, to complex planes of layered and entangled biomorphic forms through which the butterfly flitted. Shadbolt continued to work with this important motif of butterfly and moth through the 1980s. Shadbolt’s fluid and evocative treatment of this iconic image and the abstract properties of the surface itself reveal an artist in assured command of his subject. This lyrical night world of the Leopard Moth is unforgettable ~ through Shadbolt’s vision, we experience an alternate dimension in which the very existence of these exotic creatures mesmerizes us.
E STIMATE: $50,000 ~ 70,000
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WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
Mendelssohn in Canadian Winter mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1967 and on verso titled on the gallery labels, dated and inscribed 433 876 36 x 26 in, 91.4 x 66 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Mr. and Mrs. D. Pim, Toronto Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Letter from William Kurelek to Mr. and Mrs. Pim, November 11 (year unknown) Patricia Morley, Kurelek, A Biography, 1986, detail reproduced page 173 Tobi Bruce, Mary Jo Hughes et al, William Kurelek: The Messenger, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2011, reproduced page 88
E XHIBITED : Winnipeg Art Gallery, William Kurelek: The Messenger, 2011, traveling to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2012, catalogue #38 Mendelssohn in Canadian Winter can be seen as the antithesis of The Maze (one of William Kurelek’s most iconic works), yet it has a great deal in common with it. In both this work from 1967 and The Maze from 1953, Kurelek uses a similar scene~within~a~scene format to convey numerous ideas and their relationships to one another. In The Maze ~ a complex depiction of Kurelek’s agonizing personal struggle with mental illness ~ Kurelek’s skull lies open and exposed on the ground outside of the psychiatric hospital in England where he was treated. Through the skull we see chambered sections containing vignettes from his troubled life, scenes of violence and symbols of moral decay. In Mendelssohn in Canadian Winter, Kurelek once again uses a scene~within~a~scene composition. The work is extremely complex, with vignettes in the distance as in The Maze. In the winter vignette, the end of the world has come, while in the summer scene in the foreground, we have salvation through love. To say that Kurelek recovered from his mental illness with the help of religion is an understatement. He felt he could only have recovered through accepting religion. He found complete salvation in his god, and through this he was led to his family. Their depiction as the central group of people in the near ground of the smoke~vision image in the lush, green centre of this complex work speaks of his recovery, his devotion to his family, and his having come full circle in the healing process. It also cements his place as an artist who has presented us with some of the most profoundly complex and challenging painting created in Canada. Only Kurelek could have created an image such as this, and only Kurelek could make it work. Kurelek wrote a letter of thanks to the collectors who acquired this work, stating, “I am penning this note of appreciation to attach to the back of
81 your painting. I hope you continue to get the pleasure from looking at my work as I had pleasure in executing it.” With the letter, he also provided a lengthy note of explanation (artist’s spellings retained): “The painting is an intuitive prophetic type of painting with the scene set in Northern Ontario roundabout 10 years hence. The nuclear haulocost of World War III has just destroyed the southern densely populated districts and the few survivors are fleeing to uncontaminated areas. An anti~christian ‘1984’ type government…is offering food and comforts (note Utopia Express) in return for apostacy (symbolized by the man trampling on the crucifix)…One family is determined to carry on to independence and have lit a bonfire for warmth as they rest and play a small tape recorder for morale. In the smoke they see a vision of their relatively happy and secure earlier life (symbolized by my wife and 3 children)…The music is Mendelsohns Violin Concerto op. 64 which he wrote to describe a happy time in his life.” The contrast between the two scenes is remarkable. The winter scene shows us families breaking up, cold, want and poverty ~ and the distant flash of the nuclear explosion. The summer scene shows us tranquility, lush bounty, dancing and happiness. But most compelling of all are the expressions on the faces of Kurelek’s wife and children. She looks right at us as we stand in the artist’s place, her expression one of gentle contentment and love, and the children gaze off to the left, smiling, sweet, happily looking at something we can only presume to be their father. It is rather humbling to consider The Maze while looking at Mendelssohn in Canadian Winter, and to contemplate the life and the prolific output of intriguing work produced in a small, cramped studio by this masterful Canadian artist.
E STIMATE: $40,000 ~ 60,000
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CHRISTOPHER PRATT ARCA CSGA OC
1935 ~
Crab Plant on the Bay of the Islands: New Colours of Newfoundland mixed media on paper, signed, titled, dated 2009 and inscribed CC Plant April 2009 and on verso signed, titled and dated 19 3/4 x 37 3/4 in, 50.2 x 95.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver Estate of James M. Brickley, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Josée Drouin~Brisebois, Christopher Pratt: All My Own Work, National Gallery of Canada, 2005, page 100 Christopher Pratt’s subjects of working structures have included freight and salt sheds, towers, trains, abandoned whaling stations and, in this evocative work, a crab plant. In Pratt’s reductive realist images, each
element is carefully considered, particularly light. He stated, “The most important thing in my work is light. Composition and design are important elements in any two~dimensional art, but in mine they are the bones, and light is the flesh and blood. It is an essential metaphor for life.” In this image, a pale glow on the horizon, either dawn or dusk, lights the scene, as does a single streetlamp beside the plant ~ an interesting contrast between natural and artificial light. Typical of Pratt’s work, the structures of the crab plant show Pratt’s awareness of line and perspective. The light revealing these features is very subtle, a product of successive stages of refinement. Pratt explained, “I may spend weeks just glazing in lights and darks, building up contrasts…tuning them so that the light ‘does it’. When I decide I’ve gotten there, then I have that thirty~second rush.”
E STIMATE: $12,000 ~ 16,000
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CHRISTOPHER PRATT ARCA CSGA OC
1935 ~
The Drilling Site on the Port au Port Peninsula mixed media on paper, signed and dated November 2005 and on verso titled on the gallery label 22 1/2 x 34 3/4 in, 57.1 x 88.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver Estate of James M. Brickley, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Josée Drouin~Brisebois, Christopher Pratt: All My Own Work, National Gallery of Canada, 2005, page 91 Christopher Pratt was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and has his studio in St. Mary’s Bay. Pratt is a keen observer of all the aspects of Newfoundland life. As Josée Drouin~Brisebois wrote, his images “are
informed by the grand narratives of the place and reflect concern for the kinds of political, social, cultural, and ecological changes that are occurring across the continent.” This drilling site on the Gulf of St. Lawrence recalls the struggle over revenue from Newfoundland’s offshore oil and gas resources, which were supposed to primarily benefit Newfoundland as agreed to in the 1985 Atlantic Accord, thus ending its dependence on federal transfer payments. However, this did not happen, and there was a national uproar in 2004 when the Newfoundland premier ordered that Canadian flags be removed from provincial government buildings. In 2005 the Offshore Arrangement was signed, ending the dispute. Built environments are one of Pratt’s significant themes, and this industrial scene with its volumetric round towers and attached grid~like structures has a quality of still life. Typical of Pratt’s work, they are without human presence ~ sentinels standing silently in their monochromatic winter environs; silent, full of portent.
E STIMATE: $12,000 ~ 16,000
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DORIS JEAN MCCARTHY CSPWC OC OSA RCA
1910 ~ 2010
Pangnirtung, Northwest Territories oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled, dated 1984 on the gallery label and inscribed 84022 40 x 54 in, 101.6 x 137.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
L ITERATURE : Doris McCarthy, The Good Wine: An Artist Comes of Age, 1991, page 158 “Twice a day at Pangnirtung the tide came in, bringing with it a flotilla of ice floes that sailed up the fiord like a regatta of small bergs. As the tide
ebbed, they went back to sea, their restless movement keeping me in a constant state of excitement.” Doris McCarthy’s words from the first of three memoirs remind us of her passion and commitment to the full~time artist’s life that she longed for and finally achieved, after retirement from a 40~year career as a memorable and beloved art teacher. Soon after that retirement in 1972, McCarthy headed out on the first of many painting trips to the Arctic, starting with Pond Inlet, only later recalling in her diary that it had been her sixty~second birthday the day she had a harrowing fall into a frozen creek. This fine 1984 scene of one of her favourite painting sites clearly demonstrates that nothing could stop McCarthy from continuing her explorations of the great Canadian landscape and the high Arctic.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
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DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD CPE CSGA CSPWC OSA RCA 1941 ~
North Atlantic watercolour and graphite on paper, signed and dated 2003 and on verso titled 44 x 29 in, 111.7 x 73.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Abbozzo Gallery, Oakville Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE: William Gough, David Blackwood: Master Printmaker, 2001, page xiii Katharine Lochnan, Black Ice, David Blackwood: Prints of Newfoundland, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011, a similar 1995 etching entitled Wesleyville Fleet in the Labrador Sea reproduced catalogue #60, unpaginated David Blackwood is one of Canada’s most important printmakers, whose work has been collected in depth by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Blackwood grew up in Newfoundland in a seafaring family ~ both his father and grandfather were ship’s captains. Steeped in the myths, stories and customs of this unique province, Blackwood’s depictions of Newfoundland life in his work are an invaluable record of a traditional way of life that is all but gone. The sea is of central importance in his work, and the image of a whale has often appeared in it, such as in his renowned print from 1980, Fire Down on the Labrador. In this compelling watercolour, Blackwood captures the sense of wonder surrounding an encounter with one of these leviathans. Plunging into the deep, its bright and intelligent eye draws us to the mystery of its life. As William Gough writes, Blackwood “approaches his art as if it were the ocean ~ endless, deep and infinitely variable. It is here that Blackwood has set his nets, and his nets come up filled with light and stories.” 68
E STIMATE : $10,000 ~ 15,000
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LÉON BELLEFLEUR CAS PY QMG
1910 ~ 2007
Émeraudes de nuit oil on canvas, signed and dated 1953 and on verso signed, titled and dated on two labels 17 x 23 in, 43.2 x 58.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Collection of the Artist By descent to the present Private Collection, England
L ITERATURE : Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting, 2012, page 243 Léon Bellefleur was interested in art as a child, and had determined to become an artist by the age of 12. His early career was spent teaching, but
after meeting Alfred Pellan in 1942, Bellefleur was introduced to the Automatists, and through them became interested in the work of the Surrealists, especially that of Paul Klee. Bellefleur was a signatory of the Prisme d’yeux manifesto, and participated in their first show in 1948 when, as Dennis Reid relates, they declared: “We seek a painting freed from all contingencies of time and place, of restrictive ideology, conceived without any literary, political, philosophical or other meddling which could dilute its expression or compromise its purity.” Bellefleur’s paintings are usually organized around a central motif, as is the case here, with a seemingly organic, energetic, amorphous form set in a black (or often white) space. His work seems filled with a sense of new life, having a quality akin to birth or growth, and often leaves the viewer feeling that something is about to happen.
E STIMATE: $9,000 ~ 12,000
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Contexts: Variations on Primavera Theme (16 works) acrylic on posters, 1984, on verso each signed and titled on the backing 60 x 130 in, 152.4 x 330.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Jack Shadbolt, City of Vancouver, Public Art Registry, http:// app.vancouver.ca/PublicArt_NetArtworkDetails.aspx?ArtworkID =136&Neighbourhood=&Ownership=&Program=, accessed March 12, 2013 Jack Shadbolt began to work with images of butterflies in 1974, using their delicate forms in both collage works and in paintings, and later, larger public installations. The image in this group is from a photograph of Shadbolt’s 1987 large~scale three~dimensional constructed work Primavera, commissioned for the MacMillan Bloedel Building in Vancouver, and completed in collaboration with Alan Wood and Greg Bullen. This work was subsequently acquired by Tantalus Vineyards in Kelowna.
Shadbolt intended this image to be “expansive and jubilant”, as he described ~ in contrast to the massive, grey building, and to uplift the public who would view it. He stated, “What better than a great ‘primavera’ for Spring to cheer the spirit? And what more impressive than a large sculptural relief in full colour? And what more poetically exuberant as a permanent symbol than two splendid butterflies breaking from the white cocoon of Spring ~ the one on the left an abstraction of pieces coming together to form the insect and the one on the right a full~fledged realization? It is hoped that once the mind is focussed in this direction a certain transformational process is suggested and with it certain mythological overtones might unfold. The cocoon may then become the violet and white mythic egg from which Spring is born. The symbolic bird and flowers now become the guardians of this ritual birth of new life, this PRIMAVERA.” In this series of hand~painted posters of the Primavera theme, each has been hand~painted in a similar palette, but in a unique manner. Mounted as Shadbolt intended, they become a cloud of butterflies against a wall. This work is comprised of 15 hand~painted posters and one title page of the original image. Each poster measures 20 x 26 inches. The group is meant to be installed with five works in a row and three in a column.
E STIMATE: $35,000 ~ 45,000
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GORDON APPELBE SMITH BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 ~
Abstract (Entanglements Series) acrylic on canvas, on verso dated October 2009 and inscribed From Gordon and Marion in the artist’s handwriting 40 3/4 x 67 in, 103.5 x 170.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver Gordon Smith is acknowledged as one of Canada’s finest landscape painters and an early proponent of modernism on the West Coast. At his West Vancouver studio, Smith is surrounded by forest, and the patterns of its web of life have been an ongoing source of fascination for him. Resembling a blizzard of slender snow~encrusted branches, this
beautiful painting from the Entanglements series dazzles the eye with its dense criss~cross tracery of white lines. Although white may be the first impression, on closer consideration the dark background emerges, with its splashes of both warm and cool tones ~ an abstraction of the forest’s growth and ground. This painting could also be seen as a completely abstract work. Its all~over patterning creates a strong surface plane, with the contained dance of its gestures, marks and lines handled with absolute assurance. White light can be broken into all colours ~ which can be seen to happen here, with many colours dancing below the surface. Elegant and ethereal, Abstract (Entanglements Series) shows Smith’s ever~evolving relationship to nature and his mastery of the language of paint itself.
E STIMATE: $30,000 ~ 50,000
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TOM HOPKINS 1944 ~ 2011
Nocturne: Curving Motion oil on canvas on board, on verso signed, titled and dated 2001 62 x 55 in, 157.5 x 139.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Calgary Painter Tom Hopkins was born in Prince Edward Island and died in 2011 in Montreal, where he had lived and worked for most of his adult career. Hopkins’s work is grounded in landscape and still life ~ yet decidedly modernist in style. His floating, almost surreal images are painted with brush and knife, and show a keen understanding of how light, colour and
surface work together to produce compelling, luminous and rather enigmatic images. His landscapes are often mysterious, heavily glazed and suffused with light, recalling the chiaroscuro technique of Renaissance painters; and he used allegorical themes and references to the classical art world to further underscore the link that all modern art has with the past. As a teacher of painting technique at McGill University, and an alumnus of Concordia University, where he was also on the Fine Arts Faculty, he had a passionate interest in traditional painting techniques, and taught courses and workshops in materials and methods in both Canada and the United States.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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73
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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Mt. Stephen oil on canvas, signed and dated 1963 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed with the Dominion Gallery inventory #D33442 32 1/4 x 25 in, 81.9 x 63.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, British Columbia
L ITERATURE : Leslie Allan Dawn and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994, page 43 Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 158 Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album, The Paintings ~ Volume I, 1932 ~ 1991, 2011, reproduced page 39 In 1963, E.J. Hughes received his second Canada Council grant, and with the $3,000 he was awarded he was able to travel to the Interior of British Columbia to areas such as the Thompson Valley and the Fraser Valley near Lillooet, and as far east as the Alberta Rockies. The subject of this exceptional oil is Mount Stephen, located in the Kicking Horse River Valley of Yoho National Park, half a kilometre east of Field in British Columbia. Hughes used a recent purchase, a Pontiac Acadian car, to access his subjects, carry his art supplies and protect his pencil sketches from sudden bad weather. Hughes did not learn to drive until he was 45, but found the use of a car to be most liberating. His success in the early 1960s made this possible ~ his paintings were used for the covers of two BC Telephone Company directories, he had completed a Canadian Pacific Railway mural commission and the Dominion Gallery in Montreal was handling sales of his work. Recognition was on the rise, and in 1961 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation included him in a short television documentary on British Columbia artists called Five BC Painters. Hughes further describes this scene on a paper label on verso: “The greenish~whiteness of the Kicking Horse River in the foreground is not caused by foam but by a white sediment brought down by its tributary, the Yoho River. The tunnel entrance on the left is the famous CPR spiral tunnel, and the tunnel entrance on the right is, I believe, just a small tunnel. The small red car between these is on the main Trans~Canada highway, and the gravel road at the bottom of the painting is the Yoho Valley Road.” It was not uncommon for artists to be daunted by the vast scale, density of forest and panoramic majesty of British Columbia, particularly the Rockies. Hughes’s humble and reverential nature can be sensed in a letter to his sister regarding the landscape he had seen on this trip in which he states, “It will be a problem to make art out of such beautiful and picturesque subjects, but I feel it can be done…” Clearly, in Mt. Stephen he rose heroically to the challenge, due to his great love of nature and predilection for panoramic scenes. In the 1961 CBC film, Hughes stated,
91 “One of the reasons I paint is because nature is so wonderful…I feel that when I am painting, it is a form of worship.” Hughes’s paintings of the 1960s are sought after because of their brilliant colour palette, fineness of detail and intensity of vision. Mt. Stephen embodies all these properties. It is a stunning composition, with the regal peak the focus, wrapped by a glacier at the top, and with screes of rock debris running down its flanks. Hughes’s inclusion of elements such as the roads and the red car brings the warming presence of humanity into the scene. They also add a sense of scale to the vastness of the scene ~ demonstrating that here, nature overwhelmed man. His palette of greens is cool, dominated by the light and dark olive tones in the evergreen forest. In counterpoint to the predominantly green, grey and ochre palette is the foaming white water in the river and the white snow still lingering in the rocks and on the glacier at the peak. Hughes contrasts this white with tones of peridot in the water and teal in the glacier. He had a keen eye for patterning, which is consciously emphacized in the loose tumble of rocks gathered at the top of the slope, the stands of evergreens and the vegetation dotting the steep hillsides. All these fine elements make the magestic Mt. Stephen a superb example of Hughes’s 1960s period, an embodiment of the sublime beauty of British Columbia.
E STIMATE: $120,000 ~ 160,000
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74
74
STANLEY MOREL COSGROVE CAS CGP QMG RCA
1911 ~ 2002
Jeune femme oil on canvas, signed and dated 1961 and on verso titled on the gallery label 25 x 32 in, 63.5 x 81.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal Stanley Cosgrove absorbed international influences in his work and, although blocked by World War II from traveling to France, the influence of Georges Rouault can be seen in the strong use of outlines to define his figures. In 1939, Cosgrove traveled to New York, where he was impressed
by the work of Pablo Picasso, then in 1940 to Mexico City, where for four years he studied fresco painting with JosĂŠ Clemente Orozco. He returned to Canada in late 1943, and continued to paint still lifes, distinctive landscapes of trees and portraits of women, both clothed and nude. He often painted women he knew, such as his mother, sister, first wife Claire LĂŠtourneau and his second wife Ann Dodds. More than a representation of a particular person, his portraits have a universal quality. In Jeune femme, her flesh is painted with soft and subtle pastel tonalities, creating a glowing effect against a simple colour field background with a shadowy aura behind the figure. Graceful and serene of mood, Jeune femme is a sophisticated and beautiful expression of the universal feminine.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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75
75
ALFRED PELLAN CAS OC PY QMG RCA
1906 ~ 1988
Rêve d’une villageoise mixed media on canvas, signed and dated 1958 and on verso signed, titled and inscribed 649 Grande Côte, Ste~Rose Est, Cté Laval, P.Q., Canada and No. 351 11 x 17 in, 27.9 x 43.2 cm P ROVENANCE : An Important Montreal Collection
L ITERATURE : Germain Lefebvre, Pellan, Musée du Québec, 1972, listed page 117
E XHIBITED : Musée du Québec, Pellan, September 7 ~ October 8, 1972, traveling to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, October 20 ~ November 26, 1972 and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, January 8 ~ December 7, 1973, catalogue #126 Rêve d’une villageoise is an important and significant work by Alfred Pellan, produced in his fruitful late 1950s period. At the beginning of the decade, Pellan won a grant from the Royal Society of Canada that allowed
him to travel to Paris from 1952 to 1955. While abroad, he was the first Canadian artist to be honoured with a solo exhibition at Paris’s Musée national d’art moderne. As a result, he returned to Canada with great confidence, and Germain Lefebvre admiringly describes works from this period as “bursting, vibrant, from which emerge jewels, flowers and delicious little fairies suddenly coming alive.” This topsy~turvy world of Pellan is vividly exemplified in Rêve d’une villageoise. The small village is punctuated by the elongated female figure drifting through the sky and is anchored by the uncanny figure staring out of the bottom right corner. Such elements confirm Pellan’s inclination towards Surrealism, and the title, which translates as “dream of a villager”, solidifies this further. Pellan’s vision is full of fantasy, theatre and whimsy, making this image a visual feast for the viewer.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 20,000
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76
76
ANTONY (TONY) SCHERMAN 1950 ~
The Blue Highway: Framboisier encaustic on canvas, on verso signed, titled and dated 2000 54 x 60 in, 137.1 x 152.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle Private Collection, Montreal Tony Scherman’s provocative work in encaustic ~ a mixture of warm beeswax and pigments ~ elevates the subject of still life, in which he has been long interested, to a new level. Scored, dripped and layered, his images become something more than themselves; they seem rarefied and
hallowed. Set in beautiful chiaroscuro light, they are richly done, dripping with sensuality and opulence. Scherman’s mastery of the medium of encaustic is truly remarkable ~ his close~up cinematic~style portraits make use of encaustic’s ability to mimic the varied textures of human skin, and his still life work incorporates carving and incising directly into the work, giving sculptural life to his subjects. Works depicting overripe raspberries appear with some regularity in Scherman’s oeuvre, and here the berries are ripe to the point of spoiling. Their vibrant red is brilliant against the white of the cream, which almost seems to drip off the surface of the work, making a succinct comment on decadence and excess.
E STIMATE: $20,000 ~ 30,000
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
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77
77
THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON CGP CSPWC OSA P11 RCA
1924 ~ 2006
Still Life watercolour, gouache, pastel and graphite on illustration board, signed and dated 1957 17 1/2 x 27 in, 44.4 x 68.6 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto By descent to the present Private Estate, Toronto As a member of the Painters Eleven ~ the group that was largely responsible for bringing abstraction to Toronto in the 1950s ~ Tom Hodgson was an individual among individuals. Each of the Eleven had their own style; they had come together in order to be known formally as a group, and also as a way to increase their likelihood of exhibiting and
selling work. Hodgson worked mainly in the style of lyrical abstraction. He preferred the female figure ~ painting chaotic, sensual semi~nudes ~ but also painted still lifes. His watercolours are perhaps the most lyrical of his abstractions, owing in part to their assured, fluid lines and floating washes of colour. Defined with graphite, brightened with pastel and further elaborated by watercolour and gouache, Still Life is no exception to this, with the outside lines and inside shapes of the forms hinting at what they actually are; a black~capped bottle, a book and perhaps a glass.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 10,000
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78
78
WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA 1927 ~ 1977
Ukrainian~Canadian Children Schoolbound, Stuartburn, Manitoba mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1971 and on verso titled 20 x 28 1/2 in, 50.8 x 72.4 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Private Collection, Ontario In William Kurelek’s marvellous book A prairie boy’s winter, his dedication was “For everyone who ever spent a winter on the prairies ~ and for all the others who wonder what it was like.” Brought up on a Manitoba farm in a Ukrainian family, Kurelek knew the Prairie winter
intimately, and his poignant and insightful works based on his childhood are an important part of his oeuvre. Although his childhood was challenging, his paintings of it are often idyllic. For the children, winters were not just a time of bitter cold and chores, but were filled with activities such as hockey played on home~made rinks, inventive childhood games and, while on school recess, the carving of snowdrifts into elaborate tunnels and rooms. Kurelek’s school was a one~room building, its students children from Ukrainian, Mennonite and Anglo~Saxon backgrounds. Here Kurelek depicts a winter day so white and snow~encrusted that the sky echoes the road, with the children’s bright clothes a strong contrast to the whiteout. This charming scene has an utterly natural quality, and draws us to it with its evocation of a simpler, more innocent time.
E STIMATE: $30,000 ~ 35,000
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79
79
WILLIAM KURELEK ARCA OC OSA
1927 ~ 1977
The Unclean Spirit watercolour and gouache on card, signed and initialed and on verso signed and on various labels titled and dated 1963 and inscribed St Mathew [sic] XII 43 ~ 45 11 x 16 in, 27.9 x 40.6 cm P ROVENANCE : The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto Private Collection, USA William Kurelek’s depictions of the Canadian landscape often show the vast, empty Prairie, so closely associated with his upbringing on a rural Manitoba farm. Wide, flat skies, immense fields, distant horizons, and roads and fences that seem to run without end out of our view are common in his work. Yet despite their seeming emptiness, such works are full of small details finely painted. Here, dry wisps of grass poke through
the wind~crusted snow that has been painted in varying shades of white, showing us the artist’s knowledge of the subtleties of winter colour. Footprints, each unique and carefully rendered, plod across the winter field as the figure moves away and then returns to the scene. His red clothing detail 79 and hat contrast vividly with the otherwise all~white composition. Kurelek’s works often portray passages from the New Testament, as is the case here where he depicts Matthew’s parable of a man who, once the unclean spirit has left him, has gone out in search of rest and, finding none, has begun the journey home where he will find God again.
E STIMATE: $18,000 ~ 22,000
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80
80
MAXWELL BENNETT BATES ASA CGP CSGA OC RCA
1906 ~ 1980
The Lonesome Road oil on canvas, signed and dated 1970 36 x 30 in, 91.4 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired as a wedding present in 1971 from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Scotland
L ITERATURE : Jack Shadbolt, “Maxwell Bates (1906 ~ 1980)”, artscanada 37, December 1980 / January 1981, page 2 Patricia E. Bovey, A Passion for Art, The Art and Dynamics of the Limners, 1996, reproduced in a photograph of a scene from Maxwell Bates’s seventieth birthday party, page 51 This work appears in a photograph of Maxwell Bates’s seventieth birthday party at the Victoria home of Robin Skelton, a well~known poet and
academic, with the guests dressed as figures from Bates’s paintings. It is believed to be a self~portrait, the face an amalgam of dog / sheep / human features, clothing seemingly on backwards, an image consistent with Bates’s sense of sardonic humour and use of social satire. The Lonesome Road could refer to his looking back over his struggle as an artist and as a human being ~ he was a survivor of a German prisoner of war camp and of a stroke in 1961. In a tribute, artist Jack Shadbolt wrote, “He saw the world around him with no illusions but with human tolerance…His was the realism of the compassionate satirist. His technique and vision stemmed from Max Beckmann, with whom he studied and whom he admired unreservedly, but his extensions out of such a beginning were his own and unique.” Bates is one of Canada’s most important Expressionists, and The Lonesome Road is an outstanding example of his intense and complex portraits.
E STIMATE: $15,000 ~ 25,000
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81
81
JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 ~ 1998
Behind the Wire ink and watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1947 and on verso signed, titled and dated 22 5/8 x 30 7/8 in, 57.5 x 78.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, pages 34 and 36 Jack Shadbolt was transferred to London, England in 1945 to serve as an administrative officer for the Official Canadian Army War Artists Programme. After the end of the Second War War, Shadbolt processed the photographs coming in from German concentration camps such as Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. The impact of these photographs
was overwhelming, and Shadbolt wrote, “I found the experience devastating. For some time after this, I had the need for a violent image of pathos to relieve my feelings, in my work…and to express my outrage.” Shadbolt depicted both the ruins in London and images directly from the photographs that he saw, such as this searingly unforgettable watercolour. Powerful images such as this were in the style of social realism that Shadbolt had been using since the 1930s. But it was because of this experience and the explosive changes brought on by the war, the Holocaust and the dawning of the atomic age that Shadbolt would later turn to abstraction, which he felt could fully express the anxieties of modern life after the war.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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82
82
WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS CAS CGP CSGA CSPWC EGP OC OSA PY RCA 1904 ~ 1974
Still Life oil on board, signed and on verso titled, dated circa 1956 on the gallery label and inscribed 2728 12 x 16 in, 30.5 x 38.1 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario
L ITERATURE : Colin S. MacDonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 7, 1990, page 2170
E XHIBITED : The Women’s Committee of The Art Gallery of Toronto, Sale of Canadian Art
Goodridge Roberts’s work in still life is a steady thread throughout his career. Roberts was also an accomplished poet ~ a talent that ran in his family; his uncle Sir Charles G.D. Roberts was a poet, and Bliss Carman was his cousin. Comparisons between poetry and painting are often made, and it is perhaps in the genre of still life that we have the closest alignment. Like poetry, a still life is composed of limited things that must harmonize and accent each other. A small blue and white jug can contrast with a clear glass, a velvety green cloth can offset a grey wall. The success of the outcome depends on brevity, balance and harmony ~ and in poetry, carefully selected words. In the still life work of Roberts, it is the placement and choice of each carefully selected object that gives them such consistent success.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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83
83
WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS CAS CGP CSGA CSPWC EGP OC OSA PY RCA 1904 ~ 1974
Sunlight on the Bay oil on board, signed and on verso titled, dated 1968 on the gallery label and inscribed 1867 20 x 24 in, 50.8 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Roberts Gallery, Toronto By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario Goodridge Roberts visited New York in 1926 to study at the Art Students League and would remain there for two years, taking advantage of every opportunity to see the art on display in the city’s museums and galleries. He was exposed to the vibrant colour of the Fauves, the reconfigured forms of Cubism and the shimmering light and colour of Impressionism. Into his own art, he took traits from several of these styles and refined
them in his own personal manner. For his subjects, he preferred still life, the figure and landscape, and he borrowed from Henri Matisse’s colours and forms, translating them through the light, air and character of Canada. Roberts’s work has a quality of solemn strength unlike any other Canadian artist of his time. His palette is bold, and his forms are never overly delicate or insubstantial. In Sunlight on the Bay, we can see the uniqueness of Roberts’s brushwork; its rough manner deftly conveys a sense of the wind coming off the water.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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84
84
TED HARRISON OC SCA
1926 ~
Peter’s Yukon acrylic on board, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1979 on the artist’s label 23 1/2 x 35 1/2 in, 59.7 x 90.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Katherine Gibson, Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise, 2009, page 117 Ted Harrison grew up in a grimy coal mining community in England. He came to Canada in 1967 and began teaching in Alberta. Fascinated by tales of the Yukon from a fellow teacher, he resolved to move there, arriving in Carcross, near Whitehorse, in 1968. He was thrilled by the
first sight of it, declaring, “Suddenly, as if a magician had conjured up a mirage, the village of Carcross popped into view…It looked like a little toy town…It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful.” Pristine nature surrounded the town, and the natural activities of the townspeople, such as ice~fishing, snowshoeing, sledding and canoeing, fascinated Harrison. Soon he was snowmobiling around the countryside, eating caribou given to him by First Nations people and meeting the eccentric characters that gravitated to the North. Peter’s Yukon is an outstanding early work depicting northern town life, painted with electric colour. As if on a stage, the townspeople in the foreground go about their everyday activities, dogs caper and ravens scour for food, all captured with Harrison’s characteristic warmth and empathy for his community.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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85
85
TED HARRISON OC SCA
1926 ~
Dancing Kites acrylic on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1992 24 x 18 in, 61 x 45.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver Estate of James M. Brickley, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Katherine Gibson, Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise, 2009, page 126, reproduced page 203 When Ted Harrison began to paint the Yukon, he realized he had to throw out the rules of his academic training and take what was, for him, a
revolutionary approach. He explained, “I became aware of a subtle force emanating from the land itself. There were so many colours! Trees, bushes, rocks and mountains were conspiring to force me to paint in their colours and in their particular forms.” He simplified his forms, began to work with a vivid colour palette and to emphasize the rhythm and energy present in the land. Dancing Kites is a joyous and uplifting expression of the innocent pleasures of northern children in their vast land. Bands of colour radiate upward like Northern Lights ~ a stunning feature in the land of the midnight sun. Harrison’s unique approach to the North has inspired collectors and brought him great recognition. His first exhibition in Ottawa was attended by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, then minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Harrison was later awarded the Order of Canada.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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86
86
EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 ~ 2007
Monument and Chateau Laurier watercolour on paper, signed and on verso titled and dated 1956 on the Dominion Gallery label 18 x 24 in, 45.7 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal The Estate of Dr. Max Stern, Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes, RCA : 40 ans avec la galerie / E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Dominion Gallery, Dominion Gallery, 1991, page 18, reproduced page 19 and listed page 24
E XHIBITED : Dominion Gallery, Montreal, E.J. Hughes, RCA : 40 ans avec la galerie / E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Dominion Gallery, 1991
E.J. Hughes had first spent time in Ottawa from 1944 to 1946, while serving as an Official War Artist. In 1956, he went on a cross~Canada trip sponsored by Dr. Max Stern, his dealer at Montreal’s Dominion Gallery. Stern had discovered Hughes during a trip to Vancouver in 1951, and thus began a long and fruitful relationship. During this 1956 eastern trip, Hughes sketched the cities of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Regina, a departure from his usual landscape subjects. In recalling this trip, Hughes wryly commented, “Perhaps Max Stern thought he could make another Canaletto out of me.” His works from the 1950s are much sought after, since Hughes’s mature style was fully crystallized, and this is an outstanding example of his eastern cityscapes. Finely detailed, this watercolour of the iconic Château Laurier Hotel with the imposing War Memorial in the foreground captures the urban grandeur of Ottawa’s wide boulevards and stately architecture. This work and lot 87 in this auction were chosen to represent the Cities of Canada section of a 1991 exhibition honouring Hughes’s forty~year relationship with Dominion Gallery.
E STIMATE: $8,000 ~ 12,000
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87
87
EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES
E XHIBITED :
BCSFA CGP OC RCA
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, E.J. Hughes, RCA : 40 ans avec la galerie / E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Dominion Gallery, 1991
1913 ~ 2007
View of the Houses of Parliament, Ottawa graphite and white pencil on paper, signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1945 20 1/2 x 26 in, 52.1 x 66 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal The Estate of Dr. Max Stern, Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver
L ITERATURE : Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes, RCA : 40 ans avec la galerie / E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Dominion Gallery, Dominion Gallery, 1991, listed page 24
E.J. Hughes was appointed an Official War Artist in 1942 and, after his posting to Kiska, Alaska, returned to Ottawa in 1944, where he was based until 1946. During his time in Ottawa, he worked on war sketch material executed in England and Alaska, and developed a process of making highly worked drawings he called cartoons. He also depicted the city itself, and this finely finished portrayal of Ottawa’s impressive Parliament Buildings is a rare urban drawing from this period.
E STIMATE: $6,000 ~ 8,000
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88
88
HENRY GEORGE GLYDE ASA CSGA FCA PDCC RCA
1906 ~ 1998
Gowland Point, South Pender, BC oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed and titled 24 x 30 in, 61 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE :
man with the oar and the posture of the fisherman are delightful. Two women, apart from the men and perhaps on holiday, gaze out toward the water, the white~hatted lady inclining her head towards her companion who, in turn, leans back slightly. It is a lovely, gentle scene, and Glyde’s soft hazy palette of muted tones evokes a feeling of sultry coastal weather.
E STIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
Private Collection, Calgary Henry Glyde came to Canada from England in 1935, taking a teaching position at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary. He was head of the painting program at the Banff School of Fine Arts from 1936 until his retirement, and also taught at the University of Alberta, establishing their art department in 1947. Glyde’s works are often concerned with social realism, and even in this pastoral scene at Gowland Point, a regional park on Pender Island, British Columbia, Glyde’s subtle social comments are apparent. The fisherman, working class, talks with another man who leans on an oar, their heads bent in considered conversation, while the third man, seated, looks on. Glyde excelled at depicting people caught in conversation, and the downward gaze of the
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 ~ May Online Auction of Fine Canadian Art at www.heffel.com, closing on Thursday, May 30, 2013. Lots can be independently viewed at one of our galleries in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, as specified in our online catalogue.
Heffel
KAREL APPEL, Wingy People, oil on board, 36 x 42 in
•
Estimate: $50,000 ~ 70,000
Fine International Art Online Auction closes April 25, 2013 Works previewed in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver View catalogue online at www.heffel.com
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INVITATION TO CONSIGN
ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn, screenprint on paper, 1967, 36 x 36 in Sold for $87,750
We are now accepting consignments for our October sale of: Fine International Art International Pop Art Prints
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INVITATION TO CONSIGN
ALEX COLVILLE, Man on Verandah, glazed tempera on board, 1953, 15 x 20 in Sold for a Record $1,287,000
We are now accepting consignments for our fall live auction of: Canadian Post~War & Contemporary Art Fine Canadian Art
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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 Buyer. These Terms and Conditions of Business shall apply to the sale of the Lot by the Auction House to the Buyer on behalf of the Consignor,
A. DEFINED TERMS: 1. AUCTION HOUSE The Auction House is Heffel Fine Art Auction House, a division of Heffel Gallery Limited, or an affiliated entity; 2. C ONSIGNOR The Consignor is the person named in the Consignment Agreement as the person from which the Property or Lot has been received for auction; 3. C ONSIGNOR ’S COMMISSION The Consignor’s Commission is the amount paid by the Consignor to the Auction House on the sale of a Lot, that is calculated on the Hammer Price, at the rates specified in writing by the Consignor and the Auction House on the Consignment Agreement Form, plus applicable Sales Tax; 4. P ROPERTY The Property is 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” or “Lot”); 5. R ESERVE The reserve is a minimum price for the sale of the Lot, agreed to between the Consignor and the Auction House; 6. KNOCKED D OWN Knocked Down means the conclusion of the sale of the Lot being auctioned by the Auctioneer; 7. EXPENSES Expenses shall include all costs incurred, directly or indirectly, in relation to the consignment and sale of the Lot;
and shall supersede and take precedence over any previously agreed Terms and Conditions of Business. These Terms and Conditions of Business are hereby incorporated into and form part of the Consignment Agreement entered into by the Auction House and the Consignor. Expenses including expenses due from a defaulting Buyer; 11. BUYER ’S PREMIUM The Buyer’s Premium is the amount paid by the Buyer to the Auction House on the purchase of a Lot, that is calculated on the Hammer Price, at the rate of seventeen percent (17%) of the Hammer Price of the Lot, plus applicable Sales Tax; 12. SALES TAX Sales Tax means the Federal and Provincial sales and excise taxes applicable in the jurisdiction of sale of the Lot; 13. R EGISTERED BIDDER A Registered Bidder is a bidder who has fully completed the registration process, provided the required information to the Auction House and has been assigned a unique paddle number for the purpose of bidding on Lots in the auction; 14. P ROCEEDS OF SALE The Proceeds of Sale are the net amount due to the Consignor from the Auction House, which shall be the Hammer Price less commission at the Published Rates and Expenses and any other amounts due to the Auction House or associated companies; 15. L IVE AND ONLINE AUCTIONS These Terms and Conditions of Business apply to all live and online auction sales conducted by the Auction House. For the purposes of online auctions, all references to the Auctioneer shall mean the Auction House and Knocked Down is a literal reference defining the close of the auction sale.
B. THE BUYER: 1. T HE AUCTION HOUSE The Auction House acts solely as agent for the Consignor, except as otherwise provided herein.
8. HAMMER P RICE The Hammer Price is the price at which the Auctioneer has Knocked Down the Lot to the Buyer;
2. T HE BUYER a) The highest Registered Bidder acknowledged by the Auctioneer as the highest bidder at the time the Lot is Knocked Down;
9. BUYER The Buyer is the person, corporation or other entity or such entity’s agent, who bids successfully on the Lot at the auction sale;
b) The Auctioneer has the right, at his sole discretion, to reopen a Lot if he has inadvertently missed a Bid, or if a Registered Bidder, immediately at the close of a Lot, notifies the Auctioneer of his intent to Bid;
10. P URCHASE PRICE The Purchase Price is the Hammer Price and the Buyer’s Premium, applicable Sales Tax and additional charges and
c) The Auctioneer shall have the right to regulate and control the bidding and to advance the bids in whatever intervals he considers appropriate for the Lot in question;
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE d) The Auction House shall have absolute discretion in settling any dispute in determining the successful bidder; e) The Buyer acknowledges that invoices generated during the sale or shortly after may not be error free, and therefore are subject to review; f) Every Registered Bidder shall be deemed to act as principal unless the Auction House has acknowledged in writing at least twenty~four hours (24) prior to the date of the auction that the Registered Bidder is acting as an agent on behalf of a disclosed principal and such agency relationship is acceptable to the Auction House; g) Every Registered Bidder shall fully complete the registration process and provide the required information to the Auction House. Every Registered Bidder will be assigned a unique paddle number (the “Paddle”) for the purpose of bidding on Lots in the auction. For online auctions, a password will be created for use in the current and future online sales only. This online registration procedure may require up to twenty~four (24) hours to complete; h) Every Registered Bidder acknowledges that once a bid is made with his Paddle, or Paddle and password, as the case may be, it may not be withdrawn without the consent of the Auctioneer who, in his sole discretion, may refuse such consent; and i) Every Registered Bidder agrees that if a Lot is Knocked Down on his bid, he is bound to purchase the Lot for the Purchase Price. 3. BUYER ’S PRICE The Buyer shall pay the Purchase Price (inclusive of the Buyer’s Premium) to the Auction House. The Buyer acknowledges and agrees that the Auction House may also receive a Consignor’s Commission. 4. SALES TAX EXEMPTION All or part of the Sales Tax may be exempt in certain circumstances if the Lot is delivered or otherwise removed from the jurisdiction of sale of the Lot. It is the Buyer’s obligation to demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the Auction House, that such delivery or removal results in an exemption from the relevant Sales Tax legislation. Shipments out of the jurisdiction of sale of the Lot(s) shall only be eligible for exemption from Sales Tax if shipped directly from the Auction House and appropriate delivery documentation is provided, in advance, to the Auction House. All claims for Sales Tax exemption must be made prior to or at the time of payment of the Purchase Price. Sales Tax will not be refunded once the Auction House has released the Lot. 5. P AYMENT OF THE PURCHASE PRICE a) The Buyer shall: (i) Unless he has already done so, provide the Auction House with his name, address and banking or other suitable references as may be required by the Auction House; and
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(ii) Payment must be made by 4:30 p.m. on the seventh (7th) day following the auction by: a) Bank Wire direct to the Auction House’s 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 Buyer’s bank which will guarantee the amount of the cheque (release of Lot subject to clearance of cheque). Credit card payments are subject to acceptance and approval by the Auction House and to a maximum of $5,000 if the Buyer is providing his credit card details by fax, or to a maximum of $25,000 if the card is presented in person with valid identification. Such credit card payment limits apply to the value of the total purchases made by the Buyer and will not be calculated on individual transactions for separate Lots. In all other circumstances, the Auction House accepts payment by wire transfer. b) Title shall pass, and release and/or delivery of the Lot shall occur, only upon payment of the Purchase Price by the Buyer to the Auction House. 6. DESCRIPTIONS OF LOT a) All representations or statements made by the Auction House, or in the Consignment Agreement, or in the catalogue or other publication or report, as to the authorship, origin, date, age, size, medium, attribution, genuineness, provenance, condition or estimated selling price of the Lot, are statements of opinion only. The Buyer agrees that the Auction House shall not be liable for any errors or omissions in the catalogue or any supplementary material produced by the Auction House; b) All photographic representations and other illustrations presented in the catalogue are solely for guidance and are not to be relied upon in terms of tone or colour or necessarily to reveal any imperfections in the Lot; c) Many Lots are of an age or nature which precludes them from being in pristine condition. Some descriptions in the catalogue or given by way of condition report make reference to damage and/or restoration. Such information is given for guidance only and the absence of such a reference does not imply that a Lot is free from defects, nor does any reference to particular defects imply the absence of others; d) The prospective Buyer must satisfy himself as to all matters referred to in a), b) and c) of this paragraph by inspection, other investigation or otherwise prior to the sale of the Lot. If the prospective Buyer is unable to personally view any Lot, the Auction House may, upon request, e~mail or fax a condition report describing the Lot to the prospective Buyer. Although the Auction House takes great care in executing such condition reports in both written and verbal format, condition reports are only matters of opinion, are non~exhaustive, and the Buyer agrees that the Auction House shall not be held responsible for any errors or omissions
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE contained within. The Buyer shall be responsible for ascertaining the condition of the Lot; and e) The Auction House makes no representations or warranties to the Buyer that the Buyer of a Lot will acquire any copyright or other reproduction right in any purchased Lot. 7. P URCHASED LOT a) The Buyer shall collect the Lot from the Auction House by 4:30 p.m. on the seventh (7th) day following the date of the auction sale, after which date the Buyer shall be responsible for all Expenses until the date the Lot is removed from the offices of the Auction House; b) All packing, handling and shipping of any Lot by the Auction House is undertaken solely as a courtesy service to the Buyer, and will only be undertaken at the discretion of the Auction House and at the Buyer’s risk. Prior to all packing and shipping, the Auction House must receive a fully completed and signed Shipping Form and payment in full of all purchases; and c) The Auction House shall not be liable for any damage to glass or frames of the Lot and shall not be liable for any errors or omissions or damage caused by packers and shippers, whether or not such agent was recommended by the Auction House. 8. R ISK a) The purchased Lot shall be at the Consignor’s risk in all respects for seven (7) days after the auction sale, after which the Lot will be at the Buyer’s risk. The Buyer may arrange insurance coverage through the Auction House at the then prevailing rates and subject to the then existing policy; and b) Neither the Auction House nor its employees nor its agents shall be liable for any loss or damage of any kind to the Lot, whether caused by negligence or otherwise, while any Lot is in or under the custody or control of the Auction House. 9. N ON~PAYMENT AND FAILURE TO COLLECT LOT( S) If the Buyer fails either to pay for or to take away any Lot by 4:30 p.m. on the seventh (7th) day following the date of the auction sale, the Auction House may in its absolute discretion be entitled to one or more of the following remedies without providing further notice to the Buyer and without prejudice to any other rights or remedies the Auction House may have: a) To issue judicial proceedings against the Buyer for damages for breach of contract together with the costs of such proceedings on a full indemnity basis; b) To rescind the sale of that or any other Lot(s) sold to the Buyer; c) To resell the Lot or cause it to be resold by public or private sale, or by way of live or online auction, with any deficiency to be claimed from the Buyer and any surplus, after Expenses, to be delivered to the Buyer;
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d) To store the Lot on the premises of the Auction House or third party storage facilities with Expenses accruing to the account of the Buyer, and to release the Lot to the Buyer only after payment of the Purchase Price and Expenses to the Auction House; e) To charge interest on the Purchase Price at the rate of five percent (5%) per month above the Royal Bank of Canada base rate at the time of the auction sale and adjusted month to month thereafter; f) To retain that or any other Lot sold to the Buyer at the same or any other auction and release the same only after payment of the aggregate outstanding Purchase Price; g) To apply any Proceeds of Sale of any Lot then due or at any time thereafter becoming due to the Buyer towards settlement of the Purchase Price, and the Auction House shall be entitled to a lien on any other property of the Buyer which is in the Auction House’s possession for any purpose; h) To apply any payments made by the Buyer to the Auction House towards any sums owing from the Buyer to the Auction House without regard to any directions received from the Buyer or his agent, whether express or implied; and i) In the absolute discretion of the Auction House, to refuse or revoke the Buyer’s registration in any future auctions held by the Auction House. 10. GUARANTEE The Auction House, its employees and agents, shall not be responsible for the correctness of any statement as to the authorship, origin, date, age, size, medium, attribution, genuineness or provenance of any Lot or for any other errors of description or for any faults or defects in any Lot and no warranty whatsoever is given by the Auction House, its employees or agents in respect of any Lot and any express or implied conditions or warranties are hereby excluded. 11. ATTENDANCE BY B UYER a) Prospective Buyers are advised to inspect the Lot(s) before the sale, and to satisfy themselves as to the description, attribution and condition of each Lot. The Auction House will arrange suitable viewing conditions during the preview preceding the sale, or by private appointment; b) Prospective Buyers are advised to personally attend the 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
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 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 Buyer, and the prospective Buyer hereby agrees that neither the Auction House nor its employees nor agents shall be liable to either the Buyer or the Consignor for any neglect or default in making such a bid. 12. EXPORT PERMITS Without limitation, the Buyer acknowledges that certain 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 Buyer.
C. THE CONSIGNOR: 1. T HE 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 Conditions 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. W ARRANTIES AND INDEMNITIES a) The Consignor warrants to the Auction House and to the Buyer 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 Buyer 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 Buyer 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
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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 Conditions C.2.a and/or C.2.c above. 3. R ESERVES a) 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. 4. C OMMISSION AND E XPENSES 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 charge and 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 (1.5%) 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
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 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 Condition C.5.b above shall be the total amount due to the Consignor in the event of a successful claim being made against the Auction House. 6. P AYMENT OF P ROCEEDS 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 Buyer; b) If the Auction House has not received the Purchase Price from the Buyer 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 Buyer; and c) If before the Purchase Price is paid in full by the Buyer, 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. C OLLECTION OF THE P URCHASE PRICE If the Buyer 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 Buyer, save that the Auction House shall not be obligated to issue judicial proceedings against the Buyer 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 Buyer on such terms as the Auction House shall think fit, to take such steps as are necessary to collect monies from the Buyer to the Consignor and, if appropriate, to set aside the sale and refund money to the Buyer. 8. C HARGES 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
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that such consent is given, or in the event of a withdrawal pursuant to Condition C.1.b (ii) or C.1.b (iii), a charge of twenty~five percent (25%) of the high pre~sale estimate, together with any applicable Sales Tax and Expenses, is immediately payable to the Auction House, prior to any release of the 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 that the Lots are to be collected (the “Collection Notice”). Should the Consignor fail to collect the Lot from the Auction House within ninety (90) days from the receipt of the Collection Notice, the Auction House shall have the right to place such Lots in the Auction House’s storage facilities or third party storage facilities, with Expenses accruing to the account of the Consignor. The Auction House shall also have the right to sell such Lots by public or private sale and on such terms as the Auction House shall alone determine, and shall 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 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; 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 ninety (90) days following the auction to sell such Lot by private sale or auction sale 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. The Auction House shall continue to have the exclusive right to sell any unsold Lots after the said ninety (90) day period, until such time as the Auction House is notified in writing by the Consignor that such right is terminated. 10. C ONSIGNOR’ 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.
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 11. P HOTOGRAPHS 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 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.
D. GENERAL CONDITIONS: 1. The Auction House as agent for the Consignor is not responsible for any default by the Consignor or the Buyer. 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 Registered Bidder retract or withdraw his bid.
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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. 6. 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. 7. 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. 8. The Auction House will not accept any liability for any errors that may occur in the operation of any video or digital representations produced and/or broadcasted during an auction sale. 9. 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. 10. Unless otherwise provided for herein, all monetary amounts referred to herein shall refer to the lawful money of Canada. 11. 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. 12. If any provision of this Agreement or the application thereof to any circumstances shall be held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions of this Agreement, or the application thereof to other circumstances, shall not be affected thereby and shall be held valid to the full extent permitted by law. The Buyer 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 Buyer and the Consignor and the terms by which the Auction House shall conduct the sale and handle other related matters.
4. For advertising and promotional purposes, the Consignor acknowledges and agrees that the Auction House shall, in relation to any sale of the Lot, make reference to the aggregate Purchase Price of the Lot, inclusive of the Buyer’s Premium, notwithstanding that the Consignor’s Commission is calculated on the Hammer Price. 5. Any indemnity hereunder shall extend to all actions, proceedings, costs, claims and demands whatsoever incurred Version 2013.03, © Heffel Gallery Limited
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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 RCA RI
Royal Society of British Artists Royal Canadian Academy of Arts founded 1880 Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour
RMS
Royal Miniature Society
ROI
Royal Institute of Oil Painters
RPS
Royal Photographic Society
RSA
Royal Scottish Academy
RSC RSMA
Royal Society of Canada Royal Society of Marine Artists
RSPP
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
RWS
Royal Watercolour Society
SAA SAAVQ SAP SAPQ SC SCA SCPEE SSC SWAA
Society of American Artists 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
Woodlands School
YR
Young Romantics
ϕ
Indicates that 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
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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.
C ORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work by the artist. ATTRIBUTED TO CORNELIUS DAVID KRIEGHOFF In our best judgment, a work possibly executed in whole or in part by the named artist. STUDIO OF CORNELIUS DAVID K RIEGHOFF 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. C IRCLE 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 DAVID 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 / BEARS DATE 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.)
Robert C.S. Heffel Vice~President, Director and Shareholder (through R.C.S.H. Investments Ltd.)
P ROVENANCE Is intended to indicate previous collections or owners. C ERTIFICATES / 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 2012.09, © Heffel Gallery Limited
Version 2013.03, © Heffel Gallery Limited
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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 C ATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTIONS ~ DELIVERED
IN
OF
PARTICULAR INTEREST
IN
PURCHASING
OF
PARTICULAR INTEREST
IN
SELLING
1) 2)
TAX INCLUDED
CANADA
One Year (four catalogues) ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art Two Year (eight catalogues) ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art
DELIVERED
ARTISTS
TO THE
UNITED STATES
AND
AT
4) $130.00 5)
OVERSEAS
One Year (four catalogues) ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art Two Year (eight catalogues) ~ Fine Canadian Art / Post~War & Contemporary Art
C ANADIAN ART
3) $80.00
AUCTION INDEX ONLINE ~
$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 2011.03, Š Heffel Gallery Limited
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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 Export and Import Act (Canada), and compliance with the provisions of the said Act is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser.
Sale Date
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
Please indicate your preferred method of shipping below All Charges are Collect for Settlement by the Purchaser
Social Security Number for U.S. Customs (U.S. Residents Only)
SHIPPING OPTIONS
L OT NUMBER
L OT DESCRIPTION
in numerical order
artist
Please have my purchases forwarded by: Air
Surface or
Consolidated Ground Shipment to (when available): Heffel Toronto C ARRIER
OF
Heffel Montreal
2) 3)
C HOICE
Please have my purchases couriered by: FedEx
1)
4)
Other
Carrier Account Number O PTIONAL INSURANCE YES, please insure my purchases at full sale value while in transit. Heffel 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.)
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 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada V6H 3G1 Telephone 604 732~6505, Fax 604 732~4245 E~mail:mail@heffel.com, Internet:http://www.heffel.com Version 2013.03, © Heffel Gallery Limited
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ABSENTEE BID FORM Please view our General Bidding Increments as published by Heffel.
Sale Date
L OT NUMBER
L OT DESCRIPTION
in numerical order
artist
M AXIMUM 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: 2247 Granville Street, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada V6H 3G1 Telephone 604 732~6505, Fax 604 732~4245 E~mail: mail@heffel.com; Internet: http://www.heffel.com Version 2011.03, © Heffel Gallery Limited
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
INDEX OF ARTISTS BY LOT A/B
I/J/K/L
A RDEN, R OY 11 A SHEVAK, K AROO 46 BATES , MAXWELL BENNETT 80 BEAULIEU, PAUL VANIER 55 BELLEFLEUR, L ÉON 38, 69 BELZILE, L OUIS 23 BLACKWOOD, DAVID LLOYD 68 BORDUAS, PAUL~É MILE 51 BORENSTEIN, SAMUEL 32, 33, 34, 35, 45 BUSH , JACK HAMILTON 5, 6, 13, 22
KURELEK , WILLIAM 42, 44, 64, 78, 79 L EMIEUX, JEAN PAUL 10, 27, 28 L ETENDRE, RITA 29 L ITTLE , JOHN GEOFFREY CARUTHERS 43
C/D COLVILLE, ALEXANDER 2, 62 COSGROVE , STANLEY MOREL 74 DALLAIRE, JEAN~P HILIPPE 52, 53 E/F FAFARD , JOSEPH H ECTOR YVON (J OE) 47, 48 FAUTEUX~MASSÉ, HENRIETTE 56 FERRON, M ARCELLE 37, 54 G GAGNON, CHARLES 49 GAUCHER, YVES 26 GERVAIS, LISE 25 GLYDE, H ENRY GEORGE 88 H HARRIS, L AWREN S TEWART 60 HARRISON, TED 84, 85 HODGSON, THOMAS SHERLOCK 77 HOPKINS, TOM 72 HUGHES , EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) 3, 4, 73, 86, 87
M/N/O MCCARTHY , DORIS JEAN 67 MOLINARI , GUIDO 50 O NLEY, TONI (N ORMAN) 57 P P ELLAN, ALFRED 75 P RATT, C HRISTOPHER 58, 65, 66 P RATT, M ARY FRANCES 61 Q/R RADUL, J UDY 12 RIOPELLE, JEAN~P AUL 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 36 ROBERTS, WILLIAM G OODRIDGE 82, 83 S SCHERMAN, A NTONY (TONY) 76 SHADBOLT, J ACK LEONARD 1, 31, 39, 40, 41, 63, 70, 81 SMITH , GORDON A PPELBE 7, 8, 9, 24, 71 T/U/V/W/X/Y/Z TOWN, HAROLD BARLING 59 YUXWELUPTUN, LAWRENCE P AUL 30
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Spring Live Auction Highlight Previews MONTREAL AND TORONTO
Montreal Preview Thursday, April 25 & Friday, April 26, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Saturday, April 27, 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Toronto Preview Thursday, May 2 & Friday, May 3, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Saturday, May 4, 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 exhibited for our Montreal and Toronto previews.
1840 rue Sherbrooke Ouest Montreal, Quebec H3H 1E4 Telephone: 514 939~6505 Toll Free: 866 939~6505 Facsimile: 514 939~1100
13 Hazelton Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5R 2E1 Telephone: 416 961~6505 Toll Free: 866 961~6505 Facsimile: 416 961~4245
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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART
MAY 15, 2013
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
V ISIT
www.heffel.com VANCOUVER
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TORONTO
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MONTREAL
HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE
ISBN 978~1~927031~08~7
SALE WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2013, 4PM, VANCOUVER
OTTAWA
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