Post-war & Contemporary

Alexander Young Jackson (1882-1974) ALC CGP G7 OSA RCA RSA Baie St. Paul, 1923 oil on panel signed lower left, signed and titled to verso inscribed Property of A.D. Savage to verso 8.5x10.5 in. (21.x26.7 cm.)

Provenance

Anne Douglas Savage, Montreal; Sale of Joyner Fine Art, Canadian Art, May 15, 1990, lot 90; Private collection, Vancouver; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Peter Ohler Fine Arts Ltd., Vancouver; Private collection, Vancouver; Sale of Heffel Fine Art, Canadian, Impressionist & Modern Art, May 29, 2019, lot 116; Private collection, Toronto

Literature

A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, 1958, pp. 60-62; Naomi Jackson Groves, A.Y.’s Canada, 1968, p. 42;

$38,000 CAD.

Baie St. Paul would become a recurring and important sketching place for the A.Y Jackson, who in 1923, visited the area with Edwin Holgate. On this trip, he wrote a letter to friend of the Group of Seven Fred B. Housser about the village: “there is a good deal of primitive here yet, thatched barns and many timber houses and a few old stone ones. It is a very beautiful place, almost too much for painting. The ready-made composition has to be avoided.” (1)

The panel Baie St. Paul originally comes from the collection of Anne Savage, and bears her inscription to verso. Savage and Jackson had an important friendship that began when they met in 1919, shortly before Jackson’s first trips to Baie St. Paul. They started corresponding regularly in the mid 1920s, and shared feedback on each other’s paintings, discussed art in general, and shared updated on their lives. At two points during their long friendship, one or the other proposed that they might share a life together (2), though it evidently never worked out. Ultimately, the two remained important friends in a mutually supportive relationship that endured many decades.

1. A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, 1958, pp. 60-62; 3. Barbara Meadowcroft, Painting Friends, p. 90

Francis (Franz) Hans Johnston (1888 - 1949) ARCA CSPWC G7 OSA Crystal Weather oil on panel signed Franz Johnston lower left, titled and signed to verso 20x24 in. (50.8x60.9 cm.)

Provenance

Loch Gallery, Calgary Private collection

$32,000 CAD.

After Frank Johnston distanced himself the Group of Seven, the style of his work changed quite dramatically. As his career moved forward in the mid 1920s, his paintings moved towards a more decorative style. Around 1926, Frank Johnston changed his name to Franz at the recommendation of a peer – Franz was “more exotic”. The artist had always found praise in his ability to render light in his paintings, and his work from 1926 onward became picturesque. We see this clearly represented in the blue water, bright sky and sunlit snowy ground in Crystal Weather. These snow laden scenes would become a recurring theme for Johnston, and brought him considerable commercial success as an artist for the remainder of his career.

Anne Douglas Savage (1896-1971) BHG CGP Autumn in the Laurentians, c. 1930s oil on panel, double sided 8.5x10.5 in. (21.6x26.7 cm.)

Letter of Authentication by Anne McDougall (niece of Anne Savage) attached to verso

Provenance

Winchester Galleries, Victoria; Private collection, Edmonton

$19,800 CAD

Anne Savage’s family owned land at Lake Wonish in the Laurentians in Quebec, and nearly every year on her Summer and Easter breaks from teaching, she would spend time in a small studio she built on their property. The flowing composition is characteristic of Savage, who captures the windy fall day with rhythm. The lake was a place of great inspiration for the artist, and she painted in nature here for nearly fifty years, capturing the changes of the season with sensitivity.

Autumn in the Laurentians, image to verso

Maxwell Bennett Bates (1906 - 1980) ASA CGP CSGA OC RCA Young Woman oil on canvas signed and dated indistinctly lower right 30x22 in. (76.2x55.9 cm.)

Provenance

Sale of Maynards Fine Art, Contemporary, Canadian, Northwest Coast and Inuit Art Auction, May 6, 2015, lot 39; Equinox Gallery, Vancouver

$22,000 CAD.

Maxwell Bates views our existence as a hermetically sealed world of alienation and self-containement. It is a personalized and individual life we all lead; communications and human relationships can become totally exterior and distant from the inner core of our lives - the frightening realization of one’s self outside society. For Bates, art is a means of understanding the human condition, the human way of life. - Art Parry on the work of Maxwell Bates, Vanguard, 1979

Bates was a master of observation, and his portraits are empathetic, and often somewhat humorous studies of human nature. The date of Young Woman is indistinct, but the work likely comes from Bates’ years in Victoria, where his work took focus on the cultural and social aspects of his surroundings. The solitary woman returns a confident and somewhat intimidating gaze back in the direction of the viewer in this work. Despite her simple pose, Bates conveys his subject with incredible character.

Paul Vanier Beaulieau (1910-1996) RCA Still Life, 1953 oil on canvas signed and dated lower left 25.5x39.5 in. (64.7x100.3 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Toronto Galerie D’Art Vincent, Ottawa Private collection, Edmonton

$12,500 CAD. As a young artist, Paul Beaulieau was exposed to and befriended by the likes of Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti, artists whose Cubist and Surrealist influences he would carry with him throughout his entire career. The still life was a favourite subject for Beaulieau, and his work from the 1940s and onwards took inspiration from theatrics and the circus. Upon examining this still life further, we can note Beaulieau’s European influences, somewhat cubist in its shifted visual planes, and in his use of strong, complimentary colours. A Beaulieau still life titled Nature morte a la bouteille jaune was the first contemporary Canadian artwork to be acquired by the newly opened Musée national d’art moderne de Paris in 1951, and the subject remained one of his greatest strengths.

Leon Bellefleur (1910 - 2007) AANFM CAS PY QMG Sans Titre No. 1, Paris, 1955 oil on canvas signed lower right, dated Paris 1955 lower left 7.25x10 in. (18.4x25.4 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Toronto; Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto; Sale of ByDealers Auction House, May 26, 2019; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection

$7,500 CAD.

Bellefleur spent most of his early painting career teaching elementary school, and so when he retired in 1954, he was able to devote himself to his practice and left for Paris to study engraving that same year (1). Bellefleur was a signatory of the Prisme d’Yeux in 1948, a response to the Refus Global Manifesto that challenged the Automatises’ “overly narrow definition of avant garde in painting” (2). In this period of his career, he was heavily influenced by Pellan, Kandinsky, Miro and other Surrealist artists, and drew from the subconscious to create work. Much of Bellefleur’s compositions from this period saw centralized abstracted figures, glowing against dark, misty backgrounds. Organic figures swirl and glow in Sans Titre No. 1, contrasting beautifully against the misty background from which they emerge.

1. Art Gallery of Ontario, The Canadian Collection, p. 20

Leon Bellefleur (1910 - 2007) AANFM CAS PY QMG Untitled, 1962 oil on canvas signed lower right 10x13 in. (25.4x33 cm.)

Provenance

Waddington & Gorce Inc., Toronto; Private collection, Edmonton

$8,500 CAD.

Bellefleur’s works are often centered in the trappings of childhood: play, games, spontaneity, and naïve creativity. He was experimental, interested in the act of art making, the response of creative individual to paper, paint and canvas, and sensitive especially to surface, texture and composition. His works often have a centrally focused theme, wherein paint builds and moves out from the centre of the work, sometimes with a sense of purpose, in other works, as pure paint on canvas. He said, “When I step in from of my canvas, I have nothing prepared. I am naked: I am completely free. I don’t have a subject in mind, nor a title, not even a colour scheme. Nothing.”

We thank Lisa Christensen for contributing this essay

Leon Bellefleur (1910 - 2007) AANFM CAS PY QMG Fleurs a Mortefontaine, 1964 oil on canvas signed lower right 15x18 in. (38.1x45.7 cm.)

Provenance

Galerie Perrault, Quebec City Private collection, Edmonton

$9,800 CAD.

Molly Lamb Bobak (1922-2014) BCFSA CGP CPE CSGA CSPWC RCA Beach oil on canvas signed lower right 36x48 in. (91.4x121.9 cm.)

Provenance

Winchester Galleries, Victoria Private collection

$98,000 CAD. Molly Lamb Bobak is renowned for her crowd scenes, which became a mainstay of her career after she and her family moved to Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1960. Mid-career, Bobak began to receive commissions for public events, and the subject matter drew her in (1). “I simply love gatherings”, the artist noted in 1977, “It’s like little ants crawling, the sort of insignificance and yet the beauty of people all getting together.” In Beach, Bobak achieves vibrant energy, movement and an incredible amount of visual information within the canvas’ minimal details.

1. Michelle Gewurtz, “Molly Lamb Bobak: Life & Work”, Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2018, pages 63-65

Joane Cardinal-Schubert (1942-2009) RCA I Dream of Free - Birch Bark Scroll - Horses mixed media on paper 31x48 in. (78.7x121.9 cm.) $8,900 CAD. Joane Cardinal-Schubert was one of Alberta’s finest contemporary artists. She worked in many media, especially printmaking and painting. Her work explores themes of Cardinal-Schubert’s Kainaiwa ancestry, wherein she weaves her own personal history into that of her people, as well as larger societal dialogues. Part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Cardinal-Schubert’s work pushed her to the forefront of the western Canadian art scene in the late 1960s, and she became a curator, writer, and activist in addition to maintaining a serious art practice. She pioneered the use exhibition spaces in such a way that long-held stereotypes around Indigenous work were broken, re-shaping and re-directing the dialogues around First Nations art through her frank and insightful contemporary approach.

We thank Lisa Christensen for contributing this essay

Horace Champagne (b. 1937) My First Pastel of Monet’s Pond, Giverny, France, 2014 pastel on paper signed lower right 8x10 in. (20.3x25.4 cm.)

Provenance

Masters Gallery Ltd.; Private collection Calgary $2,400 CAD. In 2013, Horace Champagne embarked on a magical series that captured Monet’s famous gardens, including the Japanese bridges, water lilies and ponds that Monet himself painted during his lifetime. This work is the very first of the series, and Champagne renders the lush plant life and reflective pond of Giverny with masterful delicacy.

Jean-Phillipe Dallaire (1916-1965) QMG Still Life with Grapefruit, 1953 oil on canvas signed and dated 1953 to verso 12x13.5 in. (30.5x34.3 cm.)

Provenance

Dominion Gallery, Montreal; Sale of Joyner Fine Art, Tuesday, November 28, 1989, lot 004; Private collection, Edmonton

Exhibited

Rétrospective Jean Dallaire, Galerie Valentin, Montréal, October 18 - November 8, 2008. $29,000 CAD. You know that for the first few days after a Canadian arrives in Paris, he feels completely disoriented, because you can see so many exhibits in Paris that you become more and more influenced. And you can draw on all these influences to make endless progress. Since I arrived, I have tried Cubism, abstraction, realism, and then Cubism again. You shouldn’t be afraid of being influenced. The mistake that Canadians make is to want a Canadian form of painting. - Dallaire in a letter to friend Henri Heyendal, May 1, 1940 (1) Jean Dallaire took influence from many different facets of culture, from theatre and mythology to the European Cubists and Surrealists that he was exposed to in Paris in the late 1930s. In 1940, he was taken as a prisoner of war during German occupation of Paris, which many historians suggest must have added to the sardonic, and somewhat ominous qualities we often see in his work (2). Still Life With Grapefruit reveals the artist’s fine skills as a designer, and his clear Cubist influence. Dallaire’s command of colour and shape produce a composition that is theatrical and spontaneous despite its basis in still objects.

1. Michel Vincent Chef, Jean Phillips Dallaire, The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jean-philippe-dallaire, accessed May 10, 2022 2. Kenneth Lefolli and Elizabeth Kilbourn, Great Canadian Painting: A Century of Art, p. 89

Dorothy Knowles (b. 1927) OC Nicotine, 1992 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated August 1992 to verso 48x48 (121.9x121.9 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Edmonton

$17,000 CAD. Knowles is noted as one of Canada’s finest landscape artists, and has been an active painter for nearly 70 years. The artist began to attend the now-famous Emma Lake Workshops in the 1950s, and it was here that her interest in landscape painting was founded. Over the years, she developed her own painting techniques, sometimes using diluted oil paint and charcoal to map out her compositions, and always with an air of abstraction.

“I find myself composing with colour”, Knowles noted in a 1972 interview with curator Terrence Heath, “I just let it go and it takes on its own rhythm”. The artist’s garden in Saskatoon has been a source of inspiratio over many years, and in 1992, Knowles produced multiple canvases of her vibrant plants. The title of this work, Nicotine, likely comes from the pink flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata) that bloom across the center of the canvas.

Jean Paul Lemieux (1904-1990) CC QMG RCA Jeune Fille en Rouge, 1958 oil pastel on paper signed and dated lower right 11x7.5 in. (27.9x19 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Toronto; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Edmonton

$78,500 CAD.

In the mid-1950s, Lemieux entered a phase of his career that is referred to by scholars as his “Classic Period” (1). His work from about 1956 - 1970 saw the artist focusing on the figure, and lonely portraits set against flat fields with simple horizons dominated his practice. The result of this shift was a series of haunting works, and Lemieux is perhaps best well known for them. Deceptively minimal, works like Jeune Fille en Rouge read like found photographs, and his figures are loaded with ideas of isolation and solitude. As his career progressed into the 60s and 70s, Lemieux’ works would become imbued with more and more emotional and personally charged content.

Maud Lewis (1903-1970) Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, Lobster Fishermen, Bay View, N.S. mixed media on beaverboard signed lower right: LEWIS 11x13 in. (27.9x33 cm.) Authenticated by J.C. Miller Antiques and Maud Lewis expert Alan Deacon in 2017.

Provenance

Private collection, Ontario; Sale of the Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, May 2017; Private collection, Calgary

Exhibited

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, April 11-16, 2017; Homer Watson House and Gallery, Kitchener, Ontario, April 21 – May 19, 2017; Please inquire for pricing In March 2017, volunteers at the New Hamburg Thrift Center in Southern Ontario unexpectedly discovered this work, Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, Lobster Fishermen, Bay View, N.S. while sorting through their donation buns. A volunteer recognized the work of Nova Scotia painter Maud Lewis, and after having the painting authenticated by J.C. Miller Antiques and Lewis expert Alan Deacon, the Mennonite Central Committee put the work up for auction. The work received an enormous amount of fanfare, and the auction coincided with the release of Maudie, the biographical film released about the artist in 2017. The serendipitous find of the painting brought about a renewed national interest in Maud Lewis, whose work had spent many years in relative obscurity outside of Nova Scotia. During the auction, the work toured to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, to Homer Watson House and Gallery, and bids soared immediately. Affected by arthritis and other health problems from an early age, Lewis spent her whole life in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, and lived most of her adult years in a rural one room house. She spent her time painting cheerful scenes of horse-drawn sleighs, oxen, deer and other charming depictions of Nova Scotian life, selling work for $1 or $2 a piece. Portrait of Eddie Barnes and Ed Murphy, Lobster Fishermen, Bay View, N.S. is an extremely rare work for Lewis. As of 2021, only one other work of this particular subject matter has been recorded at auction.