Canadian Fine Art Auction MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2018
Canadian Fine Art Auction MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2018 AT 7:00 PM
LOCATION OF PREVIEW & AUCTION
Waddington’s 275 King Street East, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario M5A 1K2 ON VIEW
Friday, November 16, 2018 from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm Saturday, November 17, 2018 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm Sunday, November 18, 2018 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
CANADIAN FINE ART
FRONT COVER
416-504-5100 canadianart@waddingtons.ca
Lot 44
SENIOR SPECIALIST
Linda G. Rodeck CONSIGNMENT SPECIALIST
Anna Holmes CLIENT SERVICES
Rochelle Konn
PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD Elizabeth Street, Toronto INSIDE FRONT COVER
Lot 56
LAWREN STEWART HARRIS Houses Under Construction FRONTISPIECE
Lot 103 IVAN KENNETH EYRE Asessippi
Monday, November 19, 2018 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
INSIDE BACK COVER
Select lots may be viewed otherwise by appointment.
Guaycurai - Red Rock, Black Rock
Lot 37 MARION NICOLL BACK COVER
Lot 18 JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE
ALL LOTS CAN BE VIEWED ONLINE AT
Du Vent À Vent
www.waddingtons.ca
This auction is subject to the Conditions of Sale printed in the back of this catalogue.
This catalogue and its contents © 2018 Waddington McLean and Company Ltd. All rights reserved.
Photography and design by Waddington’s
1 DAVID A. THAUBERGER, R.C.A. SIGNS OF THE TIMES, 1991 acrylic on canvas signed, titled and dated “Sept. 1991” on the overflap 43 ins x 56 ins; 109.2 cms x 142.2 cms PROVENANCE:
The Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $6,000–8,000
David Thauberger’s (b.1948) work typically depicts the vernacular architecture of the prairies: corner stores, grain elevators - or, here, a shuttered arcade. The scenes are simplified, but this is not to be read as something reductive - rather, his subjects are distilled into their fundamental forms. Surfaces are pristine and precise, boldly animated by bright strips of primary colour. There is frequently text, found on signs and shopfronts. Otherwise, the scenes bear no evidence of occupation or human presence. In Signs of the Times, this vacancy is rendered literal. There remains, however, a sense of proximity: this place becomes a locus, an anchor, while the radio mast looming over the scene suggests the expansive horizon beyond. With the directness of a picture postcard, Thauberger elevates and animates the ordinary.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
3
2 MAUD LEWIS WINTER SCENE, C. 1960 oil on board signed 9 ins x 12 ins; 22.9 cms x 30.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Ten Mile House Gallery, NS Private Collection, Toronto $8,000–10,000
3 NORMAND HUDON MAGOG acrylic on masonite signed; titled and dated ‘83 on the reverse 18 ins x 24 ins; 45.7 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal $5,000–7,000
4
Canadian Fine Art Auction
4 TED HARRISON, R.C.A. YUKON SUN acrylic on canvas signed; also signed, titled and dated ‘83 on the reverse 36 ins x 24 ins; 91.4 cms x 60.96 cms PROVENANCE:
Ted Harrison (1926 – 2015) was born in England, where he studied and taught painting until he moved to the Yukon in 1968. In this lot, colours roll into each other, like sound waves in a symphony, forming four distinct movements. Land and sky are in perfect harmony, emphasized by the near symmetric balance of the piece. The sun is centered in the composition of the painting, and every peak and crest of mountain points to it.
Private Collection, Ottawa $15,000–20,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
5
5 KAZUO NAKAMURA, R.C.A. MORNING MIST 2, 1972 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘72 20 ins x 24 ins; 50.8 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
The Waddington Galleries Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $9,000–12,000
6 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A AUTUMN STREET SCENE oil on canvas board signed 24 ins x 18 ins; 61 cms x 45.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Continental Galleries of Fine Art, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $12,000–18,000
6
Canadian Fine Art Auction
7 DAVID BROWN MILNE BLIND ROAD, JUNE - JULY, 1930 drypoint, printed in colours signed and inscribed /50 in pencil in the lower margin plate 5 ins x 7 ins; 12.7 cms x 17.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario LITERATURE:
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 1929-1953, 1998, page 493, no.302.11, for Blind Road, Plowed Ground, on which this drypoint is based.
In a letter from David Milne (1882-1953) to his friend James Clarke, which David Silcox quotes, Milne indicates that this print was based on the canvas Blind Road, Plowed Ground, circa May 1930. Milne writes that the drypoint was “Made from a picture done here this spring and following it rather closely in the colour. In shape too except that the oil goes only half way up the canvas, leaving the rest blank.” Milne noted further interesting differences between the painting and the drypoint, for example, “the shoving up of the composition to fill the plate - the marking of the small contours in the oil (with) big brilliant colour has been used throughout and the thick line is against a contrast. The elm tree, larger in the drypoint, is reduced (united to the rest of the picture) by spots of the same dark blue used in the rest of the etching.”
Rosemarie L. Tovell, Reflections in a Quiet While this work is numbered “/50” in the lower margin, Pool: The Prints of David Milne, National Rosemarie Tovell describes the editioning of this print as Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1980, pages “puzzling”. She notes: “Some impressions were signed out of 142-143 and plate 59, for Blind Road, fifty; others out of twenty-five.” Nonetheless, she continues: illustrated. “a maximum of only thirteen prints can be accounted for”, concluding that “it is another example of the arbitrary nature $10,000–15,000 of Milne’s edition practice.” MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
7
8 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. OVERLOOKING FROOD LAKE, 1962 oil on board signed; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 12 ins x 15 ins; 30.5 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
The Art Emporium, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver $20,000–30,000
8
Canadian Fine Art Auction
9 FREDERICK HORSMAN VARLEY, A.R.C.A. PRELUDE TO SPRING, GRAND RIVER NEAR DOON, 1948 oil on board signed, with Varley Inventory no.152 12 ins x 15 ins; 30.5 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Roberts Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $18,000–22,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
9
10 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A WINTER AFTERNOON, COURSOL STREET, MONTREAL, 1967 oil on canvas board signed; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 16 ins x 20 ins; 41.9 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ancaster, ON $12,000–15,000
11 MICHAEL FRENCH THEY SAILED AWAY oil on board signed, titled and dated ‘09 14 ins x 20 ins; 35.6 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Stouffville, ON $8,000–12,000
10
Canadian Fine Art Auction
12 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. of the Yellowhead Pass and Jasper area in colourful murals and posters to be displayed in lobbies and ROCKY MOUNTAIN SKETCH, 1914 train stations. Together with fellow painter J.W. Beatty, oil on divided panel Jackson journeyed out to the Rockies for the first time signed in his life. His employers wanted the mountainscapes 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms depicted accurately, with very few liberties taken, and Jackson certainly accomplished that task. PROVENANCE: McCready Galleries Inc., Toronto Galerie d’art Michel Bigué, St. Saveur-des-Monts, QC Titled Rocky Mountain Sketch, 1914 on two labels on the reverse, the vantage point from which Jackson Private Collection, Toronto painted this lot is surely Medicine Lake, 25 kilometres southeast of Jasper. $12,000–15,000 Today, this view remains unchanged and were you to On his 1914 trip to the Canadian Rockies, A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974) was commissioned to produce venture there in July you would find that the lake is filled with freshly melted snow and glacial run-off, a sketches for paintings that would later become cool and clear sight. As summer progresses to fall, part of the advertising and hotel decoration for the lake is reduced to a series of ponds. Fortuitously, Canadian Northern Railways. Having completed Jackson captured Medicine Lake at the height of its the line in 1913 at great expense, the owners and summertime beauty. investors of the railway were looking to drum up more business by depicting the beautiful sights MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
11
13 HARRY BRITTON, O.S.A., R.C.A. QUIET CONTEMPLATION oil on board signed 24.5 ins x 18.5 ins; 62.2 cms x 46.99 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Oakville, ON $5,000–7,000
14 FREDERICK SIMPSON COBURN, R.C.A. WINTER MORNING oil on canvas signed and dated ‘46 23 ins x 32 ins; 57.2 cms x 80 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie d’art Michel Bigué, Saint-Saveur-des-Monts, QC Private Collection, Toronto $8,000–12,000
12
Canadian Fine Art Auction
15 ARTHUR LISMER, O.S.A., R.C.A. NEIL’S HARBOR, N.S., 1951 oil on board, with another sketch on the reverse signed; titled and dated on the reverse 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $12,000–18,000 VERSO
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
13
16 CHRISTOPHER PRATT, R.C.A. MY SIXTY-ONE, 1988 silkscreen, printed in colours signed, titled and dated “December ‘88” and numbered 21/65 in pencil in the lower margin sight 16.25 ins x 36 ins; 41.3 cms x 91.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Montreal LITERATURE:
Christopher Pratt with an introduction by David P. Silcox, Personal Reflections of a Life in Art, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 1995, page 172 for My Sixty-One, reproduced in colour. $6,000–7,000
14
Canadian Fine Art Auction
17 DAVID BROWN MILNE STILL WATER AND FISH (SECOND VERSION), 1941 drypoint, printed in colours signed and inscribed /33 in pencil in the lower margin sheet 9 ins x 11 ins; 22.9 cms x 27.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $30,000–40,000
LITERATURE:
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 1929-1953, 1998, page 747-748, no.403.13, for the watercolour on which this drypoint is based. Rosemarie L. Tovell, Reflections in a Quiet Pool: The Prints of David Milne, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1980, page 185, and page 178, plate 78, for Still Water and Fish, reproduced in colour. Government of Canada (Department of Citizenship and Immigration), The Arts in Canada, Ottawa, 1958, page 90, for Still Water and Fish, reproduced in colour. According to Rosemarie Tovell, this drypoint would have been made at Uxbridge and pulled between January and April 1941. It is an example of David Milne rag-wiping his plates to get a softer effect, not unlike the effect one might aim for in a watercolour painting (see literature notes for the watercolour by Milne that inspired this work).
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
15
18 JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE, R.C.A. DU VENT À VENT mixed media litho-collage on canvas signed and dated 1967 32.75 ins x 40.25 ins; 83.2 cms x 102.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $30,000–50,000 LITERATURE:
Guy Courgeval and Stéphane Aquin, Riopelle (catalogue), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, 2006, page 94. “Recycling & Mutations or The Phoenix Reborn” by Monique Brunet-Weinmann in Yseult Riopelle (ed.), Jean Paul Riopelle, Catalogue raisonné des estampes, Hibou Éditeurs, Québec, 2005, pages 60-72 for an extensive and illuminating discussion of this period of Riopelle’s production and examples of other litho-collages.
In 1966, Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) joined the stable of artists represented by the renowned Galerie Maeght, who also represented such artistic heavyweights as Miró, Braque and Calder among others. Stéphane Aquin writes that “to mark his first exhibition, the gallery devoted an entire issue of (their promotional publication), Derrière Le Miroir, to Riopelle”. It featured ten lithographs based on ten gouaches by the artist. As a by-product of the project, Aquin notes, Riopelle “developed a passion for printmaking” and in 1967 “produced nearly forty lithographs”. In 1967, the year this lot was produced, Riopelle began recycling the lithographs, which had been based on his gouache paintings, to produce new works in collage. Like Miró, whose works Riopelle would have been familiar with, Riopelle used metal pins (in this case staples) to tack shapes he had cut out from his own discarded lithos, onto his canvas support. This allowed the positions of each of the elements to be easily changed and reconsidered. The reverse of this lot shows that the staples Riopelle used have been left unpinched to facilitate this process. According to Monique Brunet-Weinmann, Riopelle’s experiments in printmaking beginning in 1966 “gathered together a whole, quantity of rejected proofs, failures and stained copies that would normally have been consigned to the studio’s waste bins - and to history! - were it not for Riopelle’s highly individual method of working which meant that he could see in a flash which parts of these rejects he could salvage and make use of.” While the litho-collages are works of art in their own right, they inevitably act as a lynch-pin between what preceeds them (including the gouaches and the experiments with printmaking) and the works that follow. As Brunet-Weinmann notes: “It is interesting to define just what characterizes Riopelle’s manner of using collage and to study the effect that this medium has on his other artistic work.” She writes: “Indeed nothing could have been more irritating to Riopelle than repetition...and yet, of course, this is precisely the function of printmaking”. Therefore, it is in works like this lot that Brunet-Weinmann argues “we see a total negation of aesthetic intentionality (in terms of a repeated image) and an affirmation of aesthetic intentionality in spite of, and also because of, the original deconstruction” - in other words, the Phoenix Reborn. This lot, which is dated ‘67, is among the earlier works produced using the litho-collage technique. 1967 is also the year that Riopelle was the subject of a major retrospective at the Musée du Québec, his first major exhibition in his native province.
16
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
17
19 WILLIAM KURELEK, R.C.A. EVENING AT MALTON oil on masonite signed, also signed with initials and dated 1972 on the reverse 35.75 ins x 24.25 ins; 90.2 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
Paul McGoey, M.D., Ontario (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, Ottawa (by descent) LITERATURE:
Patricia Morley, Kurelek: A Biography, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1986, page 247. James Baque (introduction), O Toronto: paintings and notes by William Kurelek, New Press, Toronto, 1973, page 32. $80,000–120,000
AEROQUAY ONE, 1960s
18
Canadian Fine Art Auction
The demand for Malton Airport’s services is not a bad metaphor for William Kurelek’s (1927-1977) own rise to prominence and the subsequent demand that was placed on him to produce paintings. By the early 1970s he had become a well-known painter with an expanding circle of admirers and collectors who sought his work. Furthermore, as Patricia Morley writes: “By the early 1970s Bill wanted money, more for his works of charity than for himself. Just as clearly, he wanted increased exposure, following a logic he had established ten years earlier: an audience that had been gained initially through pleasant paintings (such as this one) and books he hoped would remain to hear his serious pleas on behalf of God and man.” Of a closely related work from the same year entitled Plane Watchers at Malton, Kurelek wrote in 1973: “I use Toronto airport more and more, and appreciate the convenience of air travel. It’s by plane that I can reach the prairies for more inspiration related to my farm paintings. And from there I leave for other parts of Canada with the intention of making the whole country mine – the Arctic, the West Coast, the Maritimes. And abroad to Europe, where my roots are, to Asia where the plight of the underdeveloped people cries out for compassionate comment. Yet always at the end, the wheels of a jet touch down at Malton for me, for here is home base for me as an artist.” This work was acquired directly from the artist by the first owner on a visit to Kurelek’s Balsam Avenue studio. Kurelek had been preparing for a fall show at Isaacs Gallery, his Toronto dealer. This work was not to be included in that show and so was available to the collector who purchased it for the best of all reasons: “because I liked it”. The frame was also made by Kurelek himself.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
19
20 TAKAO TANABE LANDSCAPE IV, 1966 collage on board signed with initials and dated ‘66; also signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Vancouver, B.C.” on the cradle 24 ins x 24 ins; 61 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Godard Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $7,000–9,000
21 WILLIAM RONALD, R.C.A. STUDY FOR PRIME MINISTERS SERIES: KING-BING WING DING oil on canvas signed and dated ‘79; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 24 ins x 24 ins; 61 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Collingwood, ON $5,000–7,000
20
Canadian Fine Art Auction
22 WALTER HAWLEY YARWOOD, R.C.A. A VERY SMALL TOTEM oil on masonite signed and dated ‘58; also signed and titled on the reverse 20 ins x 24 ins; 50.8 cms x 61 cms
According to the owner, this work was originally sold by the Roberts Gallery to Canadian collectors L.T Porter and Alma Porter. They would have selected this work by Walter Yarwood (1917-1996) because of the artwork’s rich and commanding sense of colour. There is a related painting to this work entitled Yellow Totem. The totem acts as the central element in both works.
PROVENANCE:
L.T. Porter Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection $10,000–15,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
21
23 JOHN GRAHAM COUGHTRY AFTERNOON LOVERS - FOR PABLO NERUDA, 1979 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated “Aug. 79” on the reverse 72 ins x 60 ins; 182.9 cms x 152.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto LITERATURE:
Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Trans. W.S. Merwin, New York, Penguin, 2000. Joan Murray, Confessions of a Curator: Adventures in Canadian Art, Toronto, Dundurn Press, 1996. $25,000–35,000
Inspired by jazz, poetry, and Dadaism, John Graham Coughtry (1931-1999) embodied a group of Toronto artists energised in the late 1950s into the ‘60s by the potential of abstraction and free-form expression. Infamously, he declared that “every damn tree in the country has been painted” - a feeling which brought impassioned and radical developments by the artists of Isaacs Gallery - a group that included Snow, Wieland, Rayner, Burton, and others. Coughtry saw fit to return repeatedly, and perhaps unexpectedly, to the figurative: to bodies abstracted. Produced after the flurry of his early career, Afternoon Lovers sees Coughtry exploring the representative possibilities of colour and impasto. Two bodies are intertwined in a vortex of energy and splashes of colour, richly rendered on a massive scale. As is often the case in Coughtry’s works, there is a lack of distinction between figure and ground: the bodies, floating in an indeterminate space, are suffused with colour and energy until physical form is dissolved almost entirely. It is difficult to see where one body stops and another begins, both figures blurring together in a tangle of ochre and peach. Exploding outward are volcanic streaks of green and sparking flashes of blue. There is a sense of swagger or bravura in Coughtry’s style, rendering the pigments with a sensuous thickness and texture that causes the canvas to glow white-hot while giving substance to the evasive figures. Titled for Pablo Neruda, we can see how the poet’s sense of the push and pull of attraction might have inspired the painter. From ‘Leaning into the Afternoons’: ...Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes. The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you. The night gallops on its shadowy mare shedding blue tassels over the land.
22
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
23
24 JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN, R.C.A. OCRE RAFRAÎCHI PAR UN BLEU oil on canvas signed and dated “20-5-61” on the reverse 39 ins x 60 ins; 99.1 cms x 152.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto LITERATURE:
National Gallery of Canada, ‘Jean McEwen,’ https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/jeanmcewen $30,000–50,000
24
Canadian Fine Art Auction
Jean McEwen’s (1923-1999) painting insists on the significance of colour. “There are two ways to judge a painting,” he has said. “One is based on criteria and theories of art. The second is based on the sensations we get before a picture. I paint the second way.” Crucial to his practice was understanding how painting was structured by the materials used to create it. Playing with pigment, texture, and varnishes, he is able to create images that exuberantly declare their materiality while producing arresting and dreamy aesthetic effects. Ocre Rafraîchi par un Bleu demonstrates the blurring of the boundaries between form and colour explored by McEwen. The large canvas is split into two wide dark rust-coloured bands separating and bounding two mottled fields of ochre. A strong horizontal arrangement tempts us to think of this as something solid and substantial, maybe even architectural. But rather than something heavy or dense, we get a sense of permeability: a depth revealed by transparency. Threads of brilliant blue emerge, traversing just beneath the surface from the left of frame in vivid bursts before becoming effaced by layers of deeper colour to the right. The layers of paint that structure the piece surge with a subdued movement, alternating from transparency to opacity, creating a volatile sense of depth and flattened dimensionality. Unfinished edges expose blank canvas, exposing the construction of the painting as a series of layers and colours. This bifurcated organisation is one that McEwen frequently returned to as a painter. But as we can see, these compositions aren’t isolated cells - they aren’t divided, impermeable spaces. Rather, the colours drip and bleed into one another, are refreshed by each other, driven by an underlying poetic urgency.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
25
25 GORDON APPELBE SMITH, R.C.A. REFLECTIONS E, 2001 acrylic on paper signed image 22 ins x 33.25 ins; 55.9 cms x 84.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Montreal $6,000–8,000
26 GORDON APPELBE SMITH, R.C.A. REFLECTIONS I, 2002 acrylic on paper signed image 24.25 ins x 29.25 ins; 61 cms x 73.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Montreal $6,000–8,000
26
Canadian Fine Art Auction
27 SOREL ETROG, R.C.A. RUSHMAN bronze signed height 64 ins; 157.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $40,000–60,000 LITERATURE:
Ihor Holubizky (ed.), Sorel Etrog: Five Decades (catalogue), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2013, page 75 for Rushman, reproduced. Pierre Restany, Sorel Etrog, Prestel, Munich, London, New York, 2001, pages 33 and 117, page 35 for an installation shot of an exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris in 1978 featuring Rushman, and page 121 for an installation shot of Rushman, in Pistoia, Italy. Between 1972 and 1979 Sorel Etrog (1933-2014) produced his Hinges. According to the artist, these sculptures comprised two groups “Introverts” and “Extroverts”. This lot, Rushman, falls into the latter category. Etrog explains: “The Extroverts are concerned with open space and implied movement, and this was the first time I created walking figures, employing hinges as an articulation device”. Pierre Restany continues: “Like certain celebrated works by Giacometti...Etrog’s Hinge characters abandoned the frozen poses of statuary and began to walk...Piéton and Rushman are the most accomplished examples of Hinge walkers and of their dynamic morphology. Their height, the grace of their proportion, the elegance of their stance, all place these works in the front rank of contemporary culture.”
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
27
28 MARY PRATT, R.C.A. FRUIT IN THE DINING ROOM WINDOW, 1995 mixed media on paper signed and dated ‘95 sight 24.75 ins x 16.5 ins; 63.5 cms x 44.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto/Calgary Private Collection, Montreal $7,000–9,000
29 MARY PRATT, R.C.A. POMEGRANATES IN A DARK ROOM woodcut, printed in colours signed, titled, dated ‘97 and numbered 49/75 in pencil in the lower margin sight 14.25 ins x 21 ins; 36.2 cms x 53.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Vancouver $4,000–6,000
28
Canadian Fine Art Auction
30 HAROLD KLUNDER, R.C.A. SURVIVING THE PRESENT oil on board, a triptych contained in a single frame signed, titled and dated ‘09 on the reverse 49 ins x 39.75 ins; 107.3 cms x 100.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal
Harold Klunder’s (b.1943) practice arose out of the Toronto neo-expressionist school in the 1980s. In Surviving the Present, heads and legs emerge only to quickly recede. Broad, amorphous contours seem to continue across from one panel to the next, before being abruptly truncated. Arranged as a triptych, it is somewhat ambigious as to whether we are meant to understand this image as a continual narrative played out across three parts, or as an unstable repetition of the same scene. Unusually for an artist known for meticulously working and over-working his composition (a single painting can sometimes take years to finish), here the pigment is relatively sparse, and large sections of exposed, unpainted wooden chipboard gives a sense of visceral immediacy.
LITERATURE:
Gary Michael Dault, ‘Years spent on a single painting: Harold Klunder at Clint Roenisch Gallery,’ The Globe and Mail, 23 April 2005. $10,000–15,000
Whether heavily or thinly painted, Klunder’s practice is rooted in an autobiographical mode. Over the years spent in their making, the paintings, according to Clint Roenisch, “become invested with a deep, mutable, interior sense of self. His paintings are vivid evidence of his effort to give shape to consciousness itself.” Klunder continues to be an authoritative force in Canadian painting.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
29
31 MAUD LEWIS TRAFFIC JAM oil on board signed 12.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 31.8 cms x 34.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $10,000–12,000 This image was inspired by a cover illustration Oscar Cahén produced for the April 14, 1956 issue of Maclean’s magazine.
32 NORMAND HUDON LA CHUTE DE SOEUR SOPHIE acrylic on masonite signed, titled and dated ‘87 14 ins x 18 ins; 34.3 cms x 45.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Quebec $5,000–7,000
30
Canadian Fine Art Auction
33 RONALD LANGLEY BLOORE ABSTRACT PAINTING #1 oil on masonite signed and dated “Dec 60” on the reverse 48 ins x 78 ins; 121.9 cms x 198.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto EXHIBITED:
VI Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art, São Paolo, September-December 1961. LITERATURE:
Barry Lord, ‘Ron Bloore and Contemporary Art Criticism,’ Canadian Art Magazine, October 1966, pages 22-24. $20,000–30,000
Ron Bloore (1925-2009) was a member of the Regina Five, a group of abstract painters with a focus on art that reflected regional connections and experimentation rather than the production of a national style. In Abstract Painting #1, a textured white field is pierced by vertiginous black flecked with blues and greens and shocks of yellow, a wonderful clash of noise surrounded by relative calm. Produced on a massive scale, subtle changes in tonality and texture are built up with the care of a topographic map. From a distance there is an inward draw to the painting, a fissure in the ice. However, closer analysis reveals a defined resistance to three-dimensionality. The effect here is emotive but deliberately lacking in significance. “The meaning of any work of art is determined entirely by the individual experiencing it,” Bloore says: what the beholder reveals is an extension of his experience in life, “not a confirmation of what he already knows.” For Bloore, painting is given revelatory power, one that is rooted in the viewer, but demanding a dialogue between lived experience and the image.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
31
34 GUIDO MOLINARI R.C.A. STRUCTURE ASYMÉTRIQUE BLEU oil on canvas 33 ins x 26.25 ins; 83.8 cms x 66.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Jerrold Morris International Gallery Limited, Toronto Private Collection, Montreal LITERATURE:
Louise Letocha, Molinari, Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal, 1979, page 3. $35,000–50,000
Guido Molinari (1933-2004) continues to be one of Canada’s most recognisable abstract painters, with a well-defined sense of structure and colour. A subdued and characteristic example, Structure Asymétrique Bleu expertly demonstrates how Molinari’s analytical and structural compositions follow from the inheritance of Malevitch, Mondrian, and Rothko to develop a distinctly home grown language of abstraction. With a predilection for the use of pure colour, here Molinari cleverly creates a sense of subtle outward movement with a limited palette. Whereas many of his pieces are defined by their verticality and bright contrasting colours, this painting is quieter, heavier. Dark blues overlay green, and are bounded and interceded with dense black. Rather than strips of vertical colour, these are arranged as successive rectangles, mimicking the shape of the canvas. There is no bleeding between colours: the successive colours are laid against each other in hard edges. Nearly squared off and defined by darker hues, there is an almost architectural quality to the sharply-defined lines. This formalist construction doesn’t preclude a clear sense of movement, and indeed here the chromatic tensions seem to energise the painting with a vital dynamism. There is a rhythm within the asymmetric arrangement, and the closely contrasting hues seem to recede and advance in a low throb. Rippling outward from the centre and softly lurching to the edge of the frame, the structured lines are bound within the canvas, but sustaining the vibrating energy of a ripple on a deep lake, or the pulse of a shadow passing over a window. The painting retains a self-assured existentialism. As Louise Letocha writes, Molinari’s experiments in abstraction “freed the canvas of any possible reference to nature and secured for the painted surface its own reality.” Compelled by the subtle lateral movements and solid chromatic definition, Structure Asymétrique Bleu amplifies the flatness of the canvas, until it radiates a contemplative energy - both expansive and absorptive.
32
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
33
35 NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU, R.C.A. SELF PORTRAIT IN ASTRAL FORM (CAUSE AND EFFECT) oil on canvas signed with syllabics; titled on the reverse 60.75 ins x 50.75 ins; 154.3 cms x 128.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Stouffville, ON $50,000–70,000
Copper Thunderbird (1931 – 2007) was born Norval Morrisseau on Sandy Point Reserve, Ontario. Founder of the Woodland School of Art and a prominent member of the Professional Native Artists Inc. (PNAI) he is considered the Mishomis (grandfather) of contemporary Indigenous Art in Canada. In this painting, Copper Thunderbird/Norval Morrisseau stands alert, eyes wide open. Concentric rings of chroma surround his body and mirror his pupils. He is looking into an astral plane and letting the vision run through him. To him, astral planes contained the spirits that guided him through his creation. Spirituality was integral to Thunderbird’s understanding of himself. He was raised by his Ojibwe grandfather and Catholic mother and as an adult, embraced Eckankar beliefs. Each belief system informed the material of his work – however, he defined himself as his own master, and found a voice that only he could claim. Cause and Effect describes the artist’s relationship to the spirit world: Thunderbird paints himself in astral form, wherein he embodies the very energies that incite him to paint. The effect is this wonderful vision. Blue, a color he aligned with spiritual guardians, fills the painting, as blood red and earthy greens ground his body. Yellow is especially bright in this environment. Thunderbird’s hands and the top of his headdress curl towards the sphere before his face. As Morrisseau gained notoriety, his identity as Indigenous and as an artist were pegged against each other by the racism of the day, however, the outstanding quality of his work fought against systemic racist stereotypes, which had hitherto categorized Indigenous artwork as souvenirs and artifact. Morrisseau made it his role to educate Canadians about Indigenous art and culture, whilst supporting the artistic development of indigenous emerging artists.
34
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
35
36 LÉON BELLEFLEUR, R.C.A. MASCARADE oil on canvas signed and dated 1951 16.75 ins x 15.25 ins; 25.4 cms x 17.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Newfoundland LITERATURE:
Guy Robert, Bellefleur: The Fervour of the Quest, Iconia, Montreal, 1988, page 9. $10,000–15,000
36
Canadian Fine Art Auction
Leon Bellefleur (1910-2007) believed “the most important thing is not what we see, but what we imagine.” To him, the conscious and subconscious could intermingle in limitless ways. Bellefleur moved freely between ideologies and his interest in Surrealism, esoterism, and poetry inform his distinct style. In Mascarade we enter a world of dream-logic. Long, swooping lines of teal and green lead us through Bellefleur’s inner world. A swath of yellow becomes a body to a smiling creature, long lanky black strokes the eyelashes or sharp teeth. The cool tones in the painting hold mystery; upon closer exmination, wonderful details are observable, pointing to further associations. Motifs ebb and flow. A red backdrop is the curtain to a dance of illusions.
37 MARION NICOLL GUAYCURAI - RED ROCK, BLACK ROCK oil on canvas signed and dated ‘66; also signed, titled and dated ‘66 on the reverse 40 ins x 50 ins; 101.6 cms x 127 cms PROVENANCE:
Estate of Alison Hymas, Toronto $10,000–15,000
Marion Nicoll (1909-1985) was born in Alberta and became one of the first abstract painters in that region. In 1957, she visited Regina. 1950’s Saskatchewan was a stimulating place for modern artists. Here Nicoll learned to merge her interest in landscape with the language of abstraction. In Red Rock, Black Rock all detail is simplified to chroma pushing against an edge. Marion Nicoll has rendered a wonderfully unstable field. Two white beams lift the black rock to slide off the edge of the larger, energetic red rock. None of the edges in the painting are perfectly straight, yet all are hard. Nicoll demonstrates a mastery of meeting the geometric with the organic. The rocks relate but do not align. Nicoll has captured the paradoxically restless nature of rock formations: always shifting, forming new configurations, slowly advancing and receding, moving to some place undefined.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
37
38 MARY PRATT, R.C.A. TWO WORKS: B.C. DELICIOUS AND PEACHES IN A PLASTIC POT woodcuts, printed in colours the first signed, titled, dated ‘94 and numbered 51/75 in pencil in the lower margin, the second signed, titled, dated ‘95 and numbered 22/75 in pencil in the lower margin sheet 16.5 ins x 23.75 ins; 41.9 cms x 60.3 cms; 16.5 ins x 23.75 ins; 41.9 cms x 60.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver $7,000–9,000
38
Canadian Fine Art Auction
39 “For me, process is more important than content,” Tom Hodgson (1924-2006) has said. “In fact, the process of painting is the subject M8, 1960 of the painting.” A long career of experimental and varied practice oil on canvas produced a body of work that ranged from drawing to collage, signed and dated 1960; also signed, titled and figuration to landscape. Most evocative was his expressionist dated on the stretcher painting, utilising bold gestures done in bright palettes to push 35 ins x 55 ins; 88.9 cms x 139.7 cms the limits between material and form. We can readily feel this experimental energy in M8, with a canvas that has been PROVENANCE: abundantly overlaid with forceful scripts of colour. Produced Private Collection, Stouffville, ON around the time of the dissolution of Painters Eleven, this is a fine LITERATURE: example of how Hodgson continued to explore the evocative Iris Nowell, Painters Eleven: The Wild Ones of possibilities of Abstract Expressionism. Canadian Art, Douglas & McIntyre, Toronto, 2011, page 8. Streaming brushstrokes flit around the canvas, accumulating in tangled knots before spinning off in frantic streaks. A mass of deep $12,000–18,000 red gives way to bands of yellow and pink, burnished greens give way to a ray of icy verdigris. The most conspicuous of these are several sweeping lines of white, which seem to have been applied in a relatively careful calligraphy. For Hodgson, the importance of painting lays in its process, and its ability to directly capture the intensity of expression. The wet drips, hurried scrapes, and skittering brush marks that cover the canvas are self-assured documents of the artist’s energetic movements. THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON, R.C.A.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
39
40 DORIS JEAN MCCARTHY, O.S.A., R.C.A. ROME (CATHEDRAL) oil on masonite signed 30 ins x 48 ins; 76.2 cms x 120.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Art Dialogue Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto LITERATURE:
William Moore, “Heart of Vision” in Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, 1999, page 193 and pages 106-107 for other works depicting related subjects and executed in Italy, reproduced in colour. $12,000–18,000
40
Canadian Fine Art Auction
This work likely dates to 1962. Doris McCarthy (1910-2010) visited Italy just after Christmas that year, staying in Rome for a brief period. The subject, palette and handling here is consistent with her work from this date. William Moore writes that like many painters of the fifties and sixties, McCarthy “flirted” with abstraction, in her case through a simplification or reduction of forms. However, fundamentally she remained “wedded to the interpretation of the landscape” or as seen here, cityscape.
41 LISE GERVAIS D’UN POLE À L’AUTRE, 1965 oil on canvas signed and dated /65 32 ins x 43 ins; 81.3 cms x 109.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Sale of Art, The Women’s Committee of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Private Collection, Collingwood, ON $20,000–30,000
Though not a signatory to the Automatistes’ manifesto — Lise Gervais (1933-1998) was only 15 years old when Paul-Émile Borduas published the Refus Global manifesto in 1948 — her practice is deeply influenced by their ideals of free expression and artistic independence. The title of this work, D’Un Pole à l’Autre — From One Pole to Another — suggests that this movement is progressive or rhythmic, a stitch between two extremes or the pull of a magnetic attraction. Indeed, the work is fluidly rendered, comprised of widely textured marks of flat colour in a constrained palette of bold reds and interspersed with black - colours which Gervais would often return to. However, the clear divisions of colour are uneasy, and there is a softening of boundaries. Dominating the left of the image, a large void seems to disrupt the relative ease of the red ground by shooting across the frame. Scattered and diffuse, the turbulent disruption causes reds and blacks to push against each other in a splash of motion. There is no cold geometry here; only lyric sensation and brash energy, among the best of post-automatiste painting. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
41
42 DAVID BROWN MILNE WHITE SUGAR BUSH, 1935 oil on canvas signed and dated 1935 12.25 ins x 16.25 ins; 31.1 cms x 41.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Collection of Hon. Vincent Massey, Port Hope, ON (from David Milne, 1935) Laing Galleries, Toronto (1958) Dr. and Mrs. Harold M. Tovell, Bronxville, N.Y. (1959) Kaspar Gallery, Toronto (ca. 1985) Private Collection, Toronto $25,000–35,000 LITERATURE:
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 19291953, Toronto, 1998, page 598, and page 600, no.304.16, reproduced. Ian Thom (ed.), David Milne, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1991, page 153, plate 101 for a related 1935 canvas entitled Sugar Bush in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. 42
Canadian Fine Art Auction
According to David Silcox, this work is “especially close in subject to David Milne’s drawings of the ‘interrupted vision motif’,” explained by Milne in a letter to Alice and Vincent Massey (August 20, 1934): “The most interesting series of motives I have ever used were developed in what might be called interrupted vision pictures. The motive comes from the simplest and most common of occurrences. The novice photographer sidesteps and advances and retreats until he has a clear view of his subject, then snaps it. The result is often disappointing. The reason may be that he had left out, what, unnoticed gave the subject interest. He may have been standing in a sugar bush, interested in the bare ground with snow patches, the big sugar trees and little saplings, the figures and the sap buckets, but may have failed to notice the tree trunk at his side, cutting off part of his vision, or the branch in front of his face. Both were within his field of vision, though out of focus; and both had their effect; without them we miss the tantalizing mystery of the original view...Here is an opportunity for the painter... He can get a kick out of this interrupted vision, and can reproduce his thrill on canvas for those capable of receiving it.”
43 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. MARCH IN THE BIRCH WOODS tempera An inscription by the artist in pencil on the reverse reads: “Clarence Gagnon, March in the Birch Woods, adapted by A.Y. Jackson. Owned by Art Gallery of Toronto.” 30 ins x 40 ins; 76.2 cms x 101.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $20,000–30,000
This work was inspired by Clarence Gagnon’s canvas March in the Birch Woods painted in 1919, widely exhibited and now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario (a gift of the C.N.E. Association in 1965). A.Y. Jackson met Clarence Gagnon in 1899 when both men began taking classes at the Art Association of Montreal. When Jackson was in France with his brother Harry about a decade later, one of the first people he looked up was his old friend, Gagnon. The two painters kept up a lively correspondence over the ensuing decades and Jackson often visited Gagnon in Baie St. Paul. Why Jackson decided to use Gagnon’s painting as inspiration for this work is not known but perhaps it was commissioned by the mill whose name is inscribed in pencil on the reverse. Jackson did take commissions for book illustrations (like Gagnon) and from commercial enterprises (see lot 63) so this may have been the case here. Regardless, it is a beautiful example of Jackson’s adeptness with a somewhat uncooperative medium.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
43
44 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. ELIZABETH STREET, TORONTO oil on canvas signed; with the estate stamp on the reverse 30 ins x 36 ins; 73.7 cms x 88.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Estate of the artist Private Collection, Toronto EXHIBITED:
61st Annual OSA Exhibition, Ontario Society of Artists, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1933. LITERATURE:
Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work, Firefly Books, Richmond Hill 2018, pages 25, 28, 135, 208, page 189, for a detail of this lot, reproduced in colour, as the frontispiece for Chapter 5: Toronto, page 214 for the closely related watercolour of Elizabeth Street, 1930-31 on which this canvas is based, reproduced in colour, page 217 for a discussion of this work, and page 220, for this lot reproduced in colour. Charles C. Hill, The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1995, page 169. $40,000–60,000
Remarkably, it is only quite recently that the work of Peter Clapham Sheppard (1882-1965) has attracted significant interest of a broader group of serious collectors of important Canadian Art. The reason for this is typically ascribed to the massive shadow cast by his contemporaries, the Group of Seven, who for decades were considered Canada’s greatest fine art innovators, founders of our nationalist school of painting. However, that notion was being challenged even as it was being formulated. When F.B. Housser’s book A Canadian Art Movement was published in 1926, artist W.J. Phillips responded by explaining: “(The Group of Seven) have had a great deal of advertisement, but it generally has been at the expense of other painters… “Those of the Seven that I know intimately do not regard their works as the absolute perfection…The comparatives, exaggerated eulogisms, and drastic condemnations (of other art) comes from the less enlightened layman who considers himself a critic”. Nonetheless, the unintended, decades-long consequence of the mythologizing of the Group was that other talented Canadian artists in Ontario and beyond were overshadowed, leaving a dramatic gap in the scholarship. More recently the space taken up by the Group has ceded some territory to new scholarship whose aim it is to examine those artists – those working outside the major city centres, women artists and First Nations art makers - who were perhaps within the Group’s orbit but who had essentially been relegated to the B team. P.C. Sheppard is now the subject of a major monograph by respected writer, curator and art historian, Tom Smart, whose book on Sheppard was released this fall. Smart argues that artists such as Sheppard “through no fault of their own, and not through the quality of their art, drifted from public consciousness and were forgotten.” Smart’s new publication is an attempt to redress this. The group of Toronto Ward paintings produced by Sheppard, of which this lot is one of his finest, were executed at the beginning of the 1930s. Sheppard had painted the cities of Montreal and New York a few years earlier. Upon returning to Toronto, he turned his eye to a relatively poor neighbourhood rich in subject matter that had also attracted Lawren Harris who himself had immortalized the subject. Like Harris, Sheppard sought to capture the Ward’s “gritty working class streets (particularly Louisa and Elizabeth Streets), alleys, houses and shacks as portraits of resilient survival in places defined by transition and impoverishment.” Smart notes that Sheppard’s composition of Elizabeth Street: “juxtaposes the domestic and commercial nature of the subject... the row of hardscrabble houses and businesses cobbled together, weighted down by the heavy burden of snowfall as well as by
44
Canadian Fine Art Auction
the looming towers of the commercial district beyond.” In the distance, Sheppard incorporates a newly minted skyline featuring the “looming” outline of the fifteen storey, beaux-arts style beauty, the Canada Life Building, whose construction started in 1929 and was completed in 1931. Smart notes that the composition of Elizabeth Street uses a device that Sheppard established while painting in New York. “The composition divides the format horizontally in two ranks: above the divide is an anonymous cityscape of towering commercial buildings and skyscrapers, while below is the urban hurly-burly of boisterous activity, horse and carriage traffic and pedestrians.” Smart further notes that “contrasts abound in the painting between the natural and the built: the
human-scaled houses and the gargantuan commercial buildings; snow and stone; geometric and lyrical lines.” Smart also maintains that it is large format paintings, such as this lot, “that give wider fields for Sheppard to display his talent and imagination as he interpreted the rapid industrial and social growth” of cities like Toronto. The result is that Elizabeth Street is a tour de force of expression, making great use of an array of colour (mauve, violet, plum, alabaster, almond, oyster, ruby, crimson, scarlett, canary, amber, teal) and brushstroke. Copies of Tom Smart’s new publication, “Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work”, are available for purchase from Waddington’s during our auction preview and sale.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
45
45 MAURICE GALBRAITH CULLEN, R.C.A. EVENING - THE CACHE RIVER pastel signed; with Cullen Inventory no.1250 24 ins x 32 ins; 61 cms x 81.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Continental Galleries of Fine Art, Montreal Private Collection, Quebec LITERATURE:
Sylvia Antoniou, Maurice Cullen, Queen’s University, Kingston, 1982, pages 26 and 30. $15,000–18,000
46
Canadian Fine Art Auction
Sylvia Antoniou and others would rightly count the paintings of Maurice Cullen (1866-1934) among the masterpieces of Canadian art. Similarly, his works in pastel exemplify his great, if sometimes under-appreciated, talent. In the Spring / Summer of 1903, Cullen began exhibiting works in this medium for the first time and continued to do so thereafter throughout his long career. Antoniou notes,“he loved its expressive quality” and according to her, “His dealer, William Watson praised the resulting drawings highly.” Quoting Watson, she writes: “Many of his most beautiful Laurentian scenes are executed in this medium. Here he has revealed the poetry of the woodland and stream. Should Cullen wish to tell of this, he will invariably do so through the medium of pastel.”
46 FREDERICK NICHOLAS LOVEROFF, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. TRACKS AND CANALS oil on canvas signed 34.25 ins x 38.5 ins; 86.4 cms x 96.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Vancouver $18,000–22,000
Paintings by Frederick Loveroff (1894-1959) do not appear on the market frequently enough to satisfy demand, particularly the larger canvases like this lot. Loveroff’s career spanned just slightly over fifteen years, then abruptly stopped short. While his paintings of Toronto and environs are familiar to many, this grand work is not a Toronto subject but rather likely depicts Cleveland, where the artist spent a considerable amount of time visiting his wife who worked there while he was still living in Toronto. Regardless of the specificity of locale, the subject has much in common with the gritty urban scenes other artists - American, John Sloan, or Lawren Harris and Peter Sheppard - were also doing at this time.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
47
47 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. MORNING LIGHT - LAKE BAPTISTE oil on board signed 12 ins x 15 ins; 30.5 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Roberts Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Ontario $20,000–30,000
48
Canadian Fine Art Auction
48 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. KINTAIL, 1968 oil on board signed; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 9.25 ins x 11.25 ins; 23.5 cms x 28.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $20,000–30,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
49
49 LAWREN STEWART HARRIS WATERTOWER, CIRCA 1919 oil on panel inscribed “On Algoma Central Railroad Box Car Trip” 10.5 ins x 14 ins; 26.7 cms x 35.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Ontario $125,000–175,000 LITERATURE
A.Y. Jackson, “Lawren Harris Autobiographical Sketch” in Lawren Harris: Paintings, 19101948 (catalogue), Art Gallery of Toronto, 1948, pages 8 and 10.
This lot depicts a water tower on the siding of the Algoma Central Railway during one of the infamous “box car” trips which Lawren Harris (1885-1970) arranged for his painting friends. In the literature of the Group of Seven, particularly the scholarship produced in the early years, one often reads that Algoma was “MacDonald Country”, or that Algoma unsettled Harris, or how Harris struggled with rendering the dense vegetation of the area. It is easy to conclude that the best decision Harris made was to push north to Lake Superior where he would discover the truth of the relationship between subject and meaning. Yet this is a somewhat oversimplified trope, perhaps developed in part to help laymen differentiate between members of the new school of artists that was then emerging. Regional assignments and supposed preferences served a kind of Sykes-Picot arrangement for the Group, carving up Canadian “terroirs” and determining who got what: Algoma was MacDonald’s, Harris won Lake Superior and the Arctic, Quebec belonged to Jackson, Varley covered B.C. and Lismer was awarded the Maritimes. Yet it is during the first “box car” trips to Algoma, that so much of the thinking that coalesced “the group” into “The Group” actually occurred. (The first Group Show, held in 1920, took place after the first box car trip). Since Harris was critical to the formation of the group, so the Algoma experience was critical to Harris. Time spent together with MacCallum, MacDonald, Lismer, Jackson and Johnston generated a nexus of ideas. Of the box car trips, Jackson writes: “There were lively interchanges of opinion. There was the stimulus of comparison and frank discussions on aims and ideals and technical problems which resulted in various experiments...” He continues “In the boxcar with the stove to keep us warm, the discussions and arguments resumed on Whitman, Mary Baker Eddy, Madame Blavatsky, Cezanne and Van Gogh until late in the night.” Thus, despite Harris’s apparent struggles with the terrain, he seems most assuredly to have benefitted from the camaraderie of trips and eventually understood the region well enough to produce masterful work, whether or not it was ultimately his preferred locale. While this work does not depict the lush, dense and chromatic vegetation, rocky outcrops or lakes of, say, Batchewana, it does serve a higher purpose beyond the anecdotal. Here the water tower captured on the second box car trip (ca.1919) stands like a sentinel, foreshadowing other lone and imposing motifs Harris would favour in the coming years: the lighthouse at Father Point (ca.1920), an old stump (ca.1926), an isolated peak in the Rockies (ca.1930), a Davis Strait iceberg (1930), a floating triangle (ca.1937). In this painting we have a hint to the direction in which Harris is headed and which perhaps, at this time, he himself was still unaware of. Like Blaise Pascal, who famously wrote: “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter”, Harris ultimately sought increasingly to render the essence of the idea. Knowing what we know about how this story ends, Watertower strikes us as unusually prescient.
50
Canadian Fine Art Auction
VERSO
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
51
50 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. LOWER ST. LAWRENCE, APRIL (NEAR BIC, QUE.) oil on panel signed; also signed, titled and inscribed “Studio Bldg., Severn St., Toronto” 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Bernard Desroches Inc., Montreal Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $20,000–25,000 LITERATURE:
Naomi Jackson Groves, A.Y.’s Canada, Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, Toronto/Vancouver, 1968, page 40. 52
Canadian Fine Art Auction
A.Y. Jackson declared “I’m never happier than when I’m sketching down the south bank of the St. Lawrence.” Jackson’s annual itinerary of painting trips invariably included a stop during March and April along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. At this time of year, the snow still lay heavy on the ground, but the sun warmed the land for a few minutes longer each day. This sketch captures a late afternoon view near the village of Bic. The artist records a gorgeous moment with sparkling golden yellows on the river and deep periwinkle blues in the shadows of the snow. One can imagine the warming spring sun bouncing off the water at the end of a pleasingly productive day of painting.
51 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. ST. TITE DES CAPS oil on panel signed; also signed, titled and dated “March 1946” on the reverse 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
In his autobiography, A.Y. Jackson reminisced about St. Tite des Caps, the subject of this charming oil sketch, and one of the places he loved to paint: “It was not one of the old villages, but it lay in a hollow encircled by hills, and we could look down on it from several directions. The snow lingered there when it had gone in most other places.” There are many villages which we associate with the finest of Jackson’s oil paintings: St. Fidèle, Bic, Ste. Irénée, yet undoubtedly St. Tite des Caps is among his most beloved.
Private Collection, Toronto $25,000–35,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
53
52 LAWREN STEWART HARRIS MORNING SUN, PORT MUNROE oil on board signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 10.75 ins x 14 ins; 27.3 cms x 35.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $200,000–300,000 LITERATURE: Ian M. Tom, “Lawren Stewart Harris: A Canadian Painter” in Andrew Hunter, Lawren Stewart Harris: A Painter’s Progress, The Americas Society, New York, 2000, pages 21 and 32. Dennis Reid, The Group of Seven (catalogue), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1970, page 180.
54
Canadian Fine Art Auction
Lawren Harris’s first trip to Algoma in May 1918 occurred soon after he was discharged from service, and following the death of his brother, Howard. His friend, Dr. MacCallum, suggested the trip as an antidote to the depression from which Harris was suffering, a symptom of PTSD. Harris traveled to Algoma many times beginning with that first trip with MacCallum in 1918, then several more times in the company of MacCallum. JEH MacDonald, Johnston, Jackson, Lismer and others, in a specially kitted out box car that he had arranged to use as their accommodation and transportation. In 1921, after visiting Algoma, Jackson and Harris decided to push on to the north shore. Ian Thom notes: “the greater visual openness and spatial freedom appealed to Harris, and he added this site to his repertoire.” The experience was pivotal; Harris began to redirect, resulting eventually in some of his most enduring images, such as North Shore, Lake Superior, 1926 or the Pic Island subjects. The interim works produced during the initial phase of this watershed moment, works like this lot, are themselves extremely poetic and are important records of the swerve Harris made away from Algoma and towards Lake Superior. Dennis Reid provides us with a clear understanding of where Morning Sun fits in the chronology. Reid writes that in 1922 “Harris and Jackson went again to the north shore, camping at Coldwell during the first week of October. They stayed only about a week. In 1923, Harris, Jackson and, apparently, Lismer, went back to the Coldwell area for almost a month. They camped for a while at Port Munroe ...leaving for Toronto on or about 20 October.” Like a page poised to turn before the plot twist is fully revealed, or the fall of a curtain at the entr’acte, Morning Sun, Port Munroe punctuates a critical and exciting moment in the story of Lawren Harris’s progress – the transition between Algoma and Lake Superior which this painting reflects quite literally. The foreground is rich with the lush and densely packed vegetation associated with Algoma; the background softened to a dreamy suggestion of barren floating islands; the middle ground a space to forge – a lake that bridges, or interrupts, the distant goal, a lake in which we will either sink or swim. Increasingly, works after this point would become increasingly stylized. Thom acknowledges Harris’s interest in the spiritual in art. Speaking of the northern paintings, he writes: “By his reduction of incidental detail (clearly, there is more than atmospheric perspective at work in Morning Sun), the purification of his palette and tonal range, and more importantly, the use of light in these images, Harris began to move his art away from landscape and toward a more spiritually oriented painting. Morning Sun serves as a poignant example of Harris’s early consideration of this move towards a new emphasis on the spiritual.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
55
53 ALBERT HENRY ROBINSON, R.C.A. SPRINGTIME IN THE HILLS, 1927 oil on canvas signed and dated 22 ins x 26 ins; 55.9 cms x 66 cms PROVENANCE:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto EXHIBITED:
45th Spring Exhibition, Art Association of Montreal, Montreal, 1928. LITERATURE:
A.K. Prakash, Canadian Art: Selected Masters from Private Collections, Vincent Fortier Publishing, Ottawa, 2003, pages 131, 132 and 134. $80,000–120,000
56
Canadian Fine Art Auction
A.K. Prakash positions Albert Henry Robinson (1881-1956) as Canada’s foremost master of colour. Prakash writes: “Painted with a preference for high key, Robinson’s art has a harmony of colour and design rarely found in the work of other artists of his generation.” A Hamilton native, Robinson studied overseas at the Académie Julian like many of his Canadian confrères. He then settled in Montreal where he met Maurice Cullen and Suzor-Coté, and befriended A.Y. Jackson, Holgate, Gagnon and Pilot. Prakash contends that the artist’s paintings of Quebec “are crucial to the understanding of Robinson’s contribution to Canadian art.” He continues: “Created over a period of less than two decades, they show a tension between the intellect and the senses, creating effects that were seldom achieved by any other Canadian painter at the time.” Throughout the 1920s, Robinson often travelled to the lower St. Lawrence to paint, sometimes in the company of his good friend, Père Raquette (A.Y. Jackson), with whom he often bunked in local pensions or as the paying guests of local village people, where they became minor celebrities. Robinson was an excellent companion, having a knack for mimicry and a penchant for the piano. He and Jackson visited Cacouna, Baie St. Paul, La Malbaie, Les Éboulements, St. Fidèle, St. Tite des Caps, Bienville and other picturesque villages. This painting is ambiguously titled Springtime in the Hills on a 1928 Art Association of Montreal exhibition label, leaving us to guess which village inspired the scene. However, Robinson is recorded as having exhibited three Malbaie subjects that year by which we may conclude that this is likely a Malbaie subject.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
57
54 Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) loved to paint La Cloche, Ontario, located at the northeast end of Lake Huron. It UNTITLED - LA CLOCHE STORMY SKY, 1935 would become associated with him in the same way watercolour Algoma was associated with J.E.H. MacDonald, Lake 11.25 ins x 13.25 ins; 28.6 cms x 33.7 cms Superior with Harris, the lower St. Lawrence with Jackson. Many would argue that it is in watercolour that Carmichael PROVENANCE: excels above his peers, with perhaps only his one-time Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto prodigy, A.J.Casson, in a position to challenge him in this Private Collection, Toronto medium. In this lot, we see Carmichael masterfully handling the graduations between light and shadow for which he $60,000–80,000 has become so well-known. FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL, O.S.A., R.C.A.
58
Canadian Fine Art Auction
55 FRANK HANS JOHNSTON, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. AN OPEN WINTER oil on masonite signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 20 ins x 24 ins; 50.2 cms x 60.3 cms
In this composition sunlight is introduced to the picture from the right side, striking warmly on the snow and a lone tree trunk. Beyond the trees, Franz Johnston (1888-1949) has painted a soft line of turquoise to indicate a large expanse of open water. For many years Johnston painted on the eastern side of Georgian Bay, from his home base in Wyebridge where he lived full time from 1940-48.
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Bolton, ON $15,000–18,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
59
56 LAWREN STEWART HARRIS HOUSES UNDER CONSTRUCTION oil on board signed 10 ins x 13.75 ins; 25.4 cms x 34.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Austin Seton Thompson, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto (by descent) EXHIBITED:
Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906-1930, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Jan.14-Feb.26, 1978, cat.no.44. $350,000–500,000 LITERATURE:
James King, Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris, Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, 2012, page 116. David Silcox, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, 2003, pages 125-126. Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1978, pages 69-70 and page 70 reproduced. Dennis Reid, The Group of Seven (catalogue), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1970, pages 147 and 178. A.Y. Jackson, “Lawren Harris Autobiographical Sketch” in Lawren Harris: Paintings, 1910-1948 (catalogue), Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, 1948, page 10. Sydney Key, “The Paintings” in Lawren Harris: Paintings, 1910-1948 (catalogue), Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, 1948, pages 29-30.
60
Canadian Fine Art Auction
David Silcox notes that Toronto, not the wilderness, was the place in which the Group of Seven spent most of their time together. He contends that the Group really was a Toronto regional school and the city was their centre and their place of work. Given this, it is somewhat surprising that works like this one by Lawren Harris, or other urban subjects, such as sketches for Tracks and Traffic by JEH MacDonald, should appear on the market so infrequently. Indeed, Toronto was home and accessible and though the city was not “inherently beautiful” as Silcox himself concedes, it was nonetheless attractive to this group of painters. The fact remains, however, that while the interest was there, the works are small in number. For example, Jeremy Adamson notes only four known urban sketches executed by Harris in 1916, the year this work was painted. Lawren Harris began his house portraits around 1909 and according to Dennis Reid continued producing or, at least exhibiting them, until 1930. Houses Under Construction was painted around 1916. Reid notes: “This was for Harris a time of radical experimentation with hot “fauve” colouring and the working out of a planar compositional scheme.” The hot colours used by Harris were not meant to be solely descriptive but rather expressive and suggestive of mood. In Houses Under Construction, Harris loads up his brush with pink, raspberry, melon, gold and azure and unabashedly drags horizontal strokes to construct the painting, echoing the worker in blue who is also seen building the house plank by plank. While many of Harris’s house portraits depict decrepit, even shambolic structures, here Harris renders a new beginning, a happy counterpoint to other known versions whose maintenance has quite clearly been deferred or neglected. James King notes that some of the houses Harris chose seemed “penetrated by a kind of blight or mange that is eating away at them” but that the earlier pictures (like this lot) “depict the handsome solidity of workers homes”. By implication Harris indulges in a hopefulness, suggesting house-pride and even a sense of community. While Harris house paintings have been viewed as social commentary (his choice of certain neighborhoods like The Ward was considered a dubious one given the make-up of its habitants – mostly a poor immigrant population), the late Russell Harper felt this applied more so to Harris’s later Halifax house paintings (ca.1922), arguing that the Toronto houses were primarily pure painting; the Halifax works overtly social commentary.
We do not know where or what street is represented in this lot. As King notes: “The houses, buildings and shacks painted by Harris come from various sections of Toronto. Some are on the outskirts of the city – some are in the part of the inner city where immigrants from (the U.K) settled.” Fundamentally, the address is of little importance. What matters is that works like Houses Under Construction demonstrate what Sydney Key describes as a breakthough early on in Harris’s career after returning to Canada from Berlin. Key writes: Harris’s “brush
moved with sureness of direction, arranging full loads of pigment in intricate patterns. Its understanding of flat decorative composition and capacity to suggest mood rather than tell a story and merely describe a scene would probably have made the painter welcome for an evening…of discussion with Bonnard, Vuillard, Maurice Denis and other Nabis….” Key contends that while Harris experimented with other techniques and subjects at this time “the main advances, however, were in the house paintings in which the results of these experiments were incorporated.”
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
61
57 NORA FRANCES ELISABETH COLLYER HOUSE, MAGOG - BACK ROAD TO ORFORD oil on panel signed and dated /62; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 12 ins x 14 ins; 30.5 cms x 35.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal $5,000–7,000
58 BRUNO JOSEPH BOBAK, R.C.A. ST. JOHN IN SUMMER oil on canvas signed; titled on the reverse 30 ins x 40 ins; 76.2 cms x 101.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $5,000–7,000
62
Canadian Fine Art Auction
59 FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL, O.S.A., R.C.A. SNOWY HILLSIDE oil on panel with estate stamp; an oil sketch of a shoreline, with estate stamp, on the reverse 6 ins x 8.25 ins; 15.2 cms x 21 cms PROVENANCE:
Estate of the artist Private Collection (by descent) Private Collection, British Columbia Private Collection, Toronto $25,000–30,000 In this early painting, Franklin Carmichael (1980-1945) weaves together a blanket of greens, burnt sienna and white. Indigo lines become trees that link the clear blue sky to the warm crest of land below. The snow melts away and, in its pooling and puddling, reveals the promise of a new season.
60 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A RUE STE-HÉLÈNE oil on canvas signed; also signed, titled and dated ‘06 on the stretcher 12 ins x 18 ins; 30.5 cms x 45.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $7,000–9,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
63
61 FREDERICK GRANT BANTING COTTAGE IN A WOODED LANDSCAPE oil on panel signed 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
62 JACK HAMILTON BUSH, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. MARCH SNOW, HOGG’S HOLLOW, MARCH 1947 watercolour on toned paper signed, titled and dated on the reverse 13 ins x 24.75 ins; 33 cms x 62.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $4,000–6,000
64
Canadian Fine Art Auction
63 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. MOUNT PELEE, LATER MOUNT FITZWILLIAM, 1914 oil on panel signed; also signed, titled, dated 1914 and inscribed “25 Severn St., Toronto” on the reverse 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Walter Klinkhoff Galerie Inc., Montreal Waddington Galleries, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
On his 1914 trip to the Rockies for Canadian Northern Railways (see lot 12), Jackson created this sketch of Mount Fitzwilliam from the vantage point of his camp in the Yellowhead Pass. Sketches from this trip are very rare, because Jackson, unsatisfied with much of the work he produced on that trip, is reputed to have destroyed most of it by tossing his sketches into the furnace at the Studio Building at 25 Severn Street in Toronto. In a letter written by A.Y. Jackson on February 28th, 1960, he states “In 1914 I made my first trip west for the Canadian Northern Railways…I went with J.W. Beatty; no definite commission…They were to have first rights on any work we did. As you know they went bankrupt during the first war so none of our work was used…I found this and some other sketches in a box in the basement of my sister-in-law’s house. They had been lost for thirty years.”
$20,000–25,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
65
64 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. FARM, RENFREW, ONT. MARCH 1958 oil on panel signed; titled and dated on the reverse 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Toronto LITERATURE:
Wayne Larsen, A.Y. Jackson: The Life of the Landscape Painter, Toronto, 2009, page 191. $12,000–15,000
66
Canadian Fine Art Auction
For many years, March was the month A.Y. Jackson would venture to the lower St. Lawrence to paint the snowy hills and quaint villages of this region. By the late 1940’s, however, progress had changed the area. He wrote in 1946, “We are going modern – snowmobiles all over the place; new houses, and the old ones done over in tin, imitation brick, and other artist-proof abominations.” As Jackson ventured over the hills in Ontario a decade later, he must have appreciated this grouping of old buildings, unadorned and holding steady against the elements. The focus of this painting is the group of wooden structures sitting atop a hill, a distant ridge rolling up into the frame, and stretching out to the horizon. The depiction of the snow gives a sense of the direction of the prevailing winds; the wooden shacks have made it through another winter, unchanged.
65
LAWREN STEWART HARRIS MOUNTAIN SKETCH (MOUNTAINS, JASPER) oil on panel signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $80,000–120,000 LITERATURE:
Catharine M. Mastin et al., The Group of Seven in Western Canada, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 2002, pages 38-39, and 44. A.Y. Jackson, “Lawren Harris Autobiographical Sketch” in Lawren Harris: Paintings, 1910-1948 (catalogue), Art Gallery of Toronto, 1948, page 11.
In 1924, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson travelled together to the Rockies. It was the first of five summers Harris would spend painting there that decade; he would return again between 1940 and 1957. Catharine M. Mastin notes that Harris’s mountain paintings “became increasingly abstract, spiritual and less concerned about topographical detail” in contrast to much of Jackson’s Rockies subjects(see lots 12 and 63) which were easily identifiable as actual places. Jackson himself noted that Harris’s works were “based on nature but not at all constrained by reality.” This lot, like many of his mountain pictures, has not been dated by Harris and is simply titled Mountain Sketch, although he does locate it in Jasper. Like other works of this subject and period, the composition follows a consistent format: a viewpoint that emphasizes the height of the mountain, foreground and sky that each occupy one third of the composition and the mountain form dominating the centre: impenentrable, wide-shouldered, full frontal. As Dr. Mastin further notes, unlike the panoramas of the earlier northern Ontario pictures, in the mountain pictures “We are invited to stand at the top of the world, where forms are reduced to abstraction, color to near monochrome and no vegetation remains to block our view of the distances.” Ultimately, she contends, “the mountain art paved the way for his abstractions and is the most striking of his generation. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
67
66 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF STREAM ON NORTH SHORE BELOW QUEBEC oil on canvas signed, dated 1867 and titled under the mat diameter 15 ins; 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Laing Galleries, Toronto Kaspar Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto LITERATURE:
J. Russell Harper, Krieghoff, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 1999, page 153. Dennis Reid, Krieghoff: Images of Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 1999, page 145 for Winter Scene in the Laurentians - The Laval River, 1867, reproduced in colour.
It was not unusual for Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872) to repeat subjects that were popluar among his patrons (see lot 69). Marius Barbeau identifies six versions of the subject depicted in this lot only two of which, however, are formatted as rondelles. A very closely related composition from circa 1860 entitled In the Jardin des Cariboux, Fifty Miles Below Quebec was used by Blair Laing to illustrate the chapter on Krieghoff in his two volume memoir. A larger related scene from the same date as this lot forms part of the Thomson Collection, and was earlier owned by Lord Strathcona, the railway magnate who drove the last spike at the Craigellachie. And yet another, Winter Landscape, Laval may now be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. This work shares much in common with all of these works. The narrative is situated on the surface of a frozen river or stream which emerges from a deep Laurentian valley, an isolated spot illuminated by a clear blue Canadian sky under which two groups meet. Sometimes they are there coincidentally to take on water from a hole smashed into the ice, and sometimes, it would seem as though a rendezvous has been pre-arranged in order to catch up on local news.
G. Blair Laing, Memoirs of an Art Dealer, Volume 2, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1982, page 33, colour plate 9 for In the Jardin des Cariboux, Fifty Miles Below Quebec. $50,000–60,000
detail
68
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
69
67 FREDERICK ARTHUR VERNER, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. BUFFALO BY THE RIVER watercolour, laid down on card signed and indistinctly dated 191(6) 13 ins x 20 ins; 33 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Vancouver $5,000–7,000
68 WILLIAM RAPHAEL, R.C.A. UNTITLED - WOLVES CHASING HABITANTS oil on canvas 12.5 ins x 22.5 ins; 31.8 cms x 57.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie d’art Michel Bigué, Saint-Saveur-des-Monts, QC Private Collection, Toronto $8,000–12,000
70
Canadian Fine Art Auction
In a letter dated September 10, 1999, Conrad Graham, then Curator at the McCord Museum in Montreal, was of the opinion that this lot was a preliminary painting by William Raphael (1833-1914) for another version of the same subject Habitants Attacked by Wolves in the permanent collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. A copy of the letter can be made available to the purchaser of this lot.
69 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF SHOOTING THE RAPIDS, JACQUES CARTIER RIVER oil on canvas signed and dated 1861 9 ins x 13.25 ins; 22.86 cms x 33.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $25,000–30,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
71
70 PAUL PEEL, R.C.A. IN THE STUDIO oil on canvas, mounted to board 30 ins x 20 ins; 76.2 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $70,000–90,000
Paul Peel (1860-1892) departed London, Ontario for France at the end of October 1880 via London, England, where he had relatives and where it is believed he passed the winter months, reaching Paris in March 1881. He may well have audited classes at the free South Kensington Art School (renamed Royal College of Art in 1897) attached to the South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum since 1890). Drawing from plaster casts after antique and renaissance statuary was a fundamental instructional method for fledgling artists as was study and copy work after recognized masterworks held in museums. This composition could as much represent a student copyist working in the corner of the museum as in a private studio given the presence of a full-sized cast of Boy Wrestling with A Goose, after a Roman copy (1st–2nd centuries AD) of a lost Greek 2nd -century BC original held in the Vatican Museum. The accomplished Victorian painters’ studio was a veritable mini museum; an eclectic mix of in-progress and recent artwork displayed for the potential patron, the odd inspirational plaster cast, practical equipment (such as the taboret storage box seen here) and the odd exotic items reflective of the artist’s cosmopolitan tastes and interests - eastern carpets and tables for the well-paid professional artist. Here the focus is on a modest studio setup reflective of a budding artist’s set-up. Its main figure is a young female student in contemporary dress, with work apron on, seated before Boy Wrestling with A Goose, the presumed object of her sketching. Yet, looking down at the little sketchbook in her lap, with her back turned and face hidden, she is not captured in the actual act of creation, but in a private, enigmatic moment of contemplation. Her small dark figure competes with the smooth white, light-reflecting surfaces of the sculpture. In the Studio is a cerebral, classically balanced composition, demonstrating the young Peel’s accumulated art historical and practical knowledge and the range of his skills and professional practice, including sculpture, both relief and in the round, and painting: portraiture, genre and landscape. The palette on the floor is a calling card of the artist, standing just outside viewing range. We thank Victoria Baker for providing this essay.
72
Canadian Fine Art Auction
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
73
71 HOMER RANSFORD WATSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE oil on canvas signed 11 ins x 15 ins; 27.9 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Tiny, ON $7,000–9,000
72 FORSHAW DAY, R.C.A. THE BRIDGE, NOUVELLE RIVER oil on canvas signed 17.5 ins x 16.5 ins; 44.5 cms x 41.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Clinton, WA $5,000–7,000
74
Canadian Fine Art Auction
73 PAUL PEEL, R.C.A. LADY READING BY THE SHORE oil on canvas, mounted to board 8.5 ins x 5 ins; 21.6 cms x 12.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $20,000–30,000
According to Victoria Baker, Paul Peel scholar, this diminutive work corresponds in style, mood and subject to the series of outdoor oil studies Paul Peel produced during a trip to Quebec City in September 1890 in the company of his sister, Mildred, and the painter, Florence Carlyle. The simple composition of a woman resting or reading on a shore is one he favoured. The woman depicted here may be Mildred, or, given the red hair, possibly Florence Carlyle. Peel provides minimal geographic markers, but a schematically rendered distant shore with a distinctive ferry boat suggests a view towards Lévis, Quebec. However, this painting also recalls some of the outdoors studies he produced in August in and around Toronto. Most of these on-the-spot studies painted by Peel while in Canada — he arrived on July 16 and departed for France on November 2, 1890 — ended up for sale at the public auction of Peel’s work held in October 1890 by Oliver, Coate & Company, Toronto. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
75
74 ALBERT JACQUES FRANCK, A.R.C.A. CARLTON STREET oil on masonite signed and dated ‘64 24 ins x 20 ins; 61 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $8,000–12,000
75 RANDOLPH STANLEY HEWTON, R.C.A. SPRING BREAK-UP oil on canvas signed 20 ins x 24 ins; 50.8 cms x 61 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
76
Canadian Fine Art Auction
76 MARC-AURÈLE DE FOY SUZOR-COTÉ, R.C.A. LE PORTAGEUR bronze signed, titled and dated 1922, also inscribed “Roman Bronze Works, N.Y.” and “Copyright Canada & U. States, 1922” on the base height 16 ins; 40.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal LITERATURE:
Laurier Lacroix, Suzor-Coté: Light and Matter, Le Musée du Québec, Québec, 2002, page 268, and page 269, cat.114 for The Portage, 1922, reproduced in colour. Pierre L’Allier, Suzor-Coté: L’oeuvre Sculpté (catalogue), Le Musée du Québec, Québec, 1991, page 63 and page 62, fig. 14 for Le Portageur, reproduced. $9,000–12,000
MONDAY, MONDAY, NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 19, 2018 19, 2018
77
77 CHARLES FRASER COMFORT, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. PEEP-HOLE TREE #3, 1963 oil on panel signed 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $3,500–5,000 Painted in Monument Channel, Georgian Bay, July 1963.
78 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. A NORTHERN LAKE oil on canvas signed 30 ins x 36 ins; 76.2 cms x 91.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $8,000–12,000
78
Canadian Fine Art Auction
79 JOHN WILLIAM BEATTY, O.S.A., R.C.A. THE BEECHWOODS oil on canvas signed 28.75 ins x 39.5 ins; 71.8 cms x 99.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Beaverton, ON $20,000–30,000
J.W. Beatty (1869-1941) studied at the Académie Julian in Paris where so many other Canadian art legends received instruction. He painted alongside Tom Thomson in Algonquin Park, A.Y. Jackson in the Rockies, and occupied a studio in the Studio Building in 1914, shortly after it had been built. Yet, his greatest impact on Canadian Art is arguably the influence he had on the careers of so many emerging young talents in his role as instructor at O.C.A., where he worked from 1912-1941. Essentially, Beatty could be considered Ontario’s counterpart to William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal just a few decades prior. While he never aspired to be a progressive artist, nonetheless, landscapes such as this fine work embody the new and prevailing spirit of the Group of Seven with its veneration for glorious subjects in nature.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
79
80 ARTHUR LISMER, O.S.A., R.C.A. GEORGIAN BAY LANDSCAPE oil on board signed and inscribed “To Marjorie & Tom” on the reverse 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Michigan, DET $12,000–16,000
80
Canadian Fine Art Auction
81 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. SPRING BUSH AT L’ISLET, QUE. (SCENE OF GRACE’S SNOW BATH) oil on panel signed; also signed, titled, dated “April 1945” and inscribed “St. Aubert” on the reverse 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $15,000–18,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
81
82 ARTHUR LISMER, O.S.A., R.C.A. FOREST POOL WITH TREE ROOTS oil on canvas board signed 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $10,000–15,000
82
Canadian Fine Art Auction
83 FRANK HANS JOHNSTON, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. TURQUOISE AND GOLD oil on masonite signed 16 ins x 20 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms
The combination of turquoise and gold was a favourite colour pairing for Franz Johnston. Throughout his career, he remained inspired by scenes like this when the low winter sun would cast a warm glow across the snow on either side of a frigid stream as it reflected the perfect deep blue of a clear winter sky.
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Whitby, ON $10,000–15,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
83
84 MARC-AURÈLE FORTIN, A.R.C.A. STORM EFFECT, ST. EUSTACHE, QUE. oil on board signed; titled on the reverse, with catalogue raisonné number H-0834 7.25 ins x 7.75 ins; 18.4 cms x 19.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $6,000–8,000
85 JOHN WILLIAM BEATTY, O.S.A., R.C.A. LANDSCAPE WITH WINDING RIVER oil on board signed and dated ‘03 9 ins x 12 ins; 22.9 cms x 29.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Alberta $5,000–7,000
84
Canadian Fine Art Auction
86 FRANK HANS JOHNSTON, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. MOON PATH oil on masonite signed; titled on the artist’s label on the reverse 20 ins x 24 ins; 50.8 cms x 61 cms
Franz Johnston’s penchant for painting scenes of twilight and sunsets seem to indicate that he was a night owl. In Moon Path, as for any nocturnal scene, the challenge is always how to treat the lighting. Although the white orb of the moon isn’t visible here, the clear beams of light that it casts are shining up from the little stream in the foreground. Without the moon to overpower them, the stars are able to shine through the trees along the top of the painting. Finally, the eye is drawn to the orange electric light over the door, guiding the viewer toward home, and warmth.
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $12,000–15,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
85
87 ROBERT WAKEHAM PILOT, P.R.C.A. ROCKY COAST: GRAND MANAN, CIRCA 1926 oil on panel signed; also signed on the reverse 6.25 ins x 8.75 ins; 15.9 cms x 22.2 cms PROVENANCE:
The Watson Art Galleries, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $5,000–7,000
88 MANLY EDWARD MACDONALD, R.C.A. THE MILL RUN oil on canvas board signed 16 ins x 20 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $3,000–4,000
86
Canadian Fine Art Auction
89 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. FALLS ON THE MAGPIE RIVER, WAWA, AUGUST 1955 oil on panel signed; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario LITERATURE:
Wayne Larsen, A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter, Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2009, page 200. $12,000–15,000
In August of 1955, with his friends Professor and Mrs. H. U. Ross, A.Y. Jackson acquired some property on Twidale Bay on the east shore of Lake Superior near Wawa. This work would have been painted during his first month at his new property. The subject is Middle Silver Falls, on the Magpie River. As its name implies, it is one of three falls on the river - High Falls and Low Falls are the other two - and is considered to be the most scenic of the three cascades. The falls are compressed by rocks on either side as the river narrows before it drops, which results in a dramatic torrent of water, downplayed here somewhat by Jackson who is equally interested in the dense woods that surround the chute and the lake into which the water tumbles. Jackson skillfully leaves unpainted select patches of the board on which this sketch is rendered to introduce golden highlights amid the blue spruce and evergreens, hinting that late summer is beginning to show signs that autumn is coming. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
87
90 MANLY EDWARD MACDONALD, R.C.A. HAYING, BAY OF QUINTE, 1926 oil on panel signed and dated 8.5 ins x 10.25 ins; 21.6 cms x 26 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $1,500–1,800
91 YVONNE MCKAGUE HOUSSER, O.S.A., R.C.A. ST. URBAIN, QUEBEC oil on panel, with an unfinished pencil sketch on the reverse signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Halifax $7,000–9,000
88
Canadian Fine Art Auction
92 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. PENN LAKE, 1979 oil on board signed; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 12 ins x 15 ins; 30.5 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $20,000–30,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
89
93 MAUD LEWIS COLLECTING MAPLE SUGAR oil on board signed 9.25 ins x 12.75 ins; 23.5 cms x 32.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Halifax $6,000–8,000
94 MAUD LEWIS TEAM OF OXEN oil on board signed 12 ins x 14 ins; 25.4 cms x 30.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, London, ON (acquired directly from the artist) $8,000–12,000
90
Canadian Fine Art Auction
95 CÉCILE EMOND SUR LE LAC DES SABLE, STE-AGATHE oil on board signed and dated ‘84; titled “Sur le lac de sable, Ste-Agate” on the reverse 24 ins x 36 ins; 61 cms x 91.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Dominion, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $1,500–2,500
96 MICHAEL FRENCH SEGUIN oil on board signed, titled and dated ‘09 14 ins x 20 ins; 35.6 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Stouffville, ON $8,000–12,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
91
97 RANDOLPH STANLEY HEWTON, R.C.A. AN ALLEGORY DREAM LANDSCAPE WITH KING, ATTENDANTS AND PASTORAL IMAGES oil on canvas 50 ins x 47 ins; 127 cms x 119.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Estate of the artist $5,000–7,000
98 NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU, R.C.A. CHILD WITH BIRDS, 1972 acrylic on board signed with syllabics 40 ins x 30 ins; 101.6 cms x 76.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
92
Canadian Fine Art Auction
99 KATHLEEN (KAY) GRAHAM, R.C.A. POWER & GLORY SERIES - WINE DARK, 1973 acrylic on canvas signed, titled and dated on the stretcher 54 ins x 58.5 ins; 139.7 cms x 151.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Marlborough-Godard, Toronto/Montreal Private Collection, Toronto $6,000–8,000
100 ULYSSE COMTOIS LES PETITS CHEMINS I, 1980 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘80 24 ins x 30 ins; 61 cms x 76.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Marlborough-Godard, Toronto/Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $6,000–8,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
93
101 PIERRE GENDRON PAYLANDE À CARMEN MAYA NO. 2, 1992 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘92; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 40 ins x 30 ins; 101.6 cms x 76.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Art Dialogue Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $3,000–5,000
102 THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON, R.C.A. UNTITLED mixed media signed 7 ins x 14 ins; 17.8 cms x 35.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $3,000–4,000
94
Canadian Fine Art Auction
103 IVAN KENNETH EYRE, R.C.A ASESSIPPI oil on canvas signed; also signed and titled on the stretcher 56 ins x 56 ins; 142.2 cms x 142.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $60,000–80,000 LITERATURE:
Ivan Eyre, Pavilion Gallery, Winnipeg, 1999, unpaginated. Ivan Eyre (b.1935) paints landscapes that are executed not from life but from his own visual memory. His paintings can be considered reflections of his own interior sense of self. While Asessippi is a real place, a river valley at the Manitoba-
Saskatchewan border, this painting is only an impression, a mental landscape that was felt by Eyre rather than one that has been observed at a specific time. Indeed, Eyre sometimes considers his landscapes to be “abstractions, not correct in the way a topographical engineer would view the world in terms of space and the laws of perspective.” Asessippi demonstrates that ably, as the fields of space and time seem to become compressed and folded onto each other even as they are stretched across the canvas. The changing seasons seem to be represented in the same landscape: icy, snowed-in foreground is followed by yellowed scrublands, before dissolving into long, green-blue forest that extends to the horizon. A curling river careens into the distance, traced by a pale watershed in a looping diagonal. The slow draw of the landscape is elevated by Eyre’s almost staccato brushwork: paint is laid in teeming spots, with the whole scene emerging from the complexity of colour. The onus seems to be on the viewer to make sense of the painting, to figure out its ambiguous perspectival shifts and reclaim a comprehensive visual experience. Executed with a clarity of vision, Asessippi fuses colour, texture, perception and memory to create an overwhelming and deeply personal psychological landscape. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
95
104 JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN, R.C.A. PREMIÈRE SUITE PARISIENNE #1, 1977 oil on canvas signed and dated 1977; also titled on the overflap 78 ins x 40 ins; 198.1 cms x 101.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto/Montreal Private Collection, Collingwood, ON LITERATURE:
Fernande Saint-Martin, McEwen, 1953-73, Musée d’art Contemporain, Montreal, 1973, unpaginated. $25,000–35,000
96
Canadian Fine Art Auction
Jean McEwen’s (1923-1999) career was defined, if nothing else, by his experiments in the potential of colour to deliver emotive effect. The exhibition catalogue from the 1973 Musée d’art Contemporain retrospective notes: “he was one of the first Quebec artists to stress what was to become the major characteristic of Quebec art after Automatism… the exploration of the dynamic possibilities of colour.” Here, McEwen opts for a strong vertical composition: a tall, indistinct band commands the canvas, over a buzzing yellow terrain. The figure, the band, the block of colour doesn’t emerge fully formed, but is slowly revealed by the colours surrounding it. Indeed, further examination shows that what was before a clearly defined edge is now made cloudy and indistinct. Smears of black, concentrated naturally at the head of the canvas, wander away, diffusing into the surrounding amber. A haze of white (an interior glow?) gently swells in the lower half of the work, creating a visual weight that offsets the heavy black top while at the same time threatening to disperse the structural integrity of the painting. The canvas seems to glow and shimmer, and all over light and texture work together to create an ephemeral effect, as colours work to simultaneously conceal and reveal each other. Viewing the painting becomes an act of pure sensation, the layers of paint inflicting a continuallyrenewing slow burn in the eye of the viewer. McEwen here demonstrates a masterful experiment in using colour to push abstraction to its limits.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
97
105 MICHAEL BAYNE LANDSCAPE #4, 2006 oil on board signed and dated on the reverse 7 ins x 5 ins; 17.8 cms x 12.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Katharine Mulherin Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Alberta $6,000–8,000
106 HAROLD BARLING TOWN, R.C.A. TOY HORSE #1, 1978 mixed media on paper signed and dated “Feb. 25 - March 5, ‘78” 29.75 ins x 22.5 ins; 75.6 cms x 57.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Waddington Galleries, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $5,000–7,000
98
Canadian Fine Art Auction
107 MARCEL BARBEAU, R.C.A. LADY OF THE LAKE oil on canvas signed and dated ‘87, also signed, titled and dated ‘88 on the overflap 60 ins x 43 ins; 152.4 cms x 109.2 cms
interdisciplinary performance; throughout, he retained a sense of impulse and lyric energy.
$20,000–30,000
Produced at the end of the 1980s, Lady of the Lake comes at a time where Barbeau returns to highly contrasted colours and sharply defined hard edges. Retaining the expansiveness of allover painting while taking inspiration from his work in sculpture and collage. Large blocks of colour dominate the composition, becoming an injectionmoulded plastic field for the solid monochromes interlocking across the foreground. The overall effect is an intense sensory experience that seems to be a collection of fragments from a larger clash expanding out of frame.
Marcel Barbeau (1925-2016) was an early and defining figure of Canadian abstraction, becoming one of its most diverse voices. His practice at times incorporated collage, drawing, sculpture, performance, and music, as well as painting. Early work, defined by gestural marks and dynamic scrapes, gave way to experimentation with OpArt and
Lady seems to invite interpretation even as the work seems to give into itself as pure spontaneous construction: we can think of the glitter on the edges of a wave, perhaps, or the refracted bottom of a pond seen from the surface. More, we can approach it with the same synthesis of form and narrative that Barbeau injects in his practice, producing an associative and elevatory experience the same fairy-tale mysticism encountered in a childhood rich in exploration, curiosity, and play.
PROVENANCE:
Kaspar Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
99
108
109
GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A.
GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A.
SUNLIGHT NO. 6, 1986 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated on the reverse 44 ins x 38 ins; 111.8 cms x 96.5 cms
GREEN II, 1983 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated on the reverse 26 ins x 39 ins; 66 cms x 99.1 cms
PROVENANCE:
PROVENANCE:
Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto Artist’s Studio, Gershon Iskowitz Foundation
Artist’s Studio, Gershon Iskowitz Foundation
$20,000–30,000
Gershon Iskowitz’s (1921-1988) early works were cathartic productions. Drawing was a form of psychological resilience, a mechanism to deal with experience during the war. However, beginning in the 1960s, this purifying practice moved into something joyous and expressive, tracing a path from landscape into free abstraction. Frequently, Iskowitz’s paintings were given titles related to nature. Titles like Seasons and Northern Lights and Autumn root his works in a sensory response to the natural world. This deference to nature can be readily seen in the florid Sunlight. A deep red field radiates across the canvas, speckled with a glowing yellow interior; while large, amoeba-like forms in blues and greens are dappled across the surface. The scene is serene, fluttering with an interior warmth: we can think of rays of sunlight, scattered and twisting between the leaves of a tree, revealing flashes of clear sky. Indeed, the tree and the sky were frequent subjects in his earlier, more explicit landscapes of the 1960s. Here, however, we aren’t provided a direct referent; there are no branches reaching out, no solid ground to root our perception to any material location. For Iskowitz, painting becomes reified as a natural landscape of experience, transforming the meaning of his art “from a reflection on perception to the creation of vision, from a use of painting as a response to things seen to painting as the creation of experience itself.”
100 Canadian Fine Art Auction
$12,000–15,000
In Green II, bright, loud colours come together over a dappled green field. Red, yellow, blue and purple trail after one another in a rhythmic pattern that recalls the feverish figurations of his post-war paintings, now tempered by the refinements of his later career. The dense, mottled daubs and streams of paint he developed in the ‘60s, then already beginning to be magnified to macro detail, are here boldly rendered in monumental scale. There is a sense of floating in space - perhaps a sense of moving at speed over the green field - or perhaps through a psychological space as much as a topographic one. When considered from an overhead perspective, the deep inward curves towards the centre of the image could recall the trickled bends of a river delta, the bowed lee of a valley, or the fan of a peripheral treeline. We are again, however, denied the referential solidity of context. Instead of natural representation, Iskowitz plays with internal structures of gesture, colour, and form. These works are being sold to benefit the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation.
108
109 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
101
110 CHRISTOPHER PRATT, R.C.A. GREY SKY, BROWN SAND watercolour and pencil signed and dated ‘07 8.5 ins x 11.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 29.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
111 WILLIAM RONALD, R.C.A. BLUE BARON oil on canvas signed and dated ‘97; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 32 ins x 32 ins; 81.3 cms x 81.3 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Niagara Falls, ON $3,000–4,000
102
Canadian Fine Art Auction
112 KIM DORLAND THERE AIN’T NO CURE FOR LOVE #2, 2009 oil on canvas, unframed signed, titled and dated on the reverse 60 ins x 48 ins; 152.4 cms x 121.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $15,000–18,000 Taking inspiration from and riffing on the traditions of Canadian landscape painting, Kim Dorland (b.1974) suffuses his paintings with his own experience growing up. There Ain’t No Cure for Love #2 delivers a scene typical of Dorland: a solitary figure
in a nighttime forest, gazing out toward the viewer. The surrounding trees are built up with heavy layers of impasto, jutting out of the picture with sculptural corporeality: the weight of the trees becomes something physical as well as felt. The orange light that blooms out of the dark blacks and blues of the thicket resolves itself as the face of an uncanny, zombie-like figure, searing through the shadowed foliage like a glowing memento mori. The identity of the figure is unclear - a lover emerging from the trees? A friend goofing off? There is almost a sinister undertone, but figure and scene seem elided together: green sweater and blue jeans appears to merge into the tones of the forest that surround the figure, and the bright reds and oranges that blur and conceal the face serve as the fevered beacon of a fading campfire. Applied with feverish intent, with Dorland paint becomes a physical force, injecting his subjects with a potent immediacy while maintaining a curiously psychological distance.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018 103
113 THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON, R.C.A. DISROBING, 1963 oil and collage on canvas signed and dated ‘63 58 ins x 54 ins; 147.3 cms x 137.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Collingwood, ON $10,000–15,000
114 WILLIAM RONALD, R.C.A. OPUS NO. 3, 1963 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated ‘Nov. 27 ‘63’ on the reverse 35.75 ins x 42 ins; 101.6 cms x 106.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Kootz Gallery, New York Private Collection, Montreal $9,000–12,000
104
Canadian Fine Art Auction
115 PIERRE GAUVREAU V’LA L’BON VENT, 2005 acrylic on canvas signed and dated 2005; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 40 ins x 30 ins; 101.6 cms x 76.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal $12,000–15,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018 105
116 CHRISTOPHER PRATT, R.C.A. PORTRAIT OF DENISE oil on board signed and dated ‘84; also signed, titled and dated 1984 on the reverse sight 9.5 ins x 8 ins; 25.4 cms x 22.2 cms PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Montreal $8,000–12,000
117 VALERIE PALMER SANCTUARY oil on canvas signed on the stretcher 36 ins x 52 ins; 91.4 cms x 132.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Nancy Poole’s Studio, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
106
Canadian Fine Art Auction
118 JOHN MACDONALD HEAT, 2005 oil on canvas, a diptych, unframed signed, titled and dated on the reverse on both panels overall 107 ins x 110 ins; 271.8 cms x 279.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal $8,000–12,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018 107
119 ULYSSE COMTOIS SUITE ROMANESQUE XVII, 1986 painted wood signed and dated ‘86 on the base height 10.5 ins; 63.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $2,000–3,000
120 TOM HOPKINS UNTITLED - THE WATER BRIDGE oil on canvas signed 50 ins x 48 ins; 127 cms x 121.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, California $5,000–7,000
108
Canadian Fine Art Auction
121 LÉON BELLEFLEUR, R.C.A. RENDEZ-VOUS DES PAPILLONS gouache signed, titled and dated ‘80 22 ins x 15 ins; 55.8 cms x 38.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Wallack Galleries, Ottawa Biferali Fine Art, Quebec Private Collection, Quebec $3,500–5,000
122 OTTO DONALD ROGERS, R.C.A. APPROACH TO A SACRED PLACE, 1981 acrylic on canvas, unframed signed and dated ‘81 on the reverse 60 ins x 60 ins; 152.4 cms x 152.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto/Calgary Estate of Alison Hymas, Toronto EXHIBITED:
Otto Rogers: A Survey, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 1982, no.21. $7,000–9,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018 109
123 VICTOR CICANSKY, R.C.A. ORANGE HEART BONSAI mixed media, painted bronze signed and dated ‘98 overall 27 ins x 26 ins x 10 ins; 68.6 cms x 66 cms x 25.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Montreal $2,500–4,000
124 JACK BEDER VERTICAL STRUCTURE (SCULPTURE #32) painted wood and metal signed and dated ‘65 28 ins x 22 ins x 6 ins; 71.1 cms x 55.9 cms x 15.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $1,500–1,800
110
Canadian Fine Art Auction
125 LÉON BELLEFLEUR, R.C.A. GUIRLANDES DE SOLEILS FONDANTS oil on newsprint signed and dated 1950 10 ins x 7 ins; 25.4 cms x 17.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Newfoundland $7,000–9,000
126 MOLLY LAMB BOBAK, R.C.A. EVENT IN OTTAWA (2) oil on canvas board signed “Molly Lamb B.” 6 ins x 12 ins; 15.2 cms x 30.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Montreal $2,500–4,000 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
111
127 HARRY N. GRUNSTEN ST. LAWRENCE PASTORAL oil on canvas signed 34.5 ins x 40 ins; 87.6 cms x 101.6 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario EXHIBITED:
72nd Annual Exhibition, Ontario Society of Artists, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, 1944. $5,000–7,000
128 HENRI LEOPOLD MASSON, R.C.A. ÉCLAIRCIE STE. TITE-DESCAPS oil on canvas signed; also signed, titled and dated ‘21-09-75’ on the reverse 22 ins x 28 ins; 55.9 cms x 71.1 cms PROVENANCE:
Galerie Bernard Desroches, Montreal André Turgeon, Montreal Private Collection, Ottawa $3,000–4,000
112
Canadian Fine Art Auction
129 HARRY BRITTON, O.S.A., R.C.A. OLD NEIGHBOURS oil on canvas signed 18 ins x 22 ins; 45.7 cms x 55.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Oakville, ON $5,000–7,000
130 ROBERT WAKEHAM PILOT, P.R.C.A. FUR TRADERS BARTERING oil on board, framed as a triptych signed, indistinctly dated and inscribed “to Mr. and Mrs. Latte bon souvenir” overall 12.25 ins x 37 ins; 30.5 cms x 91.4 cms PROVENANCE:
Sotheby’s Canada, Toronto, May 1977 (Lot 150) Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
113
131 LUCIUS RICHARD O’BRIEN, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. “THE WOODS”, SHANTY BAY, LAKE SIMCOE watercolour sight 11.5 ins x 19.5 ins; 29.2 cms x 49.5 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto
“The Woods”, Shanty Bay, Lake Simcoe was the ancestral home of Lucius O’Brien (1832-1899), built by his father, Col. E.G. O’Brien in 1832 and sadly burnt to the ground in 1885. According to a label on the reverse of this work, written by a family member, “this watercolour of “The Woods” was part of the furnishings of the O’Brien home on Sherbourne St., Toronto.”
$2,500–4,000
132 WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS, R.C.A. THE CEDAR, MUSKOKA watercolour signed; titled on the reverse 9.25 ins x 10.25 ins; 23.5 cms x 26 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Burlington, ON $4,000–6,000
114
Canadian Fine Art Auction
133 ALBERT JACQUES FRANCK, A.R.C.A. HALF HOUSE, 1954 oil on canvas board signed and dated ‘54; also dated and titled on the reverse 16 ins x 20 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $6,000–8,000
134 ALBERT JACQUES FRANCK, A.R.C.A. NIGHT LIGHT oil on canvas board signed and dated ‘58 20.5 ins x 24.75 ins; 52.1 cms x 62.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto $7,000–9,000
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
115
RECTO
VERSO
135 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. WALKING THE DOG; A MAJESTIC HILLSIDE ELM oil on double-sided panel signed 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Ontario $3,000–5,000
136 TOM HOPKINS BOATMAN oil on canvas signed; also signed, titled and dated 1988 on the reverse 62 ins x 80 ins; 157.5 cms x 203.2 cms PROVENANCE:
Nissan Canada $8,000–12,000 Sold to benefit Habitat for Humanity, Toronto.
116
Canadian Fine Art Auction
137 MARY PRATT, R.C.A. TWO WORKS DEPICTING BREAD MAKING both watercolours both signed and dated ‘84 sight 7 ins x 7.25 ins; 17.8 cms x 18.4 cms; 6.75 ins x 9.5 ins; 17.1 cms x 24.1 cms PROVENANCE:
The Gallery Fine Art, St. John’s, NF Waddington & Gorce Inc., Toronto Joyner Fine Art, Toronto, May 1990 (Lot 221) Private Collection, Montreal $5,000–7,000
138 WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS, R.C.A. GLOAMING woodcut, printed in colours signed, titled and numbered 48/50 in pencil in the lower margin 10.5 ins x 9 ins; 26.7 cms x 22.9 cms PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Winnipeg $3,500–4,500
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
117
Index B
G
MORRISSEAU, NORVAL H. (1931-2007)
BANTING, FREDERICK GRANT (1891 -1941)...61
GAUVREAU, PIERRE (1922-2011)...115
...35, 98
BARBEAU, MARCEL (1925-2016)...107
GENDRON, PIERRE (b. 1934)...101
NAKAMURA, KAZUO (1926-2002)...5
BAYNE, MICHAEL (b. 1977)...105
GERVAIS, LISE (1933-1998)...41
NICOLL, MARION (1909-1985)...37
BEATTY, JOHN WILLIAM (1869-1941)...79, 85
GRAHAM, KATHLEEN (1913-2008)...99
O’BRIEN, LUCIUS RICHARD (1832-1899)
BEDER, JACK (1909-1987)...124
GRUNSTEN, HARRY N. (b. 1902)...127
...131
BLOORE, RONALD LANGLEY (1925 -2009)
H
P
...33
HARRIS, LAWREN STEWART (1885-1970)
PALMER, VALERIE (b. 1950)...117
BOBAK, BRUNO JOSEPH (1923-2012)...58
...49, 52, 56, 65
PEEL, PAUL (1860-1892)...70, 73
BOBAK, MOLLY LAMB (1922-2014)...126
HARRISON, TED (b. 1926)...4
PHILLIPS, WALTER JOSEPH (1884-1963)
BRITTON, HARRY (1878-1958)...13, 129
HEWTON, RANDOLPH STANLEY (1888-1960)
...132, 138
BUSH, JACK HAMILTON (1909-1977)...62
...75, 97
PILOT, ROBERT WAKEHAM (1898-1967)
HODGSON, THOMAS SHERLOCK (b. 1924)
...87, 130
C
...39, 102, 113
PRATT, CHRISTOPHER (b. 1935)...16, 110, 116
CARMICHAEL, FRANKLIN (1890-1945)...54, 59
HOPKINS, TOM (1944-2011)...120, 136
PRATT, MARY (1935-2018)...28, 29, 38, 137
CASSON, ALFRED JOSEPH (1898-1992)...
HOUSSER, YVONNE MCKAGUE (1898-1996)...91
8, 47, 48, 92
HUDON, NORMAND (b. 1929)...3, 32
BELLEFLEUR, LÉON (1910-2007)...36, 121, 125
R RAPHAEL, WILLIAM (1833-1914)...68
CICANSKY, VICTOR (b. 1935)...123 COBURN, FREDERICK SIMPSON (1871 -1960)
I/J
RIOPELLE, JEAN-PAUL (1923-2002)...18
...14
ISKOWITZ, GERSHON (1921-1988)...108, 109
ROBINSON, ALBERT HENRY (1881-1956)...53
COLLYER, NORA FRANCES ELISABETH
JACKSON, ALEXANDER YOUNG (1882-1974)
ROGERS, OTTO DONALD (b. 1935)...122
(1898-1979)...57
...12, 43, 50, 51, 63, 64, 81, 89
RONALD, WILLIAM (1926-1998)...21, 111, 114
COMFORT, CHARLES FRASER (1900-1994)
JOHNSTON, FRANK HANS (1888-1949)
...77
...55, 83, 86
S SHEPPARD, PETER CLAPHAM (1882 -1965)
COMTOIS, ULYSSE (b. 1931)...100, 119 COUGHTRY, JOHN GRAHAM (1931-1999)
K/L
...44, 78, 135
...23
KLUNDER, HAROLD (b. 1943)...30
SMITH, GORDON APPELBE (b. 1919)...25, 26
CULLEN, MAURICE GALBRAITH (1866-1934)
KRIEGHOFF, CORNELIUS (1815-1872)...66, 69
SUZOR-COTÉ, MARC-AURÈLE DE FOY
...45
KURELEK, WILLIAM (1927-1977)...19
(1869-1937)...76
LEWIS, MAUD (1901-1970)...2, 31, 93, 94
D
LISMER, ARTHUR (1885-1969)...15, 80, 82
T
DAY, FORSHAW (1837-1903)...72
LITTLE, JOHN (b. 1928)...6, 10, 60
TANABE, TAKAO (b. 1926)...20
DORLAND, KIM (b. 1974)...112
LOVEROFF, FREDERICK NICHOLAS
THAUBERGER, DAVID A (b. 1948)....1
(1894-1959)...46
TOWN, HAROLD BARLING (1924-1990)...106
EMOND, CÉCILE (b. 1931) ...95
M/N/O
V/W/Y
ETROG, SOREL (1933-2014)...27
MACDONALD, JOHN (b. 1964)...118
VARLEY, FREDERICK HORSMAN (1881-1969)
EYRE, IVAN KENNETH (b. 1935)...103
MACDONALD, MANLY EDWARD (1889-1971)
...9
...88, 90
VERNER, FREDERICK ARTHUR (1836-1928)
F
MASSON, HENRI LEOPOLD (1907-1996)...128
...67
FORTIN, MARC-AURÈLE (1888-1970)...84
MCCARTHY, DORIS JEAN (1910-2010)...40
WATSON, HOMER RANSFORD (1855 -1936)
FRANCK, ALBERT JACQUES (1899-1973)
MCEWEN, JEAN ALBERT (1923-1999)...24, 104
...71
...74, 133, 134
MILNE, DAVID BROWN (1882-1953)...7, 17, 42
YARWOOD, WALTER HAWLEY (1917 -1996)
FRENCH, MICHAEL (b. 1951)...11, 96
MOLINARI, GUIDO (1933-2004)...34
...22
E
118
Canadian Fine Art Auction
A CANADIAN MASTER REDISCOVERED!
Peter Clapham Sheppard (1879 – 1965) “Peter Clapham Sheppard was a retiring, elusive artist whose skill and vision, untouched by the noisy nationalism of some of his peers, can now finally be properly celebrated in the remarkable artistic rediscovery that is unveiled in the pages of this book.” —Ross King, author of Defiant Spirits Available from your favourite bookseller in October of 2018.
$55.00
240 pages 11 x 11 inches 978-0-2281-0078-2 hardcover with jacket
(Detail) The Bridge Builders, Construction, Bloor Street Viaduct. 1915. Oil on Canvas, 147.3 x 101.6 cm
❦ This new book collects over 225 of Sheppard’s most accomplished works painted between 1912 and 1939. The text is written by Tom Smart, who is currently the CEO of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, NB . Foreword written by Louis Gagliardi.
Art lovers and scholars will delight in the unveiling of masterworks hitherto unseen for nearly a century! This trove of beautifully illustrated drawings, oil sketches, and canvases will broaden our understanding of early 20th century Canadian art and contribute a new chapter to our visual-cultural history.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
119
Obsession Sir William Van Horne’s Japanese Ceramics
La Collection de Céramiques Japonaises de Sir William Van Horne
October 20 - January 20 Exhibition Sponsor
Publication Sponsor
Exhibition Partner
Pantone version
Organized by the Gardiner Museum in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, with objects generously provided by the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Artwork credit: Images courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario. LA.VHF.S5.F1.1-68. © Art Gallery of Ontario CMYK version
gardinermuseum.com
Conditions of Sale 1. All lots are sold “AS IS”. Any description issued by the auctioneer of an article to be sold is subject to variation to be posted or announced verbally in the auction room prior to the time of sale. While the auctioneer has endeavoured not to mislead in the description issued, and the utmost care is taken to ensure the correct cataloguing of each item, such descriptions are purely statements of opinion and are not intended to constitute a representation to the prospective purchasers and no warranty of the correctness of such description is made. An opportunity for inspection of each article is offered prior to the time of sale. No sale will be set aside on account of lack of correspondence of the article with its description or its reproduction, if any, whether colour or black & white. Some lots are of an age and/or nature which preclude their being in pristine condition and some catalogue descriptions make reference to damage and/or restoration. The lack of such a reference does not imply that a lot is free from defects nor does any reference to certain defects imply the absence of others. Frames on artwork are not included as part of purchase or condition. It is the responsibility of prospective purchasers to inspect or have inspected each lot upon which they wish to bid, relying upon their own advisers, and to bid accordingly. 2. Each lot sold is subject to a 20% buyers premium as part of the purchase price. 3. Unless exempted by law, the buyer is required to pay Harmonized Sales Tax on the total purchase price including the buyer’s premium. For international buyers, taxes are not applicable when purchases are shipped out of country. Items shipped out of Ontario, the buyer is required to pay taxes as per the tax status of that province, whether it HST or GST (Goods and Services Tax). 4. The auctioneer reserves the right to withdraw any lot from sale at any time, to divide any lot or to combine any two or more lots at his sole discretion, all without notice. 5. The auctioneer has the right to refuse any bid and to advance the bidding at his absolute discretion. The auctioneer reserves the right not to accept and not to reject any bid. Without limitation, any bid which is not commensurate with the value of the article offered, or which is merely a nominal or fractional advance over the previous bid may not be recognized.
6. Each lot may be subject to an unpublished reserve which may be changed at any time by agreement between the auctioneer and the consignor. The auctioneer may bid, or direct an employee to bid, on behalf of the consignor as agreed between them. In addition, the auctioneer may accept and submit absentee and telephone bids, to be executed by an employee of the auctioneer, pursuant to the instructions of prospective purchasers not in attendance at the sale. 7. The highest bidder accepted by the auctioneer for any lot shall be the buyer and such buyer shall forthwith assume full risk and responsibility for the lot and must comply with such other Conditions of Sale as may be applicable. If any dispute should arise between bidders the auctioneer shall have the absolute discretion to designate the buyer or, at his option, to withdraw any disputed lot from the sale, or to re-offer it at the same or a subsequent sale. The auctioneer’s decision in all cases shall be final. 8. Immediately after the purchase of a lot, the buyer shall pay or undertake to the satisfaction of the auctioneer with respect to payment of the whole or any part of the purchase price requested by the auctioneer, failing which the auctioneer in his sole discretion may cancel the sale, with or without re-offering the item for sale. 9. The buyer shall pay for all lots within 48 hours from the date of the sale, after which a late charge of 2% per month on the total invoice may be incurred or the auctioneer, in his sole discretion, may cancel the sale. The buyer shall not become the owner of the lot until paid for in full. Items must be removed within 10 days from the date of sale, after which storage charges may be incurred. 10. Each lot purchased, unless the sale is cancelled as above, shall be held by the auctioneer at his premises or at a public warehouse at the sole risk of the buyer until fully paid for and taken away. 11. Notwithstanding condition no. 1, if the buyer, prior to removal of a lot, makes arrangements satisfactory to the auctioneer for the inspection of such lot by a fully qualified person acceptable to the auctioneer to determine the genuineness or authenticity of the lot, to be carried out promptly following the sale of the lot, and if, but only if, within a period of 14 days following the sale a written opinion of such
person is presented to the auctioneer to the effect that the lot is not genuine or authentic, accompanied by a written request by the buyer for rescission of the sale, then the sale of the lot will be rescinded and the sale price refunded to the buyer. 12. Payment for purchases must be by cash, INTERAC direct debit (Cdn clients in person only), certified cheque (U.S. & Overseas not applicable), travelers cheque, bank draft, electronic transfer (fee applies), and VISA or Mastercard (up to $25,000). 13. In the event of failure to pay for or remove articles within the aforementioned time limit, the auctioneer, without limitation of the rights of the consignor and the auctioneer against the buyer, may resell any of the articles affected, and in such case the original buyer shall be responsible to the auctioneer and the consignor for: (a) any deficiency in price between the re-sale amount and the amount to have been paid by the original buyer; (b) any reasonable charge by the auctioneer for the storage of such articles until payment and removal by the subsequent buyer; and (c) the amount of commission which the auctioneer would have earned had payment been made in full by the original buyer. 14. It is the responsibility of the buyer to make all arrangements for insuring, packing and removing the property purchased and any assistance by the auctioneer or his servants, agents or contractors, in packing or removal shall be rendered as a courtesy and without any liability to them. 15. The auctioneer acts solely as agent for the consignor and makes no representation as to any attribute of, title to, or restriction affecting the articles consigned for sale. Without limitation, the buyer understands that any item bought may be affected by the provisions of the Cultural Property Export Act (Canada). 16. The auctioneer reserves the right to refuse admission to the sale or to refuse to recognize any or all bids from any particular person or persons at any auction.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
121
Buying at Waddington's
Selling at Waddington’s
All lots will be offered and sold subject to the Conditions of Sale which appear in this catalogue as well as any Glossary and posted or oral announcement. By bidding at auction, bidders are bound by those Conditions and Glossary, as amended by any oral announcement or posted notices, which together form the contract of sale between the successful bidder (buyer), Waddington’s™ and the consignor (seller) of the lot. Descriptions or photographs of lots are not warranties and each lot is sold “as is” in accordance with the Conditions of Sale.
WADDINGTON’S COMMISSION RATES
CONDITION OF LOTS All of the items are to be considered, unless otherwise noted in the description, in good condition. The definition of “good” when used in reference to condition, describes an object as having had no major damage or repair but as with the nature of the material, may show minor surface wear, discolouration etc., which indicates the acceptable wear that the piece may acquire with age. If you are particular about minor flaws, you should examine the pieces in person or have our staff answer any questions before bidding. Sizes are approximate. It is the sole responsibility of the bidder to inquire as to the condition of a lot before bidding. Condition reports are available upon request by phone, fax, email or in person. You are advised to make any requests well in advance of the sale. Frames on artwork are not included as part of purchase or condition. BUYERS PREMIUM A premium of 20% of the successful bid price of each lot. A charge of 13% HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) is applicable on the hammer price and buyer’s premium, except for purchases exported from Canada. In the case where purchases are shipped out of the province of Ontario, the HST or GST is charged based on the tax status of that province. PAYMENT Payment for purchases must be by cash, INTERAC direct debit (Cdn clients in person only), certified cheque (U.S. & Overseas not applicable), travelers cheque, bank draft, electronic transfer (fee applies), VISA or Mastercard (up to $25,000). ALL PRICES IN CANADIAN FUNDS
122
Canadian Fine Art Auction
BIDDING To bid in person at the auction, you must register for a bidding number by showing identification acceptable to the Auctioneer upon entering the salesroom. Your number will identify you if you are the successful bidder. You will be responsible for all lots purchased on your bidding number. Banking information may be requested by Waddington’s™. You may submit an Absentee Bid Form if you are unable to attend the sale. Bidding by telephone, in limited circumstances, can be arranged prior to the sale. While we are pleased to offer absentee and telephone bidding as a service to our clients, and take great care in their commission, the Auctioneer will not be responsible for technical difficulties, errors or failure to execute bids. The Auctioneer may also execute bids on behalf of the consignor to protect the reserve. The reserve is the confidential minimum price the seller is willing to accept for his or her property, below which it will not be sold. SHIPPING The Auctioneers will not undertake packing or shipping. The purchaser must designate and arrange for the services of an independent shipper and be responsible for all shipping, insurance expenses and any necessary export permits that may apply. The Auctioneers will, upon request, provide names of professional packers and shippers but will not be held responsible for the service or have any liability for providing this information. Reliable pre-auction estimates of shipping costs of lots offered in this sale may be obtained from: PakShip 905-470-6874 / 905-470-6875 / 416-293-8225
taurus@pakship.ca www.pakship.ca Envoy 416-299-3367 / 416-299-9750
ph@envoy.ca www.envoypackandship.com Fero Transport 514-453-1462 / 514-543-7585
www.ferotransport.ca REMOVAL OF PURCHASES Purchases must be paid for within 48 hours of the date of the sale, and removed from premises within 10 days of the date of sale (see Conditions of Sale, conditions 8 to 15). Clients are advised that packing and/or handling of purchased lots by our employees or agents is undertaken solely as a courtesy for the convenience of clients.
Items selling for $7,501 or more — 10% Items selling for $2,501 to $7,500 — 15% Items selling for $251 to $2,500 — 20% Items selling for $250 or less — 25% *There is a minimum handling charge of $20 per item CANADIAN ART DEPARTMENT COMMISSION RATES Items selling for $7,500 or more — 10% Items selling for $2,501 to $7,499 — 15% Items selling for $2,500 or less — 20% *There is a minimum handling charge of $20 per item Photography fee: $150 For auction advice on paintings, drawings, prints, jewellery, and various forms of decorative arts and other collectibles, please contact us via email or telephone. We are pleased to review emails containing photographs and information on your pieces in order to provide auction estimates for you to consider. For collections with a variety of objects, please contact our Appraisals and Consignments department. For department-specific inquiries, please contact the specialist and/or department directly. All contact information can be found at www.waddingtons.ca. Our office is located in Toronto, but our specialists occasionally travel to major Canadian cities to meet with prospective consignors. To receive more information on Valuation Days across Canada or to arrange an appointment, please contact our Toronto office (416-504-9100). Please note that property typically arrives at Waddington’s at least three months before the sale in order to allow our specialists time to research, catalogue, photograph and promote the items. Consignors will receive a contract to sign, setting forth terms and fees for our services. INSURANCE A 1% insurance charge, based on the hammer price of the property, will be applied to all accounts.
Inuit Art Auction TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018 AT 7:00 PM
OSUITOK IPEELEE, ᐅᓱᐃᑐ ᐃᐱᓕ CAPE DORSET / KINNGAIT ALERT CARIBOU MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19,
2018
123
Specialist Departments ASIAN ART
CONTEMPORARY ART
RUGS & CARPETS
Austin Yuen
Stephen Ranger
Andrew Brandt
416-847-6195
ay@waddingtons.ca Amelia Zhu
416-847-6185
az@waddingtons.ca
416-847-6194
skr@waddingtons.ca Kristin Vance
416-847-6168
ab@waddingtons.ca
416-847-6178
“DISCOVERY” ART
kv@waddingtons.ca
Doug Payne
416-847-6180
CANADIAN FINE ART Linda G. Rodeck canadianart@waddingtons.ca Anna Holmes 416-504-5100
canadianart@waddingtons.ca Rochelle Konn 416-847-6191
rk@waddingtons.ca
DECORATIVE ARTS Bill Kime Silver, Glass & Ceramics
416-847-6189
bk@waddingtons.ca Sean Quinn Sculpture, Decorations, Clocks & Lighting 416-847-6187
sq@waddingtons.ca Hayley Dawson Administrator 416-504-6167
FINE PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHY Susan Robertson 416-847-6179
sr@waddingtons.ca Kristin Vance 416-847-6178 kv@waddingtons.ca
dp@waddingtons.ca INTERNATIONAL ART Susan Robertson 416-847-6179
sr@waddingtons.ca INUIT ART Duncan McLean 416-847-6183 adm@waddingtons.ca Rochelle Konn 416-847-6191
inuitart@waddingtons.ca
hd@waddingtons.ca
JEWELLERY, WATCHES & NUMISMATICS Don P. McLean 416-847-6170
dpm@waddingtons.ca FINE WINE & SPIRITS Stephen Ranger 416-847-6194
skr@waddingtons.ca Joann Maplesden 416-847-6182
jmm@waddingtons.ca Devin Hatfield 416-847-6181
dh@waddingtons.ca
Operational Staff PRESIDENT Duncan McLean 416-847-6183
adm@waddingtons.ca VICE PRESIDENT Stephen Ranger 416-847-6194
skr@waddingtons.ca VICE PRESIDENT OF FINE ART Linda G. Rodeck canadianart@waddingtons.ca GENERAL MANAGER Duane Smith 416-847-6172
das@waddingtons.ca
DESIGN & PRODUCTION
ACCOUNTS
Julia Deo
Karen Sander
416-847-6188
jcd@waddingtons.ca Solomon Alaluf 416-504-9100 EXT. 6199
sa@waddingtons.ca PHOTOGRAPHY John Macdonald 416-847-6192
jm@waddingtons.ca COMMUNICATIONS Tess McLean 416-847-6171
tm@waddingtons.ca
416-847-6173
ks@waddingtons.ca Elda Pappada 416-847-6177
ep@waddingtons.ca COLLINGWOOD Valerie Brown 705-445-8811
APPRAISALS & CONSIGNMENTS Ellie Muir 416-847-6196
em@waddingtons.ca Brittany Boyd-Pyman 416-847-6175
bbp@waddingtons.ca CLIENT SERVICES Andrew Brandt
vb@waddingtons.ca
416-847-6168
VANCOUVER
Alec Kerr
Jacqui Dixon
ak@waddingtons.ca
778-837-4588 jd@waddingtons.ca
ab@waddingtons.ca 416-847-6166
Nicole Schembre 416-504-9100
ns@waddingtons.ca
Canadian Fine Art www.waddingtons.ca
Telephone: 416-504-5100 Fax: 416-504-6971 Toll Free: 1-877-504-5700
275 King Street East, Second Floor Toronto, Ontario Canada M5A 1K2