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By John Mackie, Vancouver Sun
May 27, 2010
This Lawren Harris painting of the Arctic, Bylot Island I,
sold for $2.8 million at another exceptional Heffel auction of
Canadian art at the Vancouver Convention Centre Wednesday.
A Lawren Harris painting of the Arctic, Bylot Island I, sold for $2.8 million, leading the way in another exceptional Heffel auction of Canadian art at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Wednesday.
The auction netted about $21.8 million, which made it the second highest-grossing auction in Canadian history.
Several records were broken during the auction, which saw three paintings sell for more than $1 million. Another Harris painting, Arctic Sketch IX, went for $1.521 million, while Arthur Lismer's The Sheep's Nose, Bon Echo, sold for a record $1,111,500. (All prices include the live "hammer" price and the 17-per-cent seller's commission.)
Records were also set for artists like Bill Reid, whose sculpture Killer Whale (King of the Undersea World) sold for $702,000; Jean-Paul Lemieux, whose 1962 painting Ti-Gus sold for $672,750; Gordon Smith, whose Cypress Creek sold for $128,700; and B.C. Binning, whose Nocturnal Fountain sold for $99,500.
Emily Carr didn't set any records, but her paintings did well, with one selling for $555,750, another two selling for $468,000 and two more selling for over $200,000. A tiny hand-painted Christmas card featuring her monkey Woo went for $21,060, while an uncashed cheque for $2.50 from Carr to a young man who used to walk Woo sold for $18,720.
E.J. Hughes didn't set any records, but the $380,250 attained by his luminous 1954 painting Tanker at Minstrel Island, BC soared well past its estimate of $175,000 to $225,000.
Another Hughes painting, The West Coast Near Bamfield, sold for $222,300. It dates to 1960, two decades before he painted Beside The Koksilah River, which went for $140,400.
Jean-Paul Riopelle's De couples indiscrets (1968) sold for $163,800, while the Riopelle watercolour Sans titre sold for $76,050.
About $4.6 million of contemporary art (post-1945) was sold in the afternoon, the remainder was sold in the big-ticket Fine Canadian art sale at night.
One of the few disappointments in the sale was that bidding on the double-sided Tom Thomson painting Landscape With Snow/Northern Mist stalled at $350,000 and didn't meet its reserve, so went unsold. The painting has a controversial past, because some art experts have questioned its authenticity.
The key estate in the auction came from the late Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton, who owned several Harris, Lismer and A.Y. Jackson paintings. The Thornton estate sold for $6.6 million. Arthur Erickson's estate also sold several paintings, including Claude Tousignant's colourful Double 36 (which went for a record $49,640) and B.C. Binning's Sea Side Figures ($64,350).
Albert Robinson's St. Urbain set a record for the artist at $614,250, while Jean McEwen's Rouge sur rouge went for a record $117,000. Cris Cran's 1985 work Self-Portrait With The Combat Nymphos of Saigon also sold for a record $43,875.
But the night belonged to Harris, whose Winter sold for $731,250 and Island Lake Superior went for $585,000. Another Harris painting, Mountain Sketch LXX, sold for $497,250.
The Heffel brothers now own the top nine art auctions in Canada, including the record $23 million auction in the spring of 2007.
jmackie@vancouversun.com
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