A recumbent horse with its front legs tucked beneath its body and its head turned back to touch its rear leg, while a playful monkey clambers over it.

Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton (1915-2009) owned one of Canada’s most important art collections. Born in Montreal, she grew up in an environment of sensitive and intelligent ambition. Her family tree is quite remarkable and includes James Pawley Dawes, founder of the Dawes brewery in Lachine, Quebec; the famous fur trader and explorer Peter Skene Ogden; and Dana Wilgress, Canada’s first ambassador to the United Nations. Her father was Vice President and General Manager of Canadian National Railway’s central region.

Theodosia’s renowned Canadian art collection included works by Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer, Edwin Holgate, A. Y. Jackson, Albert Robinson, Anne Savage, E. J. Hughes and J. E. H Macdonald. Many of these works were purchased directly from artists, or from their dealers as newly available works. This collection was her passion and her pride, a part of her life that she considered essential to her soul. Heffel had the honour of selling her Canadian art collection between 2010 to 2012.

Theodosia also amassed an immense collection of Chinese jade carvings and snuff bottles. Her interest developed when her grandmother, Rachel Dawes Bond, brought the family on a tour of China during the 1920s where she started collecting tabletop (scholar) Chinese works of art. Many of these pieces were later bequeathed to Theodosia, and she continued the tradition by acquiring more scholar jade carvings from Montreal’s prestigious Gurie Gallery.

Initially based in Harbin in northeastern China during the first half of the 20th Century, the Gurevich family moved to Canada during the 1950s and opened the Gurie Gallery, a staple of Montreal’s trendy Sherbrooke Street. The Gurie Gallery was one of the first to focus on Chinese ceramics, decorative arts and paintings, and was extremely popular to collectors in Montreal, Toronto and New York. The son, Alex Gurevich (1929-1990), took over the store during the 1960s and continued to source objects through frequent visits to Hong Kong.

Theodosia became friends with Alex and shared a passion for Chinese jades. She kept meticulous journals about her jade collection. The volumes contained maps and histories of China, photographs of the pieces (Theodosia was also an accomplished photographer), rubbings, and connoisseur notes. Like her grandmother, Theodosia gravitated towards palm-sized objects that can be used for study or play.

During the 1990s, Theodosia’s daughter Joan continued the family legacy of collecting Chinese jade carvings. Joan chose to complement the items already part of the family heirlooms by acquiring larger jade pieces. These include vessels, figures, animals and mountain landscapes. After the closing of Gurie Gallery, the majority of these carvings were acquired from a new generation of Montreal and New York dealers.