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Lot # 183

Emily Carr
1871 - 1945

Landscape and Sky
oil on canvas

14 x 18 in 35.6 x 45.7 cm

Provenance:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal, 1945
Sold sale of Fine Irish and Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 27, 2003, lot 86
Private Collection, London, England

In the early thirties, Emily Carr began to experiment with oil on paper as a sketching medium, and made rapid outdoor studies that were intended to be the basis for canvases. This process did not continue for very long before she realized that these works on paper were paintings in themselves. Carr produced more works in oil on paper than oil on canvas during her mature 1930s period. As well, most mature period Carr canvases are now in the collections of public art galleries such as the Vancouver Art Gallery - few are held in private hands - making a mature period Carr canvas one of the rarest treasures in Canadian art.
Carr’s particular concern in the mid-thirties was the skies of the West Coast. She had been struck by the stronger light and wider skies on a visit to the Interior in 1933 (when she worked near Lilloett). It was perhaps this experience that led her, in the mid-thirties, to begin painting in the Metchosin region to the west of Victoria. Landscape and Sky likely dates from this period. The sky is a swirl of movement similar to that found in other canvases of the period such as Above the Gravel Pit, in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, or Shoreline, in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The fact that the sky takes up over half of the composition is indicative of the focus of Carr’s attention. The brush-strokes of the sky seem to sweep in across the surface of the painting and are echoed in the movement down the mountain at the right, across the bare foreground and up into the trees at the right. The whole of nature is joined in a swirl of energy and light. It is in these mid-thirties paintings, of which Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky, in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, is the most accomplished, that Carr most overtly expresses her spiritual beliefs and her sense of the unity of God and nature. The paintings also express her own wonder at and love of the natural world. One cannot help but be engaged by the relentless energy of these compositions and the evanescence of their skies. Although modest in scale, this work is grand in ambition and distills Carr’s powerful vision into an image that resonates far beyond the confines of the picture plane.
Included with this lot is the November 15, 1945 Dominion Gallery receipt of sale for $125.

Estimation: 150,000 $ ~ 250,000 $
Sold for: 280,800.00 $

Historique des prix de vente pour cet artiste: jusqu'à 2,164,500 $
Source: L'Index des enchères d'art canadien