Lot # 001
BERTRAM CHARLES (B.C.) BINNING
BCSFA CGP CSGA OC RAIC RCA 1909 - 1976 Canadian

Sea Side Figures
oil on board,
signed and dated 1950 and on verso titled on the artist's label
7 1/2 x 10 3/4 pouces,  19 x 27.3 cm

Provenance:
Family of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

Référence:
Doreen Walker, B.C. Binning, A Classical Spirit, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1986, the larger version 1950 oil entitled Figures on Seashore listed and reproduced, unpaginated

During the 1950s, B.C. Binning's abstracted symbols were often derived from the objects of the sea. In Sea Side Figures, next to the abstracted figures on the shore are pennants and a tower, possibly a lighthouse. Binning lived near the seashore in West Vancouver, was a sailor, and clearly relished summer life on the sea and beach. In contrast to the whimsy of his recreational pursuits, he was a respected academic who began his career in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, and later founded the Department of Fine Arts there. Binning's striking black background works, such as lot 9 in this sale, were inspired by his revelatory aesthetic reaction to a velvety-black night view of the sea one summer. In this superb work, bright colours are activated by the black and the symbolic forms exude a jaunty energy, while their orderly arrangement cools the composition. Binning was very conscious of this dichotomy between the playful and the classic, stating, "I once said that the business of serious joy should be one of the main occupations of the artist. I do like joy...I do like order. I think my work plays between two sides of me."

S'est vendu pour: 64,350.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 20,000 $ ~ 25,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 002
CLAUDE TOUSIGNANT
AANFM LP QMG RCA 1932 - Canadian

Double 36 (Mars Phthalocyanine)
acrylic on canvas diptych,
on verso signed only on the green-and-yellow work, titled on each, dated 1974 on each and stamped with the Tousignant stamp on each
36 diameter (each) pouces,  91.4 diameter (each) cm

Provenance:
Estate of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

Référence:
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, 2007, page 191

Claude Tousignant emerged from the ferment of creativity in Montreal in the late 1940s, having been a student at the School of Art and Design at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In the 1950s, Tousignant leapt through a number of directions in abstraction, from a tachist application influenced by the Automatists to flat simple colour planes derived from his interest in Piet Mondrian. The 1960s saw Tousignant's work enter into the realm of colourful Op Art, and his stated intent was to create an art "emptied of all extraneous matter - to the point at which painting is pure sensation." At this time, the circle was Tousignant's main structural element, with works referred to as targets, chromatic transformers, gongs and chromatic accelerators, and this continued into the 1970s. He painted a group of circular diptychs, such as this vibrant duo, in which he explored their chromatic relationships. Double 36 (Mars Phthalocyanine) contains a vital contrast between a bright blue, yellow and green circle and a monochromatic grey and black one. These pure, reductive paintings are pulsating icons of chromatic space, radiating their optical stimulus for us to experience.

S'est vendu pour: 49,725.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 10,000 $ ~ 15,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 003
JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT
BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA 1909 - 1998 Canadian

Arthur Erickson, Happy Xmas
mixed media on paper,
signed twice, dated 1954 and 1957 and inscribed variously
14 x 26 pouces,  35.6 x 66 cm

Provenance:
Estate of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

S'est vendu pour: 5,850.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 6,000 $ ~ 8,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 004
GORDON APPELBE SMITH
BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA 1919 - Canadian

Untitled
oil on board, circa 1960
signed
17 3/4 x 29 1/2 pouces,  45.1 x 74.9 cm

Provenance:
Family of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

S'est vendu pour: 19,890.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 5,000 $ ~ 7,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 005
TAKAO TANABE
OC 1926 - Canadian

Landscape of a Virgin Land (Black Clouds)
oil on canvas,
signed and dated 1957 and on verso signed and titled
27 x 36 pouces,  68.6 x 91.4 cm

Provenance:
Family of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

S'est vendu pour: 7,605.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 6,000 $ ~ 8,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 006
CLAUDE TOUSIGNANT
AANFM LP QMG RCA 1932 - Canadian

The Double with Three
acrylic on canvas diptych,
on verso signed on each, titled on each, dated 1972 on each and stamped with the Tousignant stamp on each
12 diameter (each) pouces,  30.5 diameter (each) cm

Provenance:
Estate of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

S'est vendu pour: 21,060.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 7,000 $ ~ 9,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 007
TAKAO TANABE
OC 1926 - Canadian

Untitled
acrylic on canvas,
signed and dated 1961
34 x 24 pouces,  86.3 x 61 cm

Provenance:
Family of Arthur Erickson, Vancouver

Référence:
Ian M. Thom et al, Takao Tanabe, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, essay by Roald Nasgaard, page 44

From 1951 to 1952, Takao Tanabe was in New York investigating Abstract Expressionism, studying at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and taking classes with Hans Hofmann. Long before his evanescent West Coast landscapes, Tanabe was a modernist, moving through different stages of abstraction. In 1961, Tanabe returned from a trip to Japan, and Roald Nasgaard writes that he then "reoriented himself formally, taking up again the painterliness of abstract expressionism.Tanabe's new paintings from 1961 and 1962 are frankly gestural but built up of broad, roughly brushed chunks of colour, quite anti-calligraphic, utterly distanced from the finesse of lyrical abstraction and distrustful of easily resolved composition."

S'est vendu pour: 19,890.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 6,000 $ ~ 8,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 008
TAKAO TANABE
OC 1926 - Canadian

Chilcotin 2 / 89
acrylic on canvas,
signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 1989 and inscribed on the stretcher "Chilcotin mid September"
45 x 96 pouces,  114.3 x 243.8 cm

Provenance:
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Vancouver

Référence:
Ian M. Thom et al, Takao Tanabe, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, essay by Jeffrey Spalding, page 132

Chilcotin 2 / 89 reads like a visual poem of British Columbia's interior landscape. Despite its pared-down aesthetic, Takao Tanabe has carefully considered and structured this stunning painting in order to gently guide the viewer into the work. Chilcotin 2/89 has been organized into stratas with soft sloping diagonals breaking up the landscape, drawing us into the heart of the image and encouraging personal reflection. Jeffrey Spalding describes Tanabe's paintings of the Chilcotin with their linear movements as "the most sophisticated manifestation of this schema, structural marvels."
Painted with a sophisticated handling of light and shade, this painting is serene and timeless; the viewer is able to sense the gentle breeze blowing across the untamed field. In 1959, with the aid of a Canada Council grant, Tanabe traveled to Japan to study Japanese painting. This trip had a long-lasting effect on his work, as the transcendent atmospheres of Zen painting remain apparent in his tranquil works.

S'est vendu pour: 38,025.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 15,000 $ ~ 20,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 009
BERTRAM CHARLES (B.C.) BINNING
BCSFA CGP CSGA OC RAIC RCA 1909 - 1976 Canadian

Nocturnal Fountain
oil on canvas,
signed and dated 1952 and on verso titled on the BC Artists' Exhibition label
56 1/4 x 28 1/4 pouces,  142.9 x 71.7 cm

Provenance:
Acquired directly from the Artist
By descent to the present Private Collection, Vancouver

Référence:
Doreen Walker, B.C. Binning: A Retrospective, Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia, 1973, listed page 35
Nicholas Tuele, B.C. Binning: A Classical Spirit, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1986, unpaginated

Exposition:
Vancouver Art Gallery, 22nd Annual BC Artists' Exhibition, 1953
Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia, B.C. Binning: A Retrospective, March 13 - 31, 1973, catalogue #35

B.C. Binning was an important seminal figure in the West Coast art scene. His teaching career began in 1933 with his appointment as an instructor at the Vancouver School of Art, then he continued on to the University of British Columbia in 1940 as an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, followed by his establishing and becoming the Head of the Department of Fine Arts there in 1955. He was a cultural catalyst in Vancouver at the time, helping to found the UBC Art Centre Gallery and the Nitobe Memorial Garden, as well as organizing the UBC Festival of the Contemporary Arts. He exhibited internationally: 1950 in a survey of Canadian Art in Washington, DC, 1952 at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, 1955 in Venezuela and Washington, 1957 in Milan and 1958 at the Brussels World's Fair. Also involved with integrating art into architecture, he designed murals for the facade of the BC Hydro building, the interior of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Granville and Dunsmuir branch. He was part of an Art in Living group that included Lawren Harris, whose purpose was to inform the public about the benefits of good design. He was a vital formative part of the West Coast scene in both art and architecture, affecting generations of students and the cultural scene as a whole, and his influence also extended nationally and internationally. He served on the Visual Arts Committee of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa from 1964 to 1967, and was on the Canada Council's Advisory Panel for the Arts from 1965 to 1969.
The 1950s were an important time in Binning's work, in which he explored nautical themes. Binning had a sailboat, a 20-footer called the Skookumchuck, and he and his wife Jessie spent many hours wandering the coast, exploring coves and inlets - observing the life of the sea. Binning was greatly interested in all the nautical objects he saw - buoys, lights, ropes, flags and signals - and used them as motifs in his work, such as in the 1950 oil Night Harbour. Black background works were inspired by his experience of the sea at night, coming into the harbour and seeing, as he related, "all this black, velvety summer night...with all these signal lights flashing, and neon signs...it's really quite stirring."
The drawn line was important to Binning - two of his four years of study at The Vancouver School of Art during the late 1920s and early 1930s were devoted exclusively to drawing. This was reinforced during a period of study in England in the late 1930s, when one of his instructors was sculptor Henry Moore, to whom drawing was a fundamental essential. Binning used geometrical forms in his work, but not in a coldly mathematical way - his highly individual sense of line prevented that. He took a lyrical approach to line and form - there is order yet playfulness in his work. Paintings such as this large and superlative work display his unique sense of line, and show a finely tuned balance between formalism and playfulness.
Nocturnal Fountain is a classic work from the 1950s, full of symbolic, abstracted forms derived from the world around him. As Nicholas Tuele writes, Binning's paintings are "universal statements informed by local experience." In this painting, shapes and lines against the black background pop forward with a jaunty playfulness, and the over-all impression is of one of simplicity and grace of form. The viewer's eye follows the symbols, which activate and interact on the black surface, which recedes into the depths. Forms are accentuated with bright and lively colours - red, blue, yellow, orange and green - and are connected by delicate, refined white lines. Nocturnal Fountain, elegant and graceful, emanates a quiet, joyous radiance, making it singularly unforgettable.

S'est vendu pour: 99,450.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 60,000 $ ~ 80,000 $ CAD

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Lot # 010
GORDON APPELBE SMITH
BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA 1919 - Canadian

Cypress Creek
acrylic on canvas,
signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1990
60 x 44 3/4 pouces,  152.4 x 113.7 cm

Provenance:
Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver
Private Collection, Vancouver

Référence:
Letter from Jack Shadbolt to Gordon Smith, dated July 10, 1989, collection of Gordon Smith
Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith, The Act of Painting, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1997, page 49

Exposition:
Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, Gordon Smith, Falling Water Series, April 22 - May 11, 1991

Gordon Smith's deep forest works started with visits to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1984, and at that time his approach to painting became more spontaneous and expressionist, a significant change in his oeuvre. This was a dramatic evolution from his Abstract Expressionist paintings of the early 1950s (although in some ways it recalls and builds on this period), his hard-edge abstractions of the 1960s and his horizontal band landscapes of the 1970s and early 1980s. Throughout his career, his style has evolved while moving towards and away from the landscape, but in the end, landscape has been his great love.
Throughout the 1980s, he continued to explore coastal forests, visiting Shannon Falls in 1985, the Queen Charlotte Islands again in 1986 and 1987, and in 1989, the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island. Ian Thom comments on the work of this time period, "The images are richly evocative, suggesting the spiritual and emotional identification with nature which has haunted all British Columbia landscape painting since the time of Emily Carr." To Carr's passionate and rhythmic expression of a greater force animating all of nature, we add Smith's unique approach to the deep forest. His experience of the force present there is expressed through a visceral physicality of paint - textural, layered, vigorous with rough-hewn forms, the image infused with an awareness of the paint itself - an image abstracted yet with landscape still clearly recognizable.
Smith has a predilection for working in series - the Shannon Falls works evolved into the series this work is from, Falling Water. Working this way allows him to fully express a stream of ideas on a theme, subtle point and counterpoint in delightful variation. After 1984, he switched from using sketches and working from memory to the use of photographs, which contributed to this experimentation and improvisation with variations on a theme. In 1990, he completed his new studio on the North Shore, and the woods nearby became his subjects, as did Cypress Creek, which runs from Cypress Mountain and whose course includes a canyon featuring shooting waterfalls.
Smith's colour palette darkened in response to the forest, and in Cypress Creek brooding dark greens, browns and blues are contrasted with the foaming waterfall tumbling down the rock face, in brilliant white accented with tones of blue, green and grey-pink. Although the over-all colouration is dark, it is by no means sombre. Looking more closely, we see that he has highlighted lichens and mosses on the rocks with streaks of pink, mauve, ochre, red and yellow. Paint is thickly applied, showing much texture. His free use of paint includes variations in viscosity - thin washes over thick paint run down either side of the canvas, like streamers of rain. He made clear the importance of the paint itself in a comment that he intended "welding the image with paint, so the paint becomes the image and the image becomes the paint."
With its powerful use of paint and the impact of a stunning forest composition enlivened with a cascade of water, Cypress Creek is an outstanding canvas from a highly significant time in Smith's oeuvre. The forest works of the late 1980s and early 1990s are seen as important for his explorations of looseness of form, expressive brushwork, and a rich, deep colour palette, which resulted in his finding, as Jack Shadbolt suggested, his "true lyric territory."
For over 60 years, Smith has been a central member of Vancouver's art community. His courage to innovate, the vitality and beauty of his work and dedication to his subject have made him one of the finest landscape painters in Canada. Smith has produced some of his finest works from 1984 to the present, of which this is an important example.

S'est vendu pour: 128,700.00 $ CAD
Estimation : 40,000 $ ~ 60,000 $ CAD

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