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For Immediate Release, November 9th, 2009
The Heffel Fine Art Auction House Vancouver Preview of their November 26, 2009 sales of Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art and Fine Canadian Art exhibited to record numbers in Vancouver this past week as over 1,200 people attended. Masterpieces from the Helen E. Band estate, daughter of renowned collector Charles Shaw Band, drew collectors and dealers to the gallery repeatedly and have been the subject of much media attention.
"The strong attendance is an indication of how much this collection and the entire auction has captured the public's imagination" said Robert Heffel, Vice-President of Heffel Fine Art, "we feel as if we are standing in a museum every day." Montrealers will be the next lucky audience, as the preview moves on to the second stage of its three-city tour.
The fifteen masterworks from the Band collection are well known to collectors and museum curators alike, having been part of exhibitions and published in catalogues since the early 1930s when Charles Band purchased them directly from the artists. Band knew Lawren Harris as a youth and would embrace his art as an adult. He purchased four masterworks from Harris that are included in the fall sale.
The sketch, The Old Stump, Lake Superior, ($2,000,000 - 2,500,000), is so evocative of Harris that the Wikipedia entry for him reproduces the National Gallery canvas entitled North Shore, Lake Superior that came from it.
Iceberg, Baffin's Bay North, ($1,200,000 - 1,600,000), Houses, St. Patrick Street, ($1,200,000 - 1,600,000) and In Buchanan Bay, Ellesmere Island ($550,000 - 750,000) are equally definitive Harris works.
Harris introduced Band to the other members of the Group of Seven, and A.Y. Jackson's 1926 canvas North Shore, Lake Superior, ($450,000 - 550,000) and a stunning Frederick Varley entitled Nude on a Couch ($400,000 - 500,000) joined the Harris paintings on Band's walls. The collection, which also includes Arthur Lismer, B.C. Binning, Harold Town and Emily Carr, is nothing less than outstanding. "That the Heffel brothers landed the Band consignment shows their stature at the top of the Canadian art auction market," stated the Vancouver Sun on October 31.
But the sale is not limited to Band works alone, with a fantastic selection of Post-War and Contemporary works by E.J. Hughes, Paul-Émile Borduas, Gershon Iskowitz, Jack Shadbolt, Jack Bush, Jean-Philippe Dallaire, Charles Gagnon, William Ronald and Christopher Pratt bringing admiring collectors into the gallery. David Heffel, President of Heffel Fine Art, states, "our collectors are thrilled to see everything, and we are honored to be able to offer such an amazing selection. We have not only a major estate, but a charitable philanthropist who will donate the proceeds of the sale of his artworks to Canadian charities."
The Nature Conservancy of Canada is one of the charities that will benefit from the proceeds of the anonymous Canadian philanthropist's collection that includes the outstanding Paul-Émile Borduas canvas Allegro furioso ($100,000 - 150,000) from 1949, and, fittingly for the charity, Tom Thomson's 1917 Algonquin Park masterpiece Early Spring, Canoe Lake ($600,000 - 800,000).
Preview at Heffel Gallery, Toronto
13 & 14 Hazelton Avenue
Saturday, November 21 through
Wednesday, November 25,
11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Thursday, November 26,
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Media Contact:
Robert Heffel 604 732 6505 or 604 418 0100
robert@heffel.com
David Heffel 604 732 6505
david@heffel.com
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