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Last Updated: Saturday, November 24, 2007 | 10:41 AM ET
CBC News
A Toronto auction that included works by iconic Canadian artists Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris and David Milne has become the second highest grossing Canadian fine art auction in history.
"It was a pleasure to preside over so many exciting battles for paintings this evening," said Robert Heffel who, with his brother, David, owns the Heffel Fine Art auction house.
Lawren Harris's
Grey Day, North Shore,
Lake Superior
was the top seller at the
Friday night auction,
fetching $1,782,500.
(Heffel Fine Art)
The Vancouver-based auctioneers confirmed the Friday night sale earned $19 million. Heffel also holds the top spot for a May auction that set a record of $22.8 million.
The auction, held in Toronto's Park Hyatt Hotel, also reached a new benchmark: it was the first Canadian auction to see five different paintings sold for more than $1 million each.
Those paintings include:
- Harris's Grey Day, North Shore, Lake Superior, $1,782,500.
- David Milne's Snow Patches, Boston Corners, NY, $1,437,500.
- Harris's Houses, $1,380,000.
- Thomson's Northern Lights, $1,150,000.
- Thomson's Wild Cherry Trees in Blossom, $1,006,250.
The standing-room-only crowd was there to witness a rare sale of six paintings by Thomson. Much of the buzz was about Northern Lights, of which only five versions exist. Three sit in museums.
Kaileigh Richter of Ottawa auctioned off her oil-on-board Thomson painting for $475,000, almost a quarter of a century after discovering it in her late grandmother's home in Lakefield, Ont.
Tom Thomson's Northern Lights
was one of five paintings
fetching more than $1 million.
It sold for $1,150,000.
(Heffel Fine Art)
"I'm just thrilled," Richter said after the gavel dropped, adding the painting sold for more than she had expected.
Richter's great-grandfather got the unsigned 1915 piece, Woodland Interior, Algonquin Park, from Thomson when they worked together in advertising.
Richter was 10 when she and her mother unearthed the painting while sorting the estate. Richter's great-grandfather, Albert H. Robson, had written on the back of it, "This sketch was made by Tom Thomson in 1915."
No one in the family thought it was authentic.
"My mom had it framed for me, we put my initials on the back of it and it sat on a wall at her house for 24 years and nobody thought about it further until we had an appraiser come over," Richter told CBCNews.ca in an earlier interview.
The six Thomson works sold for a combined $3.4 million.
Twenty-two works by A.Y. Jackson and 10 J.E.H. MacDonald paintings were also auctioned off.
This marks a banner year for Canadian art and auctions as the country's three major auctioneers - Heffel's, Sotheby's Canada (in conjunction with Ritchies) and Joyner Waddington - hauled in $333.6 million in the past five days.
Familiar names such as Emily Carr, Jean-Paul Riopelle and the Group of Seven were all on the block this year.
With files from the Canadian Press
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