Sold for: $81,900

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

LITERATURE
Doreen E. Walker, B.C. Binning: A Classical Spirit, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1986, unpaginated

B.C. Binning was a pioneer West Coast modernist. Through his important contributions to the University of British Columbia – he first taught in the School of Architecture, then founded the Department of Fine Arts – he fostered a sense of artistic community that transcended boundaries. As an artist, he was a modernist with an expansive viewpoint – formatively, he studied in England with Henry Moore, traveled through Europe viewing art and architecture, then moved on to New York, where he was influenced by the modernist exhibition Art in Our Time. He often exhibited internationally. Happy Harbour, with its abstracted nautical motifs of flags, pennants, navigation devices and sails, is an absolutely classic Binning. It is very gay and bright, yet perfectly balanced formally, reflecting his dual artistic preoccupations – what he called “the business of serious joy”, balanced with “a classic sense”. Binning loved the sea, which he explored in a sailboat, and felt that the imagery he absorbed along the British Columbia coast “had to be interpreted with some sort of ‘joie de vivre’.” Binning’s use of abstracted motifs codified this “joie de vivre” into a consummate and universal visual language of the sea.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars