Sold for: $91,250

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the Artist, circa 1955
By descent to the present Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1997, page 23, a similar 1955 canvas entitled Structure with Red Sun, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, reproduced page 21

A very similar canvas from 1955, Structure with Red Sun, is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. That canvas put Gordon Smith on the national stage when it won the purchase prize at the National Gallery’s 1955 exhibition First Biennial of Canadian Painting. It, and our Cityscape with Red Sun, represent the culmination of Smith’s modernist explorations in abstraction in this decade, which began during his 1951 trip to San Francisco, where he studied with American artist Elmer Bischoff.

This confident and emphatic work embodies Smith’s push-pull between abstraction and the real city—likely Vancouver—in which he breaks up its structures, such as high-rises and bridges, into a strong linear pattern. Ian Thom’s statement about Structure with Red Sun also applies to this strong painting: “Smith had absorbed Bischoff’s lesson that the painting itself must come before all else. There is a maturity...a singularity of vision, which places Smith in the foremost ranks of Canadian painters.”

Cityscape with Red Sun was acquired directly from Smith by the consignor’s father, who made frames for local artists, including the frame on this painting.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars