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ONLINE AUCTION
Important Canadian Art
1st Session

November 05 - November 26, 2020

LOT DETAILS
         
         
         

This session is closed for bidding.
Current bid: $60,000 CAD
Bidding History
Paddle # Date Amount

325432 26-Nov-2020 12:01:24 PM $60,000

30319 26-Nov-2020 11:58:19 AM $55,000

7702 26-Nov-2020 11:46:23 AM $50,000

325432 26-Nov-2020 11:45:39 AM $47,500

7702 26-Nov-2020 11:43:05 AM $45,000

325432 26-Nov-2020 11:42:45 AM $42,500

30319 26-Nov-2020 11:41:53 AM $40,000

7702 26-Nov-2020 11:39:24 AM $37,500

325432 26-Nov-2020 01:45:45 AM $35,000

30319 26-Nov-2020 12:18:06 AM $32,500

325432 25-Nov-2020 10:00:01 AM $30,000

818762 24-Nov-2020 06:34:46 PM $27,500

325432 17-Nov-2020 04:16:08 PM $25,000

The bidding history list updated on: Thursday, March 28, 2024 02:49:37

LOT 0228

BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 - 2020
Canadian

Cypress Mountain
acrylic on canvas, circa 2015
signed and on verso signed and inscribed "For Charmaine & Hanz from Gordon"
40 x 47 in, 101.6 x 119.4 cm

Estimate: $25,000 - $35,000 CAD

Sold for: $73,250

Preview at:

PROVENANCE
Acquired as a gift from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Vancouver


Gordon Smith was an important part of the early modernist scene in Vancouver, dating back to the 1950s - along with such artists as Lawren Harris, Jack Shadbolt and B.C. Binning. Up until his passing earlier in 2020, Smith continued to innovate, and transitioned through many thoughtful and vital changes in his work, inspiring artists on the West Coast and across Canada.

The artist did not have to go far to find his inspiration in the natural environment. Cypress Mountain rose behind Smith’s studio and home on the west shore of Vancouver, easily accessible by car. In this remarkable painting, he contemplated the forest floor at the edge of a clearing, with bare twigs and branches emerging from snow in the foreground and at the top, a strip of evergreen foliage. Some of the thin branches are dark and defined, others almost ghostly - criss-crossing in a web of mark-making. Smith does not go too deeply into space, preferring to closely observe the spatial changes created by fallen wood and small openings, and the exquisite way the snow covers the ground in soft clumps. His paintwork was adept, as he moved from the light-generating snow in the foreground, which reads like an abstract colour field, upward into the darker passage of evergreen vegetation at the top of the canvas. Delicately modulated colours give definition to the snow in pale blue, grey, with touches of pink and yellow. Smith explored closeup views of nature, some more abstract, some less, for decades in his Snow, Pond and Entanglement series. Cypress Mountain exhibits the sublime painterly vocabulary Smith accumulated over a lifetime, as he fluctuates back and forth between the abstract and the natural with great sensitivity.

Please note: this work is unframed.


All prices are in Canadian Dollars


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