Sold for: $58,500

PROVENANCE
The PSBGM Cultural Heritage Foundation
Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 15, 2013, lot 116
Private Collection, British Columbia

Purchased at Heffel's Spring 2013 auction for $58,500 including Buyer's Premium
Estimate was $25,000 - $35,000

LITERATURE
Walter Klinkhoff, A.Y. Jackson Retrospective Exhibition, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., 1990, listed, unpaginated
Wayne Larsen, A.Y. Jackson, The Life of a Landscape Painter, 2009, page 138

EXHIBITED
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, A.Y. Jackson Retrospective Exhibition, September 10 - 22, 1990, catalogue #8

On July 16, 1927, A.Y. Jackson and Dr. Frederick Banting, research scientist and painter, boarded the government supply ship the SS Beothic, bound for the Arctic. After a week, their first port of call was the village of Godhavn on the coast of Greenland. Their arrival created a sensation – a contingent including the Governor of North Greenland met them, and a public holiday was declared for the day. Godhavn was quite a sight with, as Wayne Larsen writes, its “colourful Danish-style cottages, with steep roofs and ornate trim, standing side by side with Inuit shacks built from whatever material happened to be handy – wood, tarpaper, and whale bones.” Jackson and Banting soon slipped away to paint. Jackson wrote, “It’s an unbelievable village, and you keep pinching yourself to find out if it was a dream or part of the Chauve Souris, or a fairy tale.” This finely balanced composition captures the striking impact of this harbour towered over by snow-capped mountains. Jackson’s sure and fluid handling of volume and paint is in full bloom in the foreground with its delicate colour tints in the molded rock formations.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars