Sold for: $23,600

PROVENANCE
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario, acquired from the above in 2000

LITERATURE
Tom Smart, Alex Colville: Return, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2003, page 76, the 1999 acrylic Dog in Car, collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, reproduced page 77
Andrew Hunter, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2014, the 1999 acrylic Dog in Car, collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, reproduced page 87

Alex Colville often included animals in his work, both wild and domestic, and here he includes one of the family’s dogs. Tom Smart writes, “Dogs, in addition to personifying elemental goodness, are Colville’s symbolic self-portraits. They embody all that is benign and loyal, a kind of nearly human being...” The face of the woman (Colville's wife, Rhoda) is obscured, while the dog, seen in profile in the back seat, regards her with a rapt affection, radiating a comforting presence. This affection seems all the more poignant given they are surrounded by machines—the car and the Brink’s truck, which lends a subtle element of danger, given its connotation of armed guards and money. Such subtleties are what make Colville’s images so penetrating. Much more than superbly crafted realist scenes of everyday life, his works embody the contrasts, nuances, existential dilemmas and edges present in modern life.

Colville’s practice was to develop a final image for his paintings through a series of drawings, and this finely finished acrylic and ink work contains the essential compositional elements for the acrylic painting Dog in Car.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars