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Gordon Appelbe Smith
BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA 1919 –
Winter oil on canvas, signed and on verso titled, dated circa 1960 on a label and inscribed W.A. Picture Loan and $175.00 24 x 30 in, 61 x 76.2 cm P rov e n a n c e
Private Collection, Vancouver Sold sale of Western Canadian Modernists, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, June 25, 2009, lot 411 Private Collection, Vancouver The late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of solid accomplishment for Gordon Smith. In 1959 he won the Baxter Prize from the Ontario Society of Artists, and in 1960 he was chosen to
represent Canada at the Bienal de São Paulo. Also in this eventful year, a Canada Council fellowship enabled him to take a sabbatical from his teaching at the University of British Columbia to paint and travel to New York, England and Europe. No matter what degree of abstraction is present in Smith’s work, landscape is the point of departure. In Winter, Smith paints an abstracted urban scene with a strip of buildings on the horizon, and areas of blue for the sky and water. Buildings are suggested by outlines of fluid black lines. The colours of the buildings seep down as if they are reflections in the ocean into softly modulated planes of colour, which are predominantly blue and grey. Smith contrasts the more intense colours of the structures against the subtle and reflective atmospheres of sky and water in this lyrical work, evocatively transforming a specific locality into abstraction to emphasize colour, mood and light. Est imat e : $25,000 – 35,000
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