Canadian Art Auction | May 29 - June 3, 2021

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Canadian Fine Art MAY 29 — JUNE 3, 2021




AUCTION DATE

CANADIAN FINE ART

FRONT COVER

May 29 - June 3, 2021

416-504-5100 canadianart@waddingtons.ca

Lot 26 JACK HAMILTON BUSH

BID AND VIEW ALL LOTS ONLINE AT

DIRECTOR OF FINE ART

www.waddingtons.ca

Yvonne Monestier

Absentee bidding available upon request.

MANAGER OF CANADIAN FINE ART

All lots including additional images, essays and reports can be viewed online at www.waddingtons.ca

GREEN UP, 1970 (DETAIL) INSIDE COVER

Ellie Muir

Lot 1 SYBIL ANDREWS IN FULL CRY (DETAIL)

CONSIGNMENT COORDINATOR

FRONTIS

Nicole Schembre

Lots 48 RENÉ MARCIL UNTITLED, CA. 1975

IMPORTANT NOTE

The availability of in-person previews is fully dependent on COVID-19 restrictions. Please contact us to confirm if appointments are permitted, or to request additional auction details, photographs, condition reports or virtual consultations.

INSIDE BACK COVER Lot 34 CLARENCE ALPHONSE GAGNON BEACH SCENE, ST. MALO, 1907 (DETAIL)

BACK COVER Lot 16 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF MOONLIGHT

Waddington’s 275 King Street East, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario M5A 1K2 1-877-504-5700

This auction is subject to the Conditions of Sale printed in the back of this catalogue.

This catalogue and its contents © 2021 Waddington McLean and Company Ltd. All rights reserved.

Photography and design by Waddington’s.



tSYBIL ANDREWS One of two equestrian-themed works in this auction (see lot 10 - Molly Lamb Bobak, Harness Racing), Andrews transforms a familiar genre scene of equestrians on the hunt into a modernist study of motion. The artist removes all extraneous details—including the fox and hounds—drawing focus sharply towards the riders. During her career, Andrews made several linocuts depicting sporting themes, though her interest was less documentary than an enduring interest in capturing the thrill and exhilaration of these activities. The Metropolitan Museum of Art which holds a print from this same edition in their permanent collection, notes that the composition exhibits the same “velocity and potential for danger” that she captures with motorbikes in Speedway. The Met cites the print’s “machinelike aesthetic,” which they link to the artist’s work as a welder in an airplane factory during World War I. That said, the arciform shapes seem to tend more towards the free-flowing than the Fordian. The reductionist equine forms echo the tessellated work of M.C. Escher in the way that the subjects mirror and nest into one another—one needs look no further than the tightly-strung hocks of the lead horse and the way in which they curve around the head of the palomino in the rear. Andrews’s vigorous lines so effortlessly draw the eye around the page in a never-ending loop, proving that in this instance, less is most certainly more.

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1 SYBIL ANDREWS IN FULL CRY colour linocut signed, titled, and numbered 40/50 sight 11 ins x 16 ins; 27.9 cms x 40.6 cms provenance: Acquired from the artist Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$25,000–35,000

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tDORIS JEAN MCCARTHY After her retirement, Doris McCarthy took up travelling with a new zeal. She would often return to her favourite spots, including Alaska, which she visited four times in pursuit of inspiration. McCarthy would take cruises around the region, sketching and recording the passing landscape from her berth. McCarthy’s central aim was to capture glaciers and icebergs in the warmer months, though this charming scene evidently turned her head away from icier subjects. McCarthy disembarked in the town of Haines, where she was able to spend some time faithfully recording the ridgeline. The sea level perspective puts the viewer at the foot of these majestic mountains, right at the edge of the sea. A red fishing boat at harbor is cleverly included to show the scale of the mountains that loom over the small town.

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DORIS JEAN MCCARTHY, O.S.A., R.C.A. MOUNTAINS AT HAINES, ALASKA, 1986 watercolour signed; titled and dated to gallery label sight 14 ins x 21 ins; 35.6 cms x 53.3 cms provenance: Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON Private Collection, Ontario

$3,000–5,000

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DECEMBER 5 — 10, 2020   13 MAY 29 - JUNE 3, 2021   13


tPETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD A painter of staggering talent, Sheppard’s work would be largely forgotten by the end of his lifetime, and is only being properly acknowledged now. The breadth of work from this important Canadian modernist cannot be understated, described by his biographer Tom Smart as “a realist who captured the life and times of his people and city; an Impressionist who sought to picture the effects of light and weather in an urban context, particularly a winter snow squal or blizzard; a plein-air painter who worked to capture the experience of place in cedar shingle-sized paintings done on-site in all weather conditions; and a latent abstractionist whose sharp eye could also be turned to reducing landscape elements to essential shapes and significant forms, and in the process could flatten the picture plane into arrangements of colours, shapes, lines and textures.”1 Sheppard’s Elizabeth Street, Toronto shattered auction estimates in 2018 at Waddington’s, and we continue to watch this important Canadian painter’s legacy grow. Though it would seem almost a non sequitur to describe a seemingly neutral coastal scene as an exercise in dynamic modernism, The Green Boat, Port Credit is precisely that. Sheppard approaches a beloved subject—a boat plying the waters of Lake Ontario—and infuses it with a vertiginous perspective. The work brings to mind the pioneering perspective of Russian avant-garde photographer Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, taking something familiar and re-examining it steeply from above or below. While an amateur’s attempt would have resulted in a chaotic composition, Sheppard assuredly bisects his composition on the diagonal, with the upper triangle painted in radiant celestial blue, and the lower triangle dominated with duns and and blue-grays. The bottom right corner acts as a locus, with many of the lines fanning out from that point. The composition is startling, both considered and effortless, a masterful act of painterly sprezzatura. Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work, Firefly Books, p.203.

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PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. THE GREEN BOAT, PORT CREDIT, 1929-30 oil on canvas signed; titled to stretcher 30 ins x 36.25 ins; 76.2 cms x 92.1 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$20,000–30,000

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tDONALD MACKAY HOUSTOUN Donald Mackay Houstoun mastered many mediums and genres of painting. He worked in oils, acrylics and watercolours, shifting with ease from abstracts to landscapes during his decades-long career. This painting, completed mid-career in 1976, comes from a period where both abstract and landscape meld perfectly into colourful and layered harmony. His experience with watercolours is evident in the colour choices that he laid down with his signature palette knife technique. The painting reads as a rainbow in the natural landscape, emerging in spring from the dull winter season. The large scale of the composition afforded the artist the opportunity to apply detailed strokes across the trees in the foreground, giving the viewer a different experience of the artwork from afar and up close.

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4 DONALD MACKAY HOUSTOUN, R.C.A. A SPRING HAZE AND PASSING STORM, 1978 oil and Lucite on canvas signed; titled to stretcher, dated to gallery label 50 ins x 60 ins; 127 cms x 152.4 cms provenance: Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto, ON Private Collection, Toronto, ON $3,000–5,000

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JOHN HARTMAN t

Among John Hartman’s earliest interests and influences were the German Expressionist paintings of Die Brücke – in particular, Emil Nolde (1867-19 56) – the Belarus-born Paris painter Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), American Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) and the 1980s neo-expressionist work of Germans Jörg Immendorf, Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck.1 He described them as the “on-going dialogue with art history.”2 By the mid-1980s Hartman developed his own unique approach to “place, story and memory”3 to register not only the rugged Canadian Shield environs of Simcoe County and the Georgian Bay shoreline (Hartman was born in Midland and established his home and studio in Lafontaine), but histories, mythologies and people of the community. Hartman used the sky as a compositional space to populate with narrative image episodes. In part, this is a reference to historical Western religious and allegorical painting – visions that come from the sky.

critical moment of Hartman’s development of vigorously expressive paintings. The female figure in the sky – in a birthing position – had appeared in work prior to the Cape Dorset sojourn, and after. But Hartman noted that the setting of a night sky, a nighttime harbour with the landscape of the town and its surrounding mountains, painted in yellow, was new to his work. Three Cape Dorset paintings were first shown in a solo exhibition at Cambridge Galleries in 1990, and most recently, pastel on paper works at Feheley Fine Arts in 2018. Titled Kinngait Memories – John Hartman in Cape Dorset, the exhibition included works by Shuvinai Ashoona, Qavavau Manumie, and Jutai Toonoo. Hartman’s Dorset-subject printworks are represented in several public gallery collections; the triptych Kadloona Come to Cape Dorset, 1990, is in the collection of the Canada Council Art Bank.

Hartman’s work is represented in more than 35 public collections in Canada, as well as The In November 1989, he travelled to Cape Dorset, British Museum. In 2020 he was appointed as a invited by Terry Ryan, the founding manager Member of the Order of Canada. of the now Kinngait Studios for a month-long 1 David Milne’s late watercolours are also of great interest residency. Hartman worked alongside young to Hartman, but best seen and expressed in Hartman’s and senior artists such as Kenojuak Ashevak in drypoint etchings. the lithography workshop and taught a course 2 Robert Enright quoting Hartman in, John Hartman, Place, Story & Memory. Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 2012. in drawing at what is now Nunavut Arctic College. He also made ink on paper sketches 3 The Metivier Gallery exhibition title. Ibid. and pastel drawings of the community and Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art people working in the print shop. On return, historian. He received his PhD in art history Hartman made watercolours, pastels and oil from the University of Queensland. We thank paintings based his studies and memories VIEW THISon LOT him for contributing this essay. of the Cape Dorset experiences. Dorset, Night Figure is among the (approximate) eight paintings; three were triptychs. This was a VIEW THIS LOT 22

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5 JOHN HARTMAN, R.C.A. DORSET, NIGHT FIGURE, 1989-90 oil on canvas signed; also signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 48 ins x 66 ins; 121.9 cms x 167.6 cms provenance: Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto/Calgary Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$8,000–12,000

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tGERSHON ISKOWITZ Gershon Iskowitz’s art was forever changed after a 1967 Canada Council grant allowed him to charter an aircraft to fly over the sub-Arctic landscape and the coast of Hudson Bay. His iconic paintings have roots in this episode, and channel both the literal vision and ephemeral sensation of catching fleeting glimpses of the ground through gaps in the cloudscape. Blue Red-H was painted in 1980, 13 years after his first important flight, by which time his artistic vocabulary of blips had been well established. This particular example is more subdued chromatically than other canvases by Iskowitz, mainly constrained to two pigments, red and blue. It is a study in cool and warm, with the crimson blips racing towards the viewer, while the azure background recedes. A strong juxtaposition of colour, and a feast for the eyes. Proceeds from the sale of this lot to benefit the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation.

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6 GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A. BLUE RED-H, 1980 oil on canvas signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 48 ins x 42 ins; 121.9 cms x 106.7 cms provenance: Artist’s Studio, Gershon Iskowitz Foundation

$10,000–15,000

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tJEAN PAUL RIOPELLE Accompanied by excellent provenance, this expressive pastel was first in the possession of the Pierre Matisse Gallery. Matisse—the son of the artist Henri and his wife Amélie—was one of the most influential dealers of modern and contemporary art at the middle of the 20th century and was instrumental in the careers of Balthus, Marc Chagall, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Georges Rouault, and Yves Tanguy, as well as Riopelle. Indeed, Matisse gave Riopelle his debut American show in 1954 at his New York gallery. After the gallery’s closure in 1989, Acquavella Gallery in Reno, Nevada became the primary source for Riopelle’s art in the United States, and also handled the sale of this particular pastel. Riopelle is often remembered as a pure painter, but he was wonderfully multifaceted, working in diverse media including sculptures, prints, pastels and drawings. He began working in pastel in the early 1960s on the urging of Sam Szafran, the artist who chiselled Riopelle’s bronzes for his exhibition at Galerie Jacques Dubourg, then at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Szafran would also assist Riopelle with his collage works in 1967.

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7 JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE, R.C.A. UNTITLED, 1968 pastel on paper signed and inscribed “PM” sight 23 ins x 35 ins; 58.4 cms x 88.9 cms provenance: Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, NY Acquavella Modern Art, Reno, NV Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Catalogue raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, tome 4, 1966-1971, cat. no. 1968.041P, p.379

$30,000–40,000

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t KENT MONKMAN Well-known for his retelling of art history from an Indigenous perspective, Cree artist Kent Monkman playfully interjects queer Indigenous imagery into his magnificent largescale painted landscapes. They mirror 19th century classical paintings and shift colonial narratives that either misrepresented or erased Indigenous Peoples’ historical presence. These satirical paintings facetiously insert erotic queer Indigenous characters, such as Monkman’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, in order to reimagine a world where queer and Two-Spirit identities thrived and continue to flourish. Two-Spirit is an umbrella term for Indigenous Peoples whose gender expressions and sexualities sit outside Western notions of gender construction and sexuality. It is an expansive identity, with diverse experiences and understandings that are exclusive to Indigenous ancestral knowledges. This type of representation has rarely been showcased in visual culture and mass media and therefore, Monkman’s artistic practice is deeply profound to queer Indigenous or Two-Spirit communities. His rising popularity signals that these types of stories need to be told, while filling the gap of Two-Spirit voices that have been historically silenced. Study for Sunday in the Park (Dandies) draws inspiration from George Seurat’s 34

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A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884), a large-scale pointillism painting that embraces the luxurious lifestyle of aristocratic Parisians who unwind at a suburban park. Monkman’s study for this image depicts Indigenous nobles in colonial garb, with beaver top hats, extravagant foxtail coats in conjunction with loincloths and Indigenous regalia. They sit serenely in reflection as they stare off into a fictional horizon, akin to the stereotypical stoic Indigenous pose. They are Indigenous dandies— fashionable, carefree and pensive. In using this imagery, Monkman invites viewers to dream of a world that may have existed but has never been portrayed. This sketch creates a beautiful narrative as a gentle protest that demonstrates that queer Indigenous and Two-Spirit presence can be normalized and celebrated in art history. Adrienne Huard is a Two-Spirit/ Indigiqueer Anishinaabekwe curator, art critic, scholar and performer. She is a citizen of Couchiching First Nation, Ontario, and born and raised in Miiskwaagamiwiziibiing/Winnipeg. In September 2020, she began the PhDlevel program in Indigenous studies at University of Manitoba. We thank her for contributing this essay. VIEW THIS LOT


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8 KENT MONKMAN STUDY FOR SUNDAY IN THE PARK (DANDIES), 2010 graphite on acid free paper signed and dated 12 ins x 17.5 ins; 30.5 cms x 44.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, British Columbia

$7,000–9,000

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tALFRED LALIBERTÉ Chiefly remembered as one of Quebec’s finest sculptors, Laliberté produced hundreds of paintings as well. It is fitting that this painting depicts both of the artist’s muses, one holding the sculptor’s mallet, the other the painter’s palette. Behind them, the two artforms are repeated more literally. While neither painting nor sculpture were strictly represented by any of the nine muses in the classical Greek canon, European painters have long depicted these crafts through the use of the female form.

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t 9 ALFRED LALIBERTÉ, R.C.A. SANS TITRE (LA SCULPTURE ET LA PEINTURE), CA.1943 oil on canvas board signed 24 ins x 17.5 ins; 61 cms x 44.5 cms provenance: Galerie Valentin, Montreal, QC Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$1,500–2,000

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tMOLLY LAMB BOBAK One of two equestrian-themed works in this auction (see lot 1 - Sybil Andrews, In Full Cry) , this painting likely depicts a day at the races at the Wilmot Downs racetrack in Fredericton, NB. Bobak’s daughter Anny stabled her horse at Wilmot Downs, and the artist made several scenes of the venue. Bobak had a lifelong affection for animals, having grown up on the family farm on the south shore of Burnaby Lake, BC. Bobak’s interest in the work of the European modernists can be strongly felt in this canvas, particularly the energetic work of Edgar Degas. While Bobak’s work never leapt entirely into abstraction, Harness Racing shows the artist’s focus shifting from the more literal work from her wartime period into a more formal focus on line and colour. The jockeys and their horses are rendered using brief brushstrokes, reduced almost to a blur. Bobak explained to curator Joan Murray that she had “always been interested in informal movement— blowing wild flowers, parades, protests, crowds on the street, crowds anywhere; just as long as they turn into painting space in my head.”

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10 MOLLY LAMB BOBAK, R.C.A. HARNESS RACING oil on board signed; titled and initialed on the reverse 30 ins x 40 ins; 76.2 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Acquired from the artist Joyner Fine Art, 14 May 1990, lot 83 Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$10,000–12,000

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LILLIAN t FREIMAN Brittany attracted tourists and artists alike, due to its charming scenery as well as for the traditional way of life that the locals continued to practice. A picturesque subject for artists, the customary Breton dress can be seen in this painting. Freiman often made portraits of Bretons in her work from this period, but maintained a particular interest in scenes from the marketplace. When Freiman relocated to New York City in 1939, she would again rekindle her interest in portraying the hurly burly of bustling scenes by painting orchestras and onstage performances. In Marché en Bretagne, the artist’s limited palette has the effect of converting the crowd into a rhythmic pattern. This transforms a composition that should be rather chaotic into something more lyrical through Freiman’s use of economical red outlines and repetitive blue forms.

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11 LILLIAN FREIMAN MARCHÉ EN BRETAGNE, CA.1935 pastel on paper signed 29.5 ins x 35.25 ins; 74.9 cms x 89.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Quebec

$3,000–5,000

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tPEGI NICOL MACLEOD Pegi Nicol MacLeod moved to New York in 1937. Mounted Police on City Street, N.Y. captures the grittiness and vitality of the New York streets and everyday life that she is emblematic of her oeuvre. Perhaps a view from her window, an oblique perspective gives the viewer a sidelong glimpse of the busy street, filtered through a quintessentially New York fire escape. This is no stylized postcard, but rather an unvarnished, almost documentary representation. A favoured subject matter was the crowded street — figures spilling out of the canvas painted with vibrant colours and strong, assured strokes and curving lines. MacLeod applied for a fellowship at the Guggenheim Foundation in 1942 and again in 1943, where she wished for “an unencumbered year of day in day out painting of New York City subjects...the push-carts, the ice-man, the flower wagon, the open markets, and the hand-ball games.” 1 It is this commitment to painting with an unwavering gaze that made her such a vital force in the canon of modern Canadian art. MacLeod observes her surroundings with fierce vitality and captures the reality of the world as it is. MacLeod gave birth to her daughter Jane the same year she moved to New York. On the reverse of this work is a painting of a little girl, likely Jane, sucking on her thumb. Jane was a frequent subject for MacLeod - in a letter dated 1944, she wrote “I have come to the place where I must paint my daughter or bust.” Here she is nestled under a blanket, with an alternate view of her in the background, almost like a vision in a dream. 1

Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Guggenheim Fellowship Applications, 1942 and 1943

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12 PEGI NICOL MACLEOD MOUNTED POLICE ON CITY STREET, N.Y. (RECTO); GIRL SUCKING HER THUMB (PROBABLY THE ARTIST’S DAUGHTER) (VERSO) double-sided oil on board 24 ins x 20 ins; 61 cms x 50.8 cms Provenance: Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, QC Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$4,000–6,000 52

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tWILLIAM KURELEK Kurelek continues to amaze with the breadth of his subject matter. No incident too small, here the painter turns his wry gaze to the aftermath of a child’s mishap. Lye is traditionally made by steeping wood ashes in water, a process which forms a caustic solution ideal for use in soap or cleaning products. Chemical burns can occur when lye meets unprotected skin, which appears to be what our unfortunate toddler has done to himself, evidenced by the open container and cupboard door ajar. Eric Andrew-Gee, writing in The Globe and Mail, describes Kurelek’s work as having a “stubborn humanity,” and while some of his scenes portray less-than-rosy subjects, they are typically rendered with a wink, a degree of hope and a sunny palette. Less cautionary tale and more family album, one wonders if Sitting on Lye is a self-portrait of sorts, or the opener of a bemused “remember that time when…” sort of story.

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13 WILLIAM KURELEK (1927-1977) SITTING ON LYE, 1973 mixed media signed and dated; titled on the reverse 7.9 ins x 7.1 ins; 20 cms x 18 cms Provenance: Private Collection, British Columbia

$12,000–16,000

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NORVAL MORRISSEAU t

Prolific artist and original member of the “Indian Group of Seven,” Norval Morrisseau created works in which Anishinaabe mythology, aesthetics and life came together on canvas. Drawing onlookers into the worlds he painted in acrylic, Morrisseau’s flair for storytelling and hidden nuance elevate his works beyond initial realization to something deeply profound and personal. Completed in 1987, The Merman is a visually captivating and technically unique work by Morrisseau. Painted directly onto deer hide, and assumed to be one of only five other deer hide canvas paintings done by the artist, The Merman honours the Anishinaabe water spirit beings called Nibiinaabeg who appear within Anishinaabe mythology as teachers and helpers, and have their own Clan under the Giishkizhigwan. The Nibiinaabe represented in the painting is shown wearing a medicine pouch around his neck, which can be interpreted as a healing gesture or as a means of providing safety to those who hold onto the painting. The many fish seen depicted in the merman’s belly indicates the painting could have been made as a medicine painting to bring about fruitful fishing seasons or as a call for abundance to be provided. The merman, who is painted in the iconic Woodland Style that Morrisseau is known for, is a unique figure differing from much of Morrisseau’s other work by appearing alone, without any thought lines or additional beings. This makes this painting a standout amongst his other works and provides a deep intrigue into what the artist himself was conveying through this choice. Emma Steen is a freelance curator and writer, as well as the Community Relations Manager for the Indigenous Curatorial Collective. Her area of interest lies in art that explores bodies, sex and love with anti-colonial intention. We thank her for contributing this essay. Certificate of authenticity from E.A. Studios, Jasper signed by Galal Helmy will be provided to the purchaser.

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15 NORVAL MORRISSEAU THE MERMAN, 1987 acrylic on deer skin signed in syllabics 17 ins x 38 ins; 43.2 cms x 96.5 cms provenance: E.A. Studios Jasper Ltd., Jasper, AB, purchased 2006 Private Collection, Ontario

$12,000–16,000

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CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF t

For the first time in nearly a century, an exceptionally rare winter landscape in nighttime by Cornelius Krieghoff has left its distinguished family collection. Fresh to market, Moonlight echoes Krieghoff’s majestic 1851 masterpiece, White Horse Inn by Moonlight, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, with its full moon rising over a snow-covered landscape, accentuating heaven and earth with dramatic chiaroscuro. Each edifice in the paintings’ frigid landscapes offers a welcome haven to settlers on the road and to Krieghoff’s clientele attuned to picturesque details.

the first prize for oil painting in the 1854 Provincial Exhibition in Quebec City, and had ambitions to paint a panorama of Canada. As his professional ambition expanded, Krieghoff’s framing of the landscape also expanded. His paintings became more enveloping, evocative and compositionally sophisticated, as seen in Moonlight, The Passing Storm, Saint-Férréol (1854) in the National Gallery of Canada, and the Thomson Collection’s After the Ball, Chez Jolifou (1856).

From forgeries in his lifetime to Kent Monkman’s pastiches in ours, Krieghoff’s art has been a vital presence in the history of Canadian art since the Seventeenth-century northern Caravaggesque late 19th century. He remains relevant as a key landscape paintings like those of Adam Elsheimer figure in the understanding and constant renewal flowed into early Romantic expression, to become of its history. A century before Moonlight the foundation for Moonlight. This foundation entered Waddington’s saleroom, it hung on the was laid with the knowledge of historical and walls of 24 Sussex Drive, when it was a private contemporary European painting Krieghoff had residence. Its owner, William Cameron Edwards, gained at first-hand on a study trip to Europe in was a captain of the eastern Ontario lumber 1844-1846 where he made copies after historic industry, a member of Parliament, and then a artists and contemporaries such as Curtius senator until his death in 1921. He owned multiple Grolig, whose marine night-piece was copied by Krieghoffs, as did his sister-in-law, and Canada’s Krieghoff and influenced these paintings. While first female senator, Cairine Reay Wilson. After moonlit scenes became common in Canada at Edwards’ death, Moonlight was acquired in the society exhibitions late in the nineteenth1923 from his estate sale by his brother-incentury, Krieghoff is to be credited for making law, Reginald Clarence Wilson. From Wilson, this type of image part of Canadian iconography a the painting passed down to its consignors, to generation earlier. Works like Moonlight presage Waddington’s, and is on offer for the first time the tonal moonlit nocturnes by James McNeill since Mackenzie King was in his first term as Whistler, and made part of Canadian art history Prime Minister. by Maurice Cullen and Clarence Gagnon in the Gregory Humeniuk is an independent art historian, writer and late 19th and early 20th century. curator who has researched and published aspects of Canadian

Moonlight was, speculatively, painted around 1855: that is, in the moment of White Horse Inn by Moonlight, and the time of Krieghoff’s move from Montréal to Québec City. At that point, Krieghoff was exhibiting in New York and Philadelphia, won 62

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and international art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, as well as cultural policy and governance. Through fifteen years at the Art Gallery of Ontario he dealt with Canadian and European historical, modern, and contemporary art. We thank him for contributing this essay.


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16 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF MOONLIGHT oil on canvas signed 17.75 ins x 27.25 ins; 45.1 cms x 69.2 cms provenance: W. Scott & Sons, Montreal label on reverse Estate of William Cameron Edwards Collection of Reginald Clarence Wilson and Martha Wilson, Ottawa, ON By descent to present Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$125,000–175,000

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P t ETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD Sheppard viewed himself as an observer, as well as a chronicler of society. Quotidian subjects delighted the artist, and many of his major canvases show factory workers, carriage drivers, and labourers. This particular canvas takes Sheppard off the street and into the glittering world of Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre. The artist has chosen to omit a view of the stage, preferring to set his gaze on the well-heeled audience—evidently more interesting than the night’s entertainment. Sheppard’s earlier work from the 1920s had expressed a more extroverted approach in depicting his subjects, while his paintings from the 1930s tend to have more reserve, subsumed into “an interest in conveying emotion through tone and ephemeral forms...all the better to set down the deeply human and timeless qualities of his subjects.” 1 1

Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work, Firefly Books, p.203.

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17 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. THE LOGE - ROYAL ALEXANDRA THEATRE, TORONTO, CA.1939 oil on canvas with Estate stamp on stretcher 36 ins x 30.25 ins; 91.4 cms x 76.8 cms provenance: Estate of the artist Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$20,000–30,000

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tPAUL PEEL We are pleased to offer two paintings by Peel in this auction (also see lot 19). Peel spent the spring and summer of 1881 in Pont-Aven, Brittany, a village which attracted tourists and painters alike due to the enduring traditional culture of the inhabitants as well as its picturesque vistas. Peel sent four paintings made during this sojourn back to his father in Canada, which would be exhibited in the second annual exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. French influences infused Peel’s work, notably in his choice of subject matter: rural peasants, children and nudes. Here, the subject is a charming scene of a child playing with a toy ship on his stoop. In a town bisected by the Aven River, a boy playing with a boat on dry land suggests that he is patiently waiting for a friend, or perhaps reliving the day’s adventures.

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18 PAUL PEEL, R.C.A. THE YOUNG SAILOR, 1881 oil on canvas signed, dated and inscribed “Brittany” 18 ins x 12 ins; 45.7 cms x 30.5 cms provenance: Laing Galleries, Toronto, purchased 7 November 1955 by Mr. Gordon McMillan, Q.C., Toronto (with original bill of sale) By descent to Private Collection Private Collection, Ontario

$30,000–50,000

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tPAUL PEEL In 1887, Peel began studying with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, a French painter best known for his exotic portraits and Orientalist subject matter. Constant’s influence gave Peel’s work a new assurance and worldliness, and would introduce Peel to a subject that would bring him much acclaim: the nude. Peel would exhibit two works at the Salon of 1889, both depicting nude subjects. One of these, The Modest Model, won an honourable mention, a veritable coup for a young artist. One year later, Peel’s After the Bath, depicting two nude children drying themselves by a fire, would prove to be a major success, receiving critical acclaim and a third-class medal. Female Nude with Floral Wreath comes from this period in Peel’s career, which would unfortunately be around the end of his output, as he died of an infection in 1892, aged 32. At the time of his death, Peel was one of Canada’s best-known painters in Europe, and his depictions of the human body are among his most famous.

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19 PAUL PEEL, R.C.A. FEMALE NUDE WITH FLORAL HEAD WREATH, CA.1887 oil on canvas signed 29 ins x 21 ins; 73.7 cms x 53.3 cms provenance: Dominion Corinth Galleries Ltd., Ottawa, ON Imperial Oil Art Collection Joyner Waddington’s, Canadian Fine Art, 6 Dec 2005, lot 22 Private Collection, Ontario

$40,000–60,000

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tMICHAEL SNOW These lots have been withdrawn from the auction and will be donated by the Estate to a major Canadian public institution.

MICHAEL SNOW, R.C.A. FORTY DRAWINGS, 1961 MICHAEL SNOW, R.C.A. GIRL, 1961

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tMICHAEL SNOW This lot has been withdrawn from the auction and will be donated by the Estate to a major Canadian public institution.

MICHAEL SNOW, R.C.A. RECLINING FIGURE, 1955

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tJEAN ALBERT MCEWEN Compagnon de Silence #1 was produced the same year that Jean McEwen began to dedicate himself solely to painting, and is a potent demonstration of his expressive mastery of the medium. Using glossy, translucent layers of thick paint, McEwen creates a subtle and absorbing play of colour and emotion. The central space is dominated by warm, roiling browns that emerge from painted layers of steamy white fogs. Green bars at the edges of the canvas radiate with the vivid patina of weathered copper, bounding and structuring the piece with a burnished glow. Half-buried furrows of verdigris emerge from the deep-hued expanse. The larger-than-life field seems to flex and push outwards against the squared-off canvas, resisting a neat geometric structure. The overall effect is a visual encounter that is both dynamic and contemplative, perhaps even meditative.

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23 JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN, R.C.A. COMPAGNON DE SILENCE #1, 1973 oil on canvas signed, titled, and dated to the flap 72 ins x 72 ins; 182.9 cms x 182.9 cms provenance: Marlborough-Godard, Toronto/Montreal The Helen and Walter Zwig Foundation Collection, Toronto, ON

$50,000–70,000

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tJOSEPH DRAPELL A Joseph Drapell painting is immediately recognizable, with its signature striations layered over vibrant colours. Drapell’s innovative techniques and aesthetic, including the invention of a moveable, broad paint-spreading rake to create his “compression technique,” helped bring his work international attention in the 1970s and 80s. His work is characterized by high-keyed, glossy colour and built-up surfaces. The purple and blue pearlescent acrylic gracefully swoops over a sunset-hued background in Limelight (lot 25), giving the work depth and an unparalleled vibrancy. It was exhibited in New York in 2000 in the seminal exhibition of the New New Painters. A term coined by members Graham Peacock and John Gittens in the early 1990s, the New New Painters raised money to rent the historical Armory, the site of the famous Armory Show of 1913, for their exhibition. Their goal was the ”wholehearted commitment to the art of painting and its capacity to communicate deep and powerful personal feelings through form and colour.” It was intended to counter the dominance of conceptualism, instead hoping to bring the focus back to the physicality of art and the feelings that colour can convey. Their practice was driven by new developments in paint technology - non-yellowing acrylic gels, metallics, hologram paint, and pearlescents. These materials can be layered differently, in a way that is not possible with oils. Drapell and his colleagues were steadfast in their commitment to contribute to the canon of art history and question larger issues of humankind rather than conforming to trends of pure abstraction. The inspiration for Cyprus Avenue (lot 24), the artist tells us, was Van Morrison’s hit song of the same name. The song combines a synergy of folk-blues, jazz, and classical music, layered under the singer’s crooning about memories of growing up in Belfast. When we look to Drapell’s painting, we see that the artist has aptly layered together a confluence of vibrant colours united by a subtle grey iridescence overlay that mirrors the lyrical quality of Van Morrison’s song.

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24 JOSEPH DRAPELL, R.C.A. CYPRUS AVENUE (VAN MORRISON), 2005 acrylic and holographic additives, with rhinestones on canvas signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 48 ins x 36 ins; 121.9 cms x 91.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$4,000–6,000

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25 JOSEPH DRAPELL, R.C.A. LIMELIGHT, 1998 acrylic on canvas signed, titled, and dated to the overflap 34.5 ins x 48.75 ins; 87.6 cms x 123.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON exhibited: “New New Painters: The Real Avant Garde,” 69th Regiment Armory, New York, NY, 16-23 May 2000

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JACK HAMILTON BUSH t

The singular pointed figure in Green Up is a positive sign, the kind of shape and colour that screams: go! Kelly green is associated with vigour and upward progress, like the fresh shoots of nature in the springtime. This lively green is also emblematic of Ireland, where the artist and his wife had traveled to in 1969. Green Up is one of only four paintings that Jack Bush made in December 1970. The last painting he made that year, titled Down, included multiple ‘dart’ shapes diving downward. By comparison, and name, Green Up feels optimistic. There is a patrimony to the ‘dart’ featured in Green Up. In April 1969, Bush was diagnosed with angina. This heart condition is often accompanied with feelings of intermittent tightness in the chest. Bush experienced spasms of pain in sharp succession, like a flutter of darts, which he expressed in his abstract paintings of the time. While Bush’s ‘Spasm’ series was born from a negative physical hardship, the colours he used were light, fun and downright happy. Painting was always cathartic for the artist. It was a stage upon which he could exert control and conjure levity. The cheerful green colour in Green Up is reinforced on the right side of the canvas by the two forward-slashing bars in primary blue and red, side-by-side. The appearance of conjoined colour bars is reminiscent of the highly original Series ‘D’ paintings that spanned 1969-70. The way in which Bush snuggled up the red bar

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against the blue bar in Green Up suggests a kind of symbiotic relationship between these shapes and this technique of riding one colour off the belly or back of another is seen in many of the colour bars that Bush featured in paintings such as Series ‘D’ April Blue (April 1970) and Series ‘D’ Upway (June 1970). An optical effect is created when such strong colours are placed in close proximity to each other. The sharp contrast of blue against red creates an afterimage in the viewer’s eye. The effect is not unlike Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square paintings, which he mastered between 1949 and 1976. Albers expertly placed colour next to colour like a set of nesting boxes for pure optical delight. While Bush, like Albers, made great visual effects with few colours, Green Up is, however, an exemplar of Bush’s style, which is wide-ranging. He has united key aspects from two of his important series – the ‘Spasm’ and Series ‘D’ paintings. This kind of hybridization of styles is just one reason why Bush’s paintings are never redundant, no matter how simple they may seem to be. Bush’s clarity of vision and eye for colour makes so much of his work enduringly contemporary. Green Up is, remarkably, more than fifty years young and, by all appearances, it continues to march confidently into the future.


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t26 JACK HAMILTON BUSH, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. GREEN UP, 1970 acrylic/polymer on canvas signed, titled, dated “December 1970,” and inscribed “Toronto” on the reverse 89.25 ins x 39.5 ins; 226.7 cms x 100.3 cms Provenance: The artist (December 1970 - May 1971) Leslie Waddington, Waddington Galleries, London, UK Waddington Galleries, Montreal, QC Downstairs Gallery, Edmonton, AB Private Collection, Edmonton, AB Exhibited: “Group Exhibition” Theo Waddington Gallery, Montreal, 1974 “Jack Bush in Edmonton Collections,” Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, AB, 1988 “Aspects of Abstraction,” Fine Arts Building Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 2007

$250,000–350,000

We thank Dr. Sarah Stanners for contributing this essay. Dr. Stanners is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is an independent art historian and curator who has dedicated 10 years to the forthcoming Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné as both author and director of this major work of scholarship. In 2014 she co-curated the Jack Bush retrospective exhibition for the National Gallery of Canada and from 2015 to 2018 was the Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

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ULYSSE COMTOIS t The pointillism begun by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac was brought to its fullest expression by Ulysse Comtois. Fascinated by the energy that could be created by chromatic juxtapositions, by the 1970s Comtois began exploding the tight precision of his predecessors, releasing any sense of figuration or narrative in favour of pure buzzing sensation. Expressing an interest in revisiting Mondrian’s legacy, Comtois returned to two-dimensional painting after a decade spent working with welded metal and wood. Mondrian is oft remembered for his formal vocabulary of primary colours and values as well as his self-confinement to strict, gridlike compositions, but some of his earliest landscape work included forays into pointillism. Comtois’s vast colourfields echo both Mondrian’s early technique and his signature organizing grids, cleverly fusing the artist’s young career with his mature style. Ever original, Comtois’s softened Mondrian’s influences within his own work, as if viewing them through a kaleidoscopic lens. He cannily tethered his work to the material world by way of his titles, lest the viewer float away on a sea of abstraction. The evocative Couleurs d’Été (lot 28) and Au Jardin en Automne (lot 27) bring to mind memories of seasonal light and foliage, and thus, in their expressionistic way, cleave towards the rich Canadian landscape tradition, and swing back around to Mondrian’s early work.

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27 ULYSSE COMTOIS AU JARDIN EN AUTOMNE, 1982 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘82; also signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 60 ins x 72 ins; 152.4 cms x 182.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$25,000–35,000

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28 ULYSSE COMTOIS COULEURS D’ÉTÉ, 1980 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘80; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 59.5 ins x 59.25 ins; 151.1 cms x 150.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$20,000–30,000

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tALFRED JOSEPH CASSON In 1966, at the urging of A.Y. Jackson, A.J. Casson accompanied him on a rare trip outside of Ontario to do some sketching, visiting the area around Grenville, Québec, just across the Ottawa River. Casson was very taken with the area and returned every summer after his first trip, up until 1974. This sketch, from his second trip into the area, shows a scene Casson was masterfully skilled at capturing; autumn foliage, dark distant hills and a brewing storm overhead. The small white church tucked just off the side of the road awaits, ready to take in a painter should the storm overcome him.

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t

29

ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. COUNTRY CHURCH - NEAR GRENVILLE, QUE., 1967 oil on board signed; also signed, titled, and dated to label on the reverse 12 ins x 14.9 ins; 30.5 cms x 37.8 cms Provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$25,000–35,000

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t CLARENCE ALPHONSE GAGNON Although best known for his definitively Canadian scenes, Gagnon travelled throughout Europe during the height of his artistic output. While living and training in Paris, he gained a mentor in fellow Canadian Impressionist, James Wilson Morrice. Taking walks together along the Seine, Morrice encouraged Gagnon to capture the essence of a moment. During this period, Gagnon produced works with decidedly European content for both Canadian and European audiences. After exhibiting successfully at the prestigious Salon des Champs-Elysée, he returned to Canada an award-winning artist with a new international audience. Tinzen is a small town, with a current population of just over 300, nestled in the canton of Grisons in eastern Switzerland. Gagnon travelled from France to Switzerland in 1926-27, resulting in several pochades. It is easy to see how the painter was charmed by the rugged mountains and lush greens that cradle this small village, anchored by the church, Katholische Kirche Son Plasch, at the centre of the composition.

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30 CLARENCE ALPHONSE GAGNON, R.C.A. TINZEN (GRISONS), SUISSE, 1927 oil on panel titled, dated, and certified by Lucile Rodier Gagnon (no.471), Paris, 1946 on the reverse 6.25 ins x 9 ins; 15.9 cms x 22.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario $9,000–12,000

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FRANK HANS JOHNSTON t An original member of the Group of Seven, Franz Johnston is known as a master painter of light. He painted most often in oils, but it is in his works in tempera paint that his Art Nouveau influences really shine. A simple scene of a small cabin in a dense forest reveals his very keen eye for colour where the myriad shades of blue contrast with the warm glow of sunlight on snow and the rays peeking through the gaps in the tall red-trunked pine trees. While former colleagues like Lawren Harris moved toward the modernism of the 20th century, Johnston instead moved backward in time. His work increasingly took on the narrative qualities of classic 19th century landscapes. This offering, Cabin in Snowy Woods, captures the dreamy point at which the two traditions intersect. There is something not-of-this-world about the small structure perched on the edge of a commanding forest. The lonely, blueish tint offers a counterpoint to what may be his most famous piece, Shack in the Woods. Maybe something can be taken from the fact that the cabin in snowy woods is throwing up no smoke from a fire - unlike its counterpart, it is unoccupied. It stands alone.

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31 FRANK HANS JOHNSTON, O.S.A., R.C.A. CABIN IN SNOWY WOODS tempera on board signed 18.75 ins x 13 ins; 47.6 cms x 33 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

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tJAMES EDWARD HERVEY MACDONALD The year 1913 was a seminal one for J.E.H. MacDonald and the Group of Seven. MacDonald invited A.Y. Jackson to Toronto, who arrived in the spring of that year. The Studio Building was freshly opened and would become the Group’s meeting place. MacDonald and Lawren Harris also saw a Scandinavian art exhibition at the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., which re-energized and inspired them as Canadian landscape painters. In late September, the two went on a trip to the Laurentians. They stayed at Hotel Daoust, in St. Jovite, north of Montréal. MacDonald was very taken with the new scenery, so much so that he scoped out places for a future cottage property. Of the Laurentians he remarked that “the colouring is very fine. The trees are well turned, and I have never seen such brilliance of colour or such masses of it… I wish we could live in these Laurentians for a few months. They are full of the most inspiring motifs for an artist….” 1 Unfortunately he did not spend as much time as he would have liked in the region, so few canvases exist. In this sketch, the rich ochres of the autumn trees and ground cover are paired with the cool tones of the mountains as they recede into the background. Here MacDonald succeeds in capturing nature’s palette that so inspired him. 1

Paul Duval, The Tangled Garden: The Art of J.E.H. MacDonald,

Cerebrus/Prentice-Hall, Scarborough, Ontario, 197

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32 JAMES EDWARD HERVEY MACDONALD, O.S.A., R.C.A. LAURENTIANS, 1913 oil on board signed, titled, and dated 1913 on the reverse 6.25 ins x 9.25 ins; 15.9 cms x 23.5 cms provenance: Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto, ON Private Collection, Ontario

$20,000–30,000

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t ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON

Jackson’s lifetime of travels across Canada produced a wonderful record of the nation’s landscape, people and industry. Here the artist’s double-sided sketch shows two parts of the country. The recto depicts a rarely recorded part of Northwestern Ontario near Red Lake at the Hasaga Gold Mine operation (active from 1938 – 1952). The verso appears to be a sketch of the Alberta foothills – a part of our country that Jackson visited many times on his sketching trips. In A Painter’s Country, Jackson speaks about these two locations in nearly the same breath when describing his concerns about the foregrounds in his sketches – a possible indication of how he determined the recto and verso of this double-sided sketch: “…the foothills of Alberta, with the mountains as a background, afford the artist endless material. The foregrounds are a problem, because so often there is nothing but a few weeds, scrub or stubble to get hold of….In Northern Ontario the foregrounds are so crowded it is usually a matter of eliminating or simplifying much of the material.” 1 1

Jackson, Alexander Young, A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson,

p.146-147

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33 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. HASAGA MINE, RED LAKE, ONT. oil on panel signed; with a sketch on the reverse 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.3 cms provenance: Laing Galleries, Toronto, ON Joyner Waddington’s, Toronto, 3 Dec 2002, lot 180 Joyner Waddington’s, Toronto, 22 Nov 2010, lot 78 Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$15,000–25,000

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verso


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CLARENCE ALPHONSE GAGNON Beach Scene, t St. Malo is an early gem by Gagnon for Beach Scene, St. Malo came from Lefranc et that sparkles with his influences and achievements up to 1907, and flashes to his later career-defining views of rural Quebec. Three years before, in 1904, a 23-year-old Gagnon left Canada for his first study trip to Europe. Having trained in Montreal under Edmond Dyonet and William Brymner, his precocity needed a bigger opportunity, and Paris was the place. Gagnon developed steadily there and, after three years of effort, his artistry vaulted in Saint-Malo in the summer of 1907.

Cie., the same Paris colour merchant patronized by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Braque. Another Gagnon canvas of the same size in a private collection suggests a painting place near the same cliffs in different weather and with a distinct pastel palette akin to some of Claude Monet’s paintings of Brittany and Normandy. A third, Rocks, St. Briac, Brittany, is an expressive view of rocks being beaten by sea and storm. Now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, it was boldly acquired from Snug against the bottom of the picture plane, the 1909 Ontario Society of Artists exhibition by three women are atop a rocky outcropping Canada’s foremost print connoisseur, collector overlooking a bay on a blustery summer day in of Gagnon’s prints, and driving force behind the Brittany. Turquoise water separates them from establishment of the Art Museum of Toronto Saint-Malo as boats in full sail head toward the (now, Art Gallery of Ontario) and Royal Ontario English Channel. Along the horizon are Grand-Bé Museum, Sir Edmund Walker. on the left and Saint-Malo in centre identifiable by the spire of its Cathédrale Saint-Vincent, In Beach Scene, St. Malo, Gagnon captured the and its jetty, Môle des Noires, terminated by its contrast of the cool turquoise waters of the lighthouse. English Channel in a deft mix of cobalt blue The standing figure is likely Katherine Irwin, and Naples yellow, with the sun-soaked rocks in whom Gagnon married in December 1907. This is Naples yellow and red ochre. As if channeling supported by his multiple studies of her around Eugène Boudin or Édouard Manet, Beach Scene, this time, and the recurrence of figures in the St. Malo manifests the humanity, light and movesame apparel in contemporary Brittany paintings. ment beloved in Impressionist painting that would continue to underpin Gagnon’s painted œuvre in One example being the woman in an identical white outfit and hat with turquoise ribbon seated Canada, in Charlevoix and the Laurentians. in the foreground of the Montreal Museum of Gregory Humeniuk is an independent art historian, Fine Arts’, The Beach at Dinard, and another writer and curator who has researched and published being two of the women seated at bottom left in aspects of Canadian and international art from the the Musée national des beaux-art du Québec’s mid-nineteenth century to the present, as well as cultural policy and governance. Through fifteen years Summer Breeze at Dinard with duplicate outfits at the Art Gallery of Ontario he dealt with Canadian and parasol as this painting. Beach Scene, St. Malo is one of a small group of exploratory beach scenes on size-8 canvases, smaller than the above works. Gagnon’s canvas 122

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and European historical, modern, and contemporary art. We thank him for contributing this essay.


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34 CLARENCE ALPHONSE GAGNON, R.C.A. BEACH SCENE, ST. MALO, 1907 oil on canvas signed and dated; dated “1907” and inscribed “No. 4” on the reverse 13.74 ins x 18 ins; 34.9 cms x 45.7 cms provenance: Private Collection, Austria

$40,000–60,000

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tPETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD Cherry Beach is one of three paintings by Sheppard in this auction (see lots 3 and 17). In the words of Tom Smart, Sheppard used the landscape as “a visual touchstone that supported an impulse to explore the purely expressive properties of colour,” an instinct on full display in this painting. Torontonians will thrill to see a local landscape rendered in such exuberant hues —a time capsule into a sunny yet blustery day at the beach. The two female subjects are Sheppard’s sister and her companion, making this painting a glimpse into the reserved artist’s inner world.

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35 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. CHERRY BEACH, TORONTO, 1912-14 oil on board titled and dated with the estate stamp on the reverse 10.5 ins x 8.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 21.6 cms provenance: The Estate of the artist Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$3,000–5,000

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tFREDERIC MARLETT BELL-SMITH Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith spent many happy days painting on the shores of Lake Mazinaw while staying at the Bon Echo Inn during trips he would make from 1911 until his death in 1923. This gave him ample opportunity to study the changing view of Mazinaw Rock as the sun moved across the sky over the course of the day. Bell-Smith’s painting shows the west-facing rock in the early hours as the sun rises behind it to burn off the blue haze of morning fog on the lake. Tiny wisps of charcoal grey paint and carefully placed white dots indicate a boat and its occupants. They also show the calmness on the lake and help to demonstrate the magnificent scale of the well-known rock formation recorded by some of Canada’s best painters and enjoyed to this day by visitors to Bon Echo Provincial Park.

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36 FREDERIC MARLETT BELL-SMITH, O.S.A., R.C.A. BLUE HAZE, BON ECHO, 1921 oil on card signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 5.5 ins x 4.5 ins; 14 cms x 11.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Windsor, ON exhibited: Bell-Smith: Three Generations, Coburg Art Gallery, Coburg, ON, 15-29 November 1969

$3,000–4,000

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tANNE MEREDITH BARRY Anne Meredith Barry records here an oft-made voyage across an inlet in Conception Bay, off the south east coast of Newfoundland between the small villages of Cupids (on the far left panel) and Bareneed (on the far right panel). The steep coastline is depicted in jewel-toned colours and freewheeling brushstrokes, busting with energy and joy. Barry was born in Toronto, only making her first visit to Newfoundland in 1971, at the age of 39. Captivated by the Maritime landscape, Barry would relocate to the province, finally settling on the Avalon Peninsula in 1986. Her pleasure in her surroundings is more than evident in this rolicking triptych, with Barry colouring her scene as vividly as her palette will allow.

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37 ANNE MEREDITH BARRY, O.S.A., R.C.A. FROM CUPIDS TO BARENEED, 1998 mixed media on paper, tripytch signed and dated overall 29.5 ins x 66 ins; 74.9 cms x 167.6 cms Provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$6,000–8,000

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tTAKAO TANABE In 1980, after an already-prolific art career living abroad and teaching, Takao Tanabe returned to his birth place of British Columbia and settled on Vancouver Island to paint full time. His focus became centred around capturing the beauty of the West Coast. Goletas Channel, for which this painting is specifically named, is on the Northern tip of Vancouver Island. There is a ferry that leaves Port Hardy, just south of the channel and continues all the way to Prince Rupert in Northern B.C. We can imagine this was a view from the ferry down the channel. Tanabe has expertly captured the mood and atmosphere of a cool, misty morning. While the painting is specifically named for its place, it evokes a grander place that is both subtle and sublime. He has treated the acrylic like watercolour, with soft washes of colour. Of his West Coast paintings, he explains that “...the views I favour are the grey mists, the rain-obscured islands and the clouds that hide the details. However much we desire order and clarity in all the details of our lives, there are always unexpected events that cloud and change our course. Life is ragged. The typical weather of the coast is like that, just enough detail to make it interesting but not so clear as to be banal or overwhelming. It can be a metaphor for life.” 1 1

Takao Tanabe, in an artist’s statement of Oct. 12, 1999, cited by Roger H. Boulet in his essay in the

exhibition catalogue Takao Tanabe: Wet Coasts and Dry Lands (Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, B.C., 2000), p.13.

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38 TAKAO TANABE GOLETAS 3/94 acrylic on canvas signed; signed, titled, and dated to the stretcher, also inscribed “Browning Passage” on the reverse 32 ins x 55 ins; 81.3 cms x 139.7 cms provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$40,000–60,000

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MIKE BAYNE t It was a balmy summer evening on Queen Street West. Two collectors and their young son had just stepped out of the heat into the cool oasis of Katharine Mulherin’s gallery, where a new exhibition of Mike Bayne’s work was underway. The Art Gallery of Ontario had recently acquired four of Bayne’s paintings and the National Gallery of Canada would soon follow suit with two of their own. It was then, and remains now, a rare treat to see the artist’s work assembled in one room.

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somewhere there too.” It is typical of Bayne to note the vegetation. He operates a farm in rural Kingston that requires constant care - the land, like each painting, demanding patient cultivation. He works in a studio overlooking his fields, daubing gravel, shingles and sky into existence with size-000 brushes, each new painting a minor miracle.

The National Gallery of Canada recently included Bayne’s work in an exhibition entitled Perspectives on Urban Spaces, “Wait,” the couple’s son exclaimed, “where where it demonstrated, in the writer are all the paintings?!” His eyes, still sunChris Hampton’s words, how a utility dazzled, hadn’t registered the tiny, rectangular pole can become “an object of sculptural pictures punctuating the walls. “Look closer,” dignity,” and a brick wall a “worthy work his parents said, “they’re there.” of Minimalism.” Bayne describes this particular painting’s “low-end building Bayne’s paintings have always compelled materials - crumbling cinder block, asphalt, us to look closer, both at them and at our aluminum siding” as “lots of fun to paint,” environments. Their attention to the world and his enjoyment in perfecting each detail is as exquisite as we would wish ours to be, is palpable. He not only humanizes this jolting us into a higher state of consciousness lowly edifice, but stirs in us a more general with their unlikely array of snowdrifts, resolution never again to overlook. strip malls, and station wagons. This small, wonderful painting, first exhibited in New Sura is from a particularly beloved period York City in 2011, is a fine example of Bayne’s in Bayne’s catalogue, when pale, luminous dazzling deadpan. Entitled Sura</em>, it skies predominated. It’s easy to see how makes an enigma of a modest Toronto garage, his wan light and virtuosic paint handling celebrating the found beauty of a structure have earned him comparisons to the Delft hiding in plain sight. master, Johannes Vermeer; certainly, few painters of any era attain such dizzying Of the painting, Bayne recalls: “This was technical or spiritually secular heights. just off the Queen West strip, somewhere This jewel-like painting, like its laneway close to Katharine (Mulherin)’s gallery. monolith, risks being missed; once seen, its Those are sumac trees on the left. I perfection is indelible. think there’s a bathtub standing upright Canadian Fine Art Auction



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39 MIKE BAYNE SURA, 2011 oil on board 8 ins x 10 ins; 20.3 cms x 25.4 cms Provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$12,000–16,000

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WANDA KOOP t Early in the new millennium, Wanda Koop, like many of us, was glued to her TV, watching the 2003 Iraq War and trying to interpret the first, fuzzy images being broadcast out of Baghdad. For weeks, CNN and Fox News ran play-by-plays of the shock-and-awe campaign and Koop found herself mesmerized by the visual complexity of the coverage. Hazy green orbs hung in the televised darkness. Flames raged under flare-riddled skies. It was unclear exactly what was happening and the murky imagery would soon become a metaphor for a nation left in the dark while its leaders waged a protracted and unnecessary war. Koop seized on the televised confusion. Her paintings typically present landscape through a technological lens – either a viewfinder or screen of some sort. In this case, she focused on the rectangular graphics hovering above footage of Iraq. Known as Chyrons, these animated shapes report on an endless stream of additional information: sports scores, stock prices, and upcoming programming. Koop dispensed with the text and kept the laconic blocks, using them to remind us of the layered lens through which we

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interpret the world. The result was one of her most iconic and beloved series: Green Zone. This arrestingly beautiful painting is part of that Green Zone series, which in 2011 culminated in a major solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. Its Day-Glo orange and ethereal taupe are among the artist’s signature colours, while the soft blue, green, and violet Chyrons, hanging like windows in the sky, are unmistakable trademarks of the Green Zone period. Even as it flickers with conflict, the painting delights the eye, keeping its viewer toggling between sharp, frontal abstraction and a bay that Koop recalls having seen televised at the time. She points out that harbours like this one recur throughout her work, perhaps owing to the time she spent living in places like Rotterdam – Europe’s largest port – or travelling the length of the Saint Lawrence River aboard a commercial container ship in preparation for her equally seminal SEEWAY series. In Koop’s work, the harbour is a place of possibility and of deep reflection, a departure point and a safe haven. In its presence we are elsewhere, and always, acutely, home.


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40 WANDA KOOP UNTITLED (GREEN ZONE SERIES), 2006 acrylic on canvas titled to gallery label 30 ins x 40 ins; 76.2 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Galerie Division, Montreal, QC Private Collection, Ontario

$18,000–24,000

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t DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD Blackwood’s hometown of Wesleyville, Newfoundland might well be described as the artist’s true muse, so often does it form the inspiration for his celebrated scenes. Of the town, the artist explains that “the region is very flat and barren, the dominating features are the sea and sky.” 1 Despite wide panoramic views and the dominance of the Maritime landscape, Blackwood’s work is nearly always anchored by a human element. Here we see a couple out for a walk with their small dog, spotlit as if on stage. This halo echoes that of the rising sun, suggestive of new beginnings, or a sanctified passage.

1

Katharine Lochnan, Black Ice: David Blackwood Prints of Newfoundland,

2011, p.1

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41 DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD, O.S.A., R.C.A. WESLEYVILLE FROM BADGER QUAY, 1979 etching and aquatint, printed in colours signed, titled, dated and numbered “artist’s proof 6/10 ed. 50” image 6.75 ins x 11.75 ins; 17.1 cms x 29.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ottawa, ON

$2,500–3,500

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tDAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD The kite is a recurring motif in Blackwood’s work, allowing the artist to take a “kite’s-eye view” of the landscapes of the Maritimes. It is no stretch to see the kite as both an emblem of childhood pleasures as well as a more adult motif of freedom—to roam, to play, and to slip the surly bonds of earth. Kite making is also a well-loved tradition in Wesleyville, Newfoundland, where Blackwood grew up. Because of the strong winds that rip through the Atlantic town, children quickly learn their kites must be made strong. While typically working in a limited colour palette, Blackwood’s kite series are given a wider chromatic scope. Here, the rainbow of the kite’s bow-tie ribbons is on full display, guiding the eye up and over the sombre shoreline.

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42 DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD, O.S.A., R.C.A. MARCH ICE OFF SHORE: ERIC BISHOP’S KITE, 1998 etching signed, titled, dated, and numbered 10/75 image 14.75 ins x 35.25 ins; 37.5 cms x 89.5 cms Provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$3,000–5,000

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tALEXANDER COLVILLE Colville often approached his portraits obliquely, inserting an obfuscating detail to block out the more literal aspects of a scene. The effect of a mis-framed photograph or an outtake in the family album is mitigated by Colville’s masterful harmonization of his compositions. The artist’s renowned sense of geometry here takes precedence over the more human aspects, as if the boater got in the way of a portrait of the buoy, rather than vice versa. Another particularly Colvillian detail is, in the words of writer and curator Ray Cronin, the artist’s presentation of “a situation in which order and chaos are equal possibilities.” It slowly dawns on the viewer that the light on the buoy is out, rendering it largely useless for its intended purpose - navigation. The title of the piece can be viewed with irony, as a man-made attempt to conquer the wild ocean, to impose order on our surroundings, fails to live up to expectations.

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43 ALEXANDER COLVILLE NAVIGATION, 1995 serigraph on paper signed, dated, and numbered 67/70 image 14 ins x 15 ins; 35.6 cms x 38.1 cms Provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$4,000–6,000

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JAMES WILLIAMSON GALLOWAY MACDONALD t A pioneer of abstract work in Canada, Jock MacDonald was a founding member of Painters Eleven in 1954. He was older than most of the other members by decades, and had had a long career before the group was formed. Eastern Potentate is from a series of watercolours inspired by a trip to teach at Unesco in Holland in 1949. MacDonald was inspired by a visit to the Nusantara Museum, an Indonesian ethnographic museum in Delft, and visions of Eastern dancers, Buddhas, and batiks remained in his mind when he returned to Canada. He was “transported into a world of fantasy, exotic colour, subtle charm of design and playfulness in subject matter.” 1 Over the next three years, he would work on a series that harkens back to his Dutch sojourn. In this work, batiks are evident in the patterning of colour and the thick black lines of ink. His student, Marion Nicholl, taught him about batik in the summer of 1951. He incorporated the wax resist technique into subsequent works, including Batik (1951), a work made of dye on cotton to experiment with the automatic technique in new ways.

Eastern Potentate is more figurative than many of his automatic abstract works from this time, with the dancing ruler and side table blending into an otherworldly background with swirls and dabs of black ink layered over washes of primary colours. 1

J.W.G. Macdonald, “Reflections on a trip to the Canadian International Seminar at Breda, Holland,” Highlights

(paper of the Alberta Society of Artists, Calgary, 1950) 4:2, p.6.

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44 JAMES WILLIAMSON GALLOWAY MACDONALD, O.S.A., R.C.A. EASTERN POTENTATE, CA.1951 watercolour signed; titled to gallery label on the reverse 9.5 ins x 9.5 ins; 24.1 cms x 24.1 cms provenance: Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto exhibited: “Jock MacDonald: The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition,” Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Windsor, The Edmonton Art Gallery, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1981-82. cat. no. 69. literature: Jock MacDonald: The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Windsor, The Edmonton Art Gallery, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1981-82, illus. p.146.

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t GERALD FERGUSON Ferguson’s “task-oriented” frottage paintings are made by rolling black paint over canvas laid on top of commonplace objects such as garden hoses, chains, clotheslines, doormats and drain covers. The artist’s stated goal was to demystify the act of art production and to deconstruct its strategies, which he interrogated through literal descriptions of his methodology and/or subject matter. Claiming that his art is nothing more than what it seems to be, Ferguson was influenced by Duchamp’s statement that “an ordinary object can be elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Despite their wry intentions and quotidian origins, Ferguson’s frottage works read as elegant and refined, as beautiful as they are conceptual. Upon seeing a 2002 exhibition of Ferguson’s work, Roald Nasgaard wrote that “always there are ironies, subterfuges or inversions with regard to the proud history of abstraction, operations that nevertheless (or is it therefore?) yield profoundly moving visual poetry.”

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45 GERALD FERGUSON 1 DOOR MAT, 2006 enamel on canvas signed, titled, and dated to the overflap 35 ins x 44 ins; 88.9 cms x 111.8 cms provenance: Gallery Page & Strange, Halifax, NS Private Collection, Halifax, NS

$10,000–15,000

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tOSCAR CAHÉN The art of Oscar Cahén underwent rapid and dramatic evolution and growth in the early 1950s. By 1953 Cahén developed a dramatically different approach. In works such as this lot, the artist has combined linear drawing with bold tonal gestural mark-making wherein the broad painterly stroke simultaneously defines mass while its outer edges of that movement determine the final shape. Rather than looking back towards Paris and Cubism, these Cahén works embrace the inspiration of Abstract Expressionism: Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, William Baziotes and second generation Abstract Expressionists such as Ray Parker. The stark painterly flair of Robert Motherwell’s Spanish Elegy series is recalled by Cahén’s dramatic use of striking black marks as the scaffold around which the work is structured. So too Cahén may have been inspired by Patrick Heron and the St. Ives group, their work toured to Canada and Toronto’s Hart House courtesy of the British Council. By 1953 Cahén’s new development had leapfrogged his colleagues of Painters Eleven, works of the sort of this lot established new directions. It is an approach that becomes ubiquitous in English Canada, however primarily in the

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later 1950s in the years following Cahén’s death. These formal experiments would inspire fellow P11 members. The artist’s exhibition fortunes also dramatically increased in 1953 both in number of inclusions as well as the consequence of venue, his work was selected for inclusion in the São Paulo Art Biennial exhibiting alongside Borduas. Works such as this lot were among the most advanced sophisticated art of its day in the nation. This work was selected for inclusion in the Art Gallery of Ontario Retrospective. It may be that it was Cahén’s mastery as an illustrator that prepared him to take these new steps. Working daily with mixed media on paper, the artist has a complete ease with treating the surface of paper to forceful contrasts of dense, intense marks with whispered counterpoints of line and washes. This lot is classically composed, it pursues a recurring formal dare explored by the artist of having a lateral split left/right side of the picture and treating each side as differently as possible, yet attempting to hold it together as a unified whole. We thank the late Jeffrey Spalding for providing the essay for this lot, originally published in 2014.


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46 OSCAR CAHÉN UNTITLED watercolour and ink on wove paper 25.75 ins x 39.75 ins; 65.4 cms x 101 cms provenance: Estate of the artist Private Collection, Toronto, ON Private Collection, British Columbia Waddington’s Canadian Fine Art Auction, 26 May 2014, lot 21 Private Collection, Toronto, ON exhibited: “Oscar Cahén,” Ringling, Sarasota, 1968. literature: David Burnett, Oscar Cahén, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1983, page 52, cat. no. 52, reproduced. Iris Nowell, Painters Eleven, The Wild Ones of Canadian Art, Douglas & Mcintyre, Vancouver, 2010, page 154, reproduced in colour.

$25,000–35,000 172

Canadian Fine Art Auction


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RENÉ MARCIL René Marcil is a painter and fashion illustrator from Québec. He spent most of his professional life in New York, Paris, London and the French Riviera. After the war, his role was central to the successful launch of Christian Dior’s New Look collection in the United States. Olivier Gabet, Director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, wrote in 2018 that “Marcil’s drawings expressive and refined sketches - enable one to appreciate the dissemination of fashion trends in the media and the history of fashion illustration style.”

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Le Delarge notes that Marcil moved to Paris which “introduced him to a taste for neoplasticism, for which he used bright colors.” The Galerie l’Art Français in Montreal described his work from this period as “intense, luminous and has the quality of combining graphic design, great draftsmanship, extraordinary color, fascinating surfaces…[and] poetic feeling.” Marcil’s contemporaries took note, with Kay Kritzwiser, The Globe and Mail’s art critic from 1964-1980, writing that “he communicates the pleasure he discovers in putting down his ideas, his facility with paint and his almost epicurean device in making his luminous surfaces come together without conflict.” She also noted that his colours are “bright, unmuddied, and they come movingly together, cleared of all inessentials.” As echoed in the following excerpt from Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Paris, Art Contemporain catalogue of 2012, “the

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subject, form and flamboyant colors, Marcil’s work represents an artistic language totally in tune with the new generation’s aspirations of his time. This language was meant as a challenge to his peers...In the hybrid repertoire so typical of Marcil, a common thread is his casual painting style inspired by the daily life that it unmasks.” Later, while living in the French Riviera and Paris, Marcil evolved towards NeoExpressionism. In 1986, he wrote: “if I am talking to you about Dubuffet, Combas and Haring, it is because my work has been oriented in this direction for a long time... A contemporary artist does not paint a picture for aesthetic reasons or for the sake of beauty if you prefer. Dubuffet was the first to place social thought above the artistic work and the latter only serves to define his thought…even here in France, left-wing and right-wing politicians rejected his work, and his only supporters were writers and intellectuals. Fortunately, in Paris, there are always men (and women) who can express themselves freely because freedom of expression is something the French will never give up.” Works by Marcil are present in the permanent collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris at the Louvre, and in the Collections Nationales de France, Ministère de la Culture de France. Waddington’s thanks the Patrimoine Marcil for contributing the above essay.


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48 RENÉ MARCIL UNTITLED, CA.1975 oil on Masonite signed 24 ins x 24 ins; 61 cms x 61 cms provenance: Patrimoine Marcil Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$8,000–10,000

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49 RENÉ MARCIL UNTITLED, CA.1975 oil on Masonite signed 24 ins x 24 ins; 61 cms x 61 cms provenance: Patrimoine Marcil Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$8,000–10,000

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tJACK LEONARD SHADBOLT Coming from one of the artist’s most fertile and fully realized periods, Window has one foot in the real world, and another in a swirl of abstraction. The frame-within-a-frame is easily identified as the titular window, yet the viewer is left perpetually uncertain as to whether they are looking out from inside, or looking inside from out. Regardless, both states are subtly connected, with lines flowing through the window in a wary dialogue. It is easy to view this as a metaphor for consciousness itself, a tenuous conversation between perception and interpretation. Writer and curator Patricia Ainslie reminds us that “Shadbolt’s art was nurtured by the study of form, draughtsmanship and deliberate structuring with attention to formal principles.”1 This structure is evident in the central window, which appears to have been masked off by the artist midway through the painting process. Some areas have been worked and reworked carefully, while others are more free-flowing and spontaneous. Several of the lines are interrupted, yet the central window holds firm, resolutely dividing inside from out, regardless of which realm the viewer believes themselves to occupy. 1

Patricia Ainslie, Correspondences, Jack Shadbolt, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, 1991, pgs 18-24.

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50 JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT, R.C.A. WINDOW, 1977 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘77 28 ins x 36 ins; 71.1 cms x 91.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, British Columbia

$8,000–12,000

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t JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT Shadbolt’s riotous explosion of flowers may have its roots in the work of his mother, a dressmaker. The influence of her patterned fabric scraps found their way into several of his works, including Umbilicus, held in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in Ottawa. The work was originally part of the personal collection of the artist’s wife Doris, so one might be forgiven for sentimentally wondering if this work functioned as a painterly bouquet of sorts. Shadbolt had begun his Winter Garden series in 1961, focusing on furniture and floral arrangements. The artist experimented with still life early in his career, and this return to floral themes can be viewed as an extension of his interest in the natural world, metamorphosis and the cycles of life, currents which underpinned the breadth of his oeuvre. Shadbolt often returned to work he had made earlier, recycling and reinterpreting directions sometimes over a decade old. A. J. Kristiansen, writing about a 1990 exhibition of Shadbolt’s work explains that “the constant in Shadbolt’s image-making - the thread that binds his works over time, place and style - is the concept of a struggle between two poles of expression. Structure emerges at different moments to dominate, control the flow, only to have the spontaneous erupt forth unfettered at a later moment. The tension between design strictures and organic flux has not only informed the artist’s oeuvre but has given impetus to the dynamic of development.”

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51 JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT, R.C.A. UNTITLED (R126), 1973 gouache on paper signed and dated Sight 59.25 ins x 39.5 ins; 150.5 cms x 100.3 cms provenance: Estate of Doris Shadbolt Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, BC Private Collection, British Columbia

$10,000–15,000

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tPAUL VANIER BEAULIEU In a charming piece of serendipity, this still life by Beaulieu arrives at auction at the same time as one by his good friend Stanley Cosgrove (see lot 53). Beaulieu’s long career intersected with the dynamic revitalization and modernization of the Québec art scene, yet the artist’s direction was his own, independent of the more recognizable movements of his peers. Time spent in Paris kept him apart, with Beaulieu gaining more influence from the work of Bonnard, Dufy, Braque, Matisse and Picasso than from Borduas, Pellan or Lyman. His first exhibition in Montréal in 1945 featured harlequin figures alongside still lifes, and, in the words of Germain Lefebvre, “reflected his fondness for Cézanne’s manner of cubism, Matisse’s fauvist colour accents, Braque’s compositional strength and the clarity of Picasso’s drawing.” The still life was an enduring and important subject for Beaulieu. In 1951, the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris purchased Beaulieu’s Still Life with Yellow Bottle, the first work by a contemporary Canadian artist to be acquired by the institution. Private collectors were also captivated by Beaulieu’s still lifes, and to quote Lefebvre again, “delighted in seeing a pitcher, some fish, or pears in a fruit bowl executed in a manner akin to cubism.”

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52 PAUL VANIER BEAULIEU, R.C.A. NATURE MORTE, CA.1953 oil on canvas signed; also signed on the reverse 5.5 ins x 7 ins; 12.7 cms x 17.8 cms provenance: Galerie Valentin, Montreal, QC Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$2,000–3,000

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S t TANLEY MOREL COSGROVE Cosgrove’s still lifes were a preferred subject for the artist, alongside forests and portraits of women. Cosgrove, while maintaining a consistent artistic path, was keen to explore diverse influences. Famously, he apprenticed under Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco in Mexico City before continuing his education in France, influenced by the work of Bracque and Rouault. There is a sureness to his work, as well as a limited palette and formal simplicity that can be traced back to all three of these influences. Nature Morte was painted economically, using only the three primary colours, exploring that which could be captured alla prima.

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53 STANLEY MOREL COSGROVE, R.C.A. NATURE MORTE, 1953 oil on board signed and dated ‘53 10 ins x 12 ins; 25.4 cms x 30.5 cms Provenance: Dominion Gallery, Montreal, QC Galerie Valentin, Montreal, QC Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$1,500–2,500

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HORACE t CHAMPAGNE Horace Champagne spent many hours studying the spot where Rue Garneau meets Côte de la Fabrique in Old Québec City. He would often work in pastel en plein air on the spot and record scenes in smaller format that he wished to expand at a later date. The artist’s atmospheric talent for evoking Québec’s ancient narrow streets is on full display here. He explained, “and so, when I worked, I would say, what can I do to show the beauty of the city, Chateau Frontenac, these streets that go up and down, the snow, the slush….that’s got everybody beat in the winter. I had a lot of fun doing those street scenes at night, in the winter.” 1 A work of this size by Champagne is a rarity, making this a highly covetable piece from the master pastellist. 1

Pastel Society of the West Coast Magazine, “The Heart of an Artist” Vol.12 Is.4,

Fall 2019, p.38.

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54 HORACE CHAMPAGNE OLD FASHIONED WINTER IN QUEBEC CITY pastel on paper signed sight 48.75 ins x 59 ins; 123.8 cms x 149.9 cms provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$6,000–8,000

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t EDWARD WILLIAM (TED) GODWIN A founding member of the Regina Five, Ted Godwin spent the majority of his lifetime in Saskatchewan and Alberta. While working in pure abstraction in the 1960s when the group was active, he quickly returned to using nature as inspiration for his abstract works and then to representational painting later in his career. His most recognizable scenes of river beds, rocky shores and flowing rivers transport us into a world devoid of human intervention. As an avid fisherman, water captivated Godwin. In Spring Spirits, painted from the perspective of his boat, he has captured the sparkling waters with short dashes of turquoise blue against the flashes of russet coloured branches that edge the shoreline. The pale green buds on the trees form diaphanous shapes, like spring spirits reaching skyward from the thawing ground.

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55 EDWARD WILLIAM (TED) GODWIN, R.C.A. SPRING SPIRITS oil on canvas signed to the stretcher 47 ins x 61 ins; 119.4 cms x 154.9 cms provenance: Prominent Canadian Corporate Collection

$8,000–12,000

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tFRANCES ANNE HOPKINS Frances Anne Hopkins, nee Beechey, was born in England into a family of artists – both her father and grandfather were accomplished painters. She was taught by them and kept painting throughout her life. She married Edward Martin Hopkins and moved to Canada sometime after 1858. He worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Hopkins accompanied him on trips by canoe, sketching en pleinair. She is perhaps best known for these paintings in watercolour of birchbark canoes on foggy waters. This gouache is from a period of her life when, widowed, she had returned to Europe. Hopkins continued selling paintings throughout her life — a rarity for a female artist of her time — sending her work to W. Scott & Sons of Montréal as well as Goupil & Cie in Paris to be sold.

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56 FRANCES ANNE HOPKINS SPRING IN NORMANDY, WEEDING THISTLES FROM THE YOUNG WHEAT, 1904 gouache initialed and dated; titled on the reverse sight 8 ins x 12.25 ins; 20.3 cms x 31.1 cms Provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$3,000–4,000

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tFREDERICK ARTHUR VERNER Frederick Arthur Verner travelled to the Northwest of Canada in 1873, sketching many subjects that would become the basis for his paintings for years to come. It was a very important trip for Verner, travelling all the way out to present-day southern Manitoba. Most of his sketches on the trip recorded the lives of Ojibway peoples, and the Sioux teepees, with their distinctive designs were recorded in sketches made from a display during the Provincial Exhibition of 1867 in Toronto. As years passed, Verner would draw from different sketches and combine them to create something new. The scene in this painting shows a group at work tanning hides and drying fish. We can see woven baskets and blankets and the Red River cart behind the teepees that is distinctive to the area.

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57 FREDERICK ARTHUR VERNER, O.S.A., A.R.C.A. SIOUX ENCAMPMENT, 1912 watercolour, laid down on board signed and dated; titled to label on the reverse 18.25 ins x 30 ins; 46.4 cms x 76.2 cms provenance: Private Collection, Burlington, ON Sotheby’s, Important Canadian Art, Toronto, 18 November 1992, lot 28 Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$10,000–15,000

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tJOHN LITTLE Rue Berri in Montreal has been part of the city since the 17th century, with some name changes through the years, running from Rue de la Commune in Old Montreal to Rue Saint-Grégoire in The Plateau neighbourhood. In 1971, when this painting was completed, The Plateau was home to a diverse group of working-class people. Front stoops served as the location for play and communal experience for the residents. We can see children horsing around in the snow in front of the woman in her bright orange winter coat. The cars, showing the quintessential 1970s colour palette of turquoise, harvest gold and avocado green add vibrancy to the pale snowy day.

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58 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A RUE BERRI, MONTREAL, 1971 oil on canvas signed; also signed, titled, and dated ‘71 to the stretcher 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms provenance: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., Montreal, QC Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$7,000–9,000

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tALBERT JACQUES FRANCK Like other painters of urban scenes, such as John Kasyn, Albert Franck was often as interested in the rear view of the houses he painted as he was about their charming facades - perhaps even preferring this vantage. They are a glimpse into the private lives of Toronto residents where the gridlines of the city are betrayed by the sheds leaning up against the crooked fences. Clotheslines swaying in the cold breeze and paint jobs on cladding show the true colour preferences of the city’s residents. Franck recorded these angles of Toronto’s residential areas throughout the downtown, and while this painting doesn’t identify a specific street, it is an unmistakable record of a city in flux.

VIEW THIS LOT

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59 ALBERT JACQUES FRANCK, R.C.A. BACKYARDS, 1952 oil on canvas board signed and dated ‘52 16 ins x 20 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms Provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$6,000–8,000

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LOUIS-PHILIPPE HÉBERT

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Hébert’s nudes are known for their masterful handling as well as for their dramatic poses. Women—especially the nude—were a favoured subject for Hébert, which he believed to be the epitome of beauty and the ultimate test of a sculptor’s skill. A certain primness was characteristic of Québécois and Canadian audiences at the time, which Hébert skirted by presenting his nude sculptures as allegories. In La Chute, Hébert personifies the waterfall in the form of a nymph, perhaps a naiad from Greek mythology. Hébert regularly travelled to Paris to absorb the energies of the greatest artists of the period and to gain inspiration. Perhaps this bronze was inspired by the naiad that presides over the Fontaine Medicis in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th Arrondissement of Paris, sculpted by Claude Ramey. It also prefigures one of Hébert’s most enduring sculptures, the Monument à John Young, a fountain situated in the Vieux-Port de Montréal. One of the four bronze elements of that monument is the allegorical figure of the River God holding a bowl from which water flows into the basin below — and echoes the pose of La Chute. This lot is accompanied by a letter of authentication from Bernard Desroches of Galerie Bernard Desroches, dated April 22, 1987. The letter describes this lot as a unique casting.

60 LOUIS-PHILIPPE HÉBERT, R.C.A. LA CHUTE, 1902 patinated bronze signed, titled, dated, and inscribed “Roman Bronze Works Inc Sc.C.” excluding base 8 ins x 6 ins x 4.5 ins; 20.3 cms x 15.2 cms x 11.4 cms provenance: Setadel Fine Arts, Toronto, ON Arto Yuzbasiyan, Toronto, ON Private Collection, Nova Scotia Estate of Robert Young, Nova Scotia

$3,000–5,000

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Index A

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I

ANDREWS, SYBIL (1898-1992) (1)

ISKOWITZ, GERSHON (1921-1988) (6)

B

J/K

BARRY, ANNE MEREDITH (1932-2003) (37)

JACKSON, ALEXANDER YOUNG (1882-1974) (33)

BAYNE, MIKE (b. 1977) (39)

JOHNSTON, FRANK HANS (1888-1949) (31)

BEAULIEU, PAUL VANIER (1910-1996) (52)

KOOP, WANDA (b. 1951) (40)

BELL-SMITH, FREDERIC MARLETT (1846-1923) (36)

KRIEGHOFF, CORNELIUS (1815-1872) (16)

BLACKWOOD, DAVID LLOYD (b. 1941) (41, 42)

KURELEK, WILLIAM (1927-1977) (13)

BOBAK, MOLLY LAMB (1922-2014) (10) BUSH, JACK HAMILTON (1909-1977) (26)

L

LALIBERTÉ, ALFRED (1878-1953) (9)

C

CAHÉN, OSCAR (1916-1956) (46) CASSON, ALFRED JOSEPH (1898-1992) (29) CHAMPAGNE, HORACE (b. 1937) (54) COLVILLE, ALEXANDER (1920-2013) (43) COMTOIS, ULYSSE (1931-1999) (27, 28) COSGROVE, STANLEY MOREL (1911 -2002) (53)

LITTLE, JOHN (b. 1928) (58) M

MACDONALD, JAMES EDWARD HERVEY (b. 1921) (32) MACDONALD, JAMES WILLIAMSON GALLOWAY (b. 1921) (44) MACLEOD, PEGI NICOL (1904-1949) (12) MARCIL, RENÉ (1917-1993) (48, 49)

D

DRAPELL, JOSEPH (b. 1940) (24, 25)

McCARTHY, DORIS JEAN (1910-2010) (2) McEWEN, JEAN ALBERT (1923-1999) (23) MONKMAN, KENT (b. 1965) (8)

F

MORRISSEAU, NORVAL (1931-2007) (15)

FERGUSON, GERALD (1937-2009) (45) FRANCK, ALBERT JACQUES (1899-1973) (59) FREIMAN, LILLIAN (1908-1986) (11)

PEEL, PAUL (1860-1892) (18, 19) RIOPELLE, JEAN PAUL (1923-2002) (7)

G

GAGNON, CLARENCE ALPHONSE (1881-1942) (30, 34) GODWIN, EDWARD (TED) WILLIAM (1933-2013) (55)

S

SHADBOLT, JACK LEONARD (1909-1998) (50, 51) SHEPPARD, PETER CLAPHAM (1879-1965) (3, 17, 35)

H

HARTMAN, JOHN (b. 1950) (5) HÉBERT, LOUIS-PHILIPPE (1850-1917) (60) HOPKINS, FRANCES ANNE (1838-1919) (56) HOUSTOUN, DONALD MACKAY (1916-2004) (4)

222

P/R

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T/V

TANABE, TAKAO (b. 1926) (38) VERNER, FREDERICK ARTHUR (1836-1928) (57)


Buying at Waddington’s All lots will be offered and sold subject to the Conditions of Sale which appear in this catalogue as well as any Glossary and posted or oral announcement. By bidding at auction, bidders are bound by those Conditions and Glossary, as amended by any oral announcement or posted notices, which together form the contract of sale between the successful bidder (buyer), Waddington’s™ and the consignor (seller) of the lot. Descriptions or photographs of lots are not warranties and each lot is sold “as is” in accordance with the Conditions of Sale.

condition of lots

All of the items are to be considered, unless otherwise noted in the description or condition report, in good condition. The definition of “good” when used in reference to condition, describes an object as having had no major damage or repair but as with the nature of the material, may show minor surface wear, discolouration etc., which indicates the acceptable wear that the piece may acquire with age. If you are particular about minor flaws, you should examine the pieces in person or have our staff answer any questions before bidding. Sizes are approximate. It is the sole responsibility of the bidder to inquire as to the condition of a lot before bidding. Condition reports are available upon request by phone, fax, email or in person. You are advised to make any requests well in advance of the sale. Frames on artwork are not included as part of purchase or condition.

buyers premium

A premium of 20% of the successful bid price of each lot. A charge of 13% HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) is applicable on the hammer price and buyer’s premium, except for purchases exported from Canada. In the case where purchases are shipped out of the province of Ontario, the HST or GST is charged based on the tax status of that province.

payment

Payment for purchases must be by cash, INTERAC direct debit (CDN clients in person only), certified cheque (U.S. & Overseas not applicable), travelers cheque, bank draft, electronic transfer (fee applies), VISA or Mastercard (up to $25,000). ALL PRICES IN CANADIAN FUNDS

Selling at Waddington’s bidding

The Auctioneer may also execute bids on behalf of the consignor to protect the reserve. The reserve is the confidential minimum price the seller is willing to accept for his or her property, below which it will not be sold.

shipping

waddington’s commission rates Items selling for $7,501 or more 10% Items selling for $2,501 to $7,500 15% Items selling for $251 to $2,500 20%

The Auctioneers will not undertake packing or shipping. The purchaser must designate and arrange for the services of an independent shipper and be responsible for all shipping, insurance expenses and any necessary export permits that may apply. The Auctioneers will, upon request, provide names of professional packers and shippers but will not be held responsible for the service or have any liability for providing this information. Reliable preauction estimates of shipping costs of lots offered in this sale may be obtained from:

Items selling for $250 or less 25%

PakShip

*There is a minimum handling charge of $20 per item

Safer Shipping Inc. 416-299-3367 / 416-299-9750 perry@safershipping.ca / www.safershipping.ca

A 1% insurance charge, based on the hammer price of the property, will be applied to all accounts.

905-470-6874 / 905-470-6875 / 416-293-8225 taurus@pakship.ca / www.pakship.ca

removal of purchases

Purchases must be paid for within 48 hours of the date of the sale, and removed from premises within 10 days of the date of sale (see Conditions of Sale, conditions 8 to 15). Clients are advised that packing and/or handling of purchased lots by our employees or agents is undertaken solely as a courtesy for the convenience of clients.

cites

Restrictions exist regarding the import and export of species protected under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). This includes but is not limited to items made of or containing bone (whalebone etc.), ivory, tortoise shell, seal skin, rhinoceros horn and any other animal part and is strictly controlled or forbidden by most countries. Please review your country’s laws before bidding on pieces made of or containing these restricted items. It is the sole responsibility of the buyer to inquire about and obtain the proper permits for artwork purchased that may contain restricted materials, if such permit can be obtained. Please contact the department for further assistance. Failure to obtain necessary import/ export permits will not void any sale. All Narwhal Tusks must have a Marine Harvest Number or a Marine and Mammal Transport number to be sold at Waddington’s. For more information please visit: www.cites.org

*There is a minimum handling charge of $20 per item canadian art department commission rates Items selling for $7,501 or more 10% Items selling for $2,501 to $7,500 15% Items selling for $2,500 or less 20%

insurance

auction advice

For auction advice on paintings, drawings, prints, jewellery, and various forms of decorative arts and other collectibles, please feel free to contact us via email or telephone. We are pleased to review emails containing photographs and information on your pieces in order to provide auction estimates for you to consider. For collections with a variety of objects, please contact our Appraisals and Consignments department (consignments@waddingtons. ca). For department-specific inquiries, please contact the specialist and/or department directly. All contact information can be found at www.waddingtons.ca. Our offices are located in Toronto and Vancouver, but our specialists occasionally travel to major Canadian cities to meet with prospective consignors. To receive more information on Valuation Days across Canada or to arrange an appointment, please contact our Toronto office (416-504-9100). Please note that property typically arrives at Waddington’s at least three months before the sale in order to allow our specialists time to research, catalogue, photograph and promote the items. Consignors will receive a contract to sign, setting forth terms and fees for our services. MAY 29 - JUNE 3, 2021   223


Conditions of Sale 1. All lots are sold “AS IS”. Any description issued by the auctioneer of an article to be sold is subject to variation to be posted or announced verbally in the auction room prior to the time of sale. While the auctioneer has endeavoured not to mislead in the description issued, and the utmost care is taken to ensure the correct cataloguing of each item, such descriptions are purely statements of opinion and are not intended to constitute a representation to the prospective purchasers and no warranty of the correctness of such description is made. An opportunity for inspection of each article is offered prior to the time of sale. No sale will be set aside on account of lack of correspondence of the article with its description or its reproduction, if any, whether colour or black & white. Some lots are of an age and/or nature which preclude their being in pristine condition and some catalogue descriptions make reference to damage and/or restoration. The lack of such a reference does not imply that a lot is free from defects nor does any reference to certain defects imply the absence of others. Frames on artwork are not included as part of purchase or condition. It is the responsibility of prospective purchasers to inspect or have inspected each lot upon which they wish to bid, relying upon their own advisers, and to bid accordingly.

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2. Each lot sold is subject to a 20% buyers premium as part of the purchase price. 3. Unless exempted by law, the buyer is required to pay Harmonized Sales Tax on the total purchase price including the buyer’s premium. For international buyers, taxes are not applicable when purchases are shipped out of country. Items shipped out of Ontario, the buyer is required to pay taxes as per the tax status of that province, whether it HST or GST (Goods and Services Tax).

6. Each lot may be subject to an unpublished reserve which may be changed at any time by agreement between the auctioneer and the consignor. The auctioneer may bid, or direct an employee to bid, on behalf of the consignor as agreed between them. In addition, the auctioneer may accept and submit absentee and telephone bids, to be executed by an employee of the auctioneer, pursuant to the instructions of prospective purchasers not in attendance at the sale. 7. The highest bidder accepted by the auctioneer for any lot shall be the buyer and such buyer shall forthwith assume full risk and responsibility for the lot and must comply with such other Conditions of Sale as may be applicable. If any dispute should arise between bidders the auctioneer shall have the absolute discretion to designate the buyer or, at his option, to withdraw any disputed lot from the sale, or to re-offer it at the same or a subsequent sale. The auctioneer’s decision in all cases shall be final. 8. Immediately after the purchase of a lot, the buyer shall pay or undertake to the satisfaction of the auctioneer with respect to payment of the whole or any part of the purchase price requested by the auctioneer, failing which the auctioneer in his sole discretion may cancel the sale, with or without re-offering the item for sale. 9. The buyer shall pay for all lots within 48 hours from the date of the sale, after which a late charge of 2% per month on the total invoice may be incurred or the auctioneer, in his sole discretion, may cancel the sale. The buyer shall not become the owner of the lot until paid for in full. Items must be removed within 10 days from the date of sale, after which storage charges may be incurred.

4. The auctioneer reserves the right to withdraw any lot from sale at any time, to divide any lot or to combine any two or more lots at his sole discretion, all without notice.

10. Each lot purchased, unless the sale is cancelled as above, shall be held by the auctioneer at his premises or at a public warehouse at the sole risk of the buyer until fully paid for and taken away.

5. The auctioneer has the right to refuse any bid and to advance the bidding at his absolute discretion. The auctioneer reserves the right not to accept and not to reject any bid. Without limitation, any bid which is not commensurate with the value of the article offered, or which is merely a nominal or fractional advance over the previous bid may not be recognized.

11. Notwithstanding condition no. 1, if the buyer, prior to removal of a lot, makes arrangements satisfactory to the auctioneer for the inspection of such lot by a fully qualified person acceptable to the auctioneer to determine the genuineness or authenticity of the lot, to be carried out promptly following the sale of the lot, and if, but only if, within a period of 14

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days following the sale a written opinion of such person is presented to the auctioneer to the effect that the lot is not genuine or authentic, accompanied by a written request by the buyer for rescission of the sale, then the sale of the lot will be rescinded and the sale price refunded to the buyer. 12. Payment for purchases must be by cash, INTERAC direct debit (Cdn clients in person only), certified cheque (U.S. & Overseas not applicable), travelers cheque, bank draft, electronic transfer (fee applies), and VISA or Mastercard (up to $25,000). 13. In the event of failure to pay for or remove articles within the aforementioned time limit, the auctioneer, without limitation of the rights of the consignor and the auctioneer against the buyer, may resell any of the articles affected, and in such case the original buyer shall be responsible to the auctioneer and the consignor for: (a) any deficiency in price between the resale amount and the amount to have been paid by the original buyer; (b) any reasonable charge by the auctioneer for the storage of such articles until payment and removal by the subsequent buyer; and (c) the amount of commission which the auctioneer would have earned had payment been made in full by the original buyer. 14. It is the responsibility of the buyer to make all arrangements for insuring, packing and removing the property purchased and any assistance by the auctioneer or his servants, agents or contractors, in packing or removal shall be rendered as a courtesy and without any liability to them. 15. The auctioneer acts solely as agent for the consignor and makes no representation as to any attribute of, title to, or restriction affecting the articles consigned for sale. Without limitation, the buyer understands that any item bought may be affected by the provisions of the Cultural Property Export Act (Canada). 16. The auctioneer reserves the right to refuse admission to the sale or to refuse to recognize any or all bids from any particular person or persons at any auction.




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