Canadian Fine Art | November 13 - 18, 2021

Canadian Fine Art NOVEMBER 13 - 18, 2021

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.

t WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS Phillips and his family would summer at Lake of the Woods from 1914-1923. An exhibition of Phillips’ woodcuts from this period was held at the McMichael Gallery in 2020, with the accompanying essay noting that “the experiences that Phillips had there grounded his sense of belonging to his new home. In time, he would create works of quiet subtlety and serenity capturing the unique topography of the region and its shifting moods, gracefully combining the graphic languages of Japanese printmaking and the British Art and Crafts style.”

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1 WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS, R.C.A. SUNSET, LAKE OF THE WOODS, 1928 colour woodcut signed and numbered 299 7.25 ins x 8.25 ins; 18.4 cms x 21 cms provenance: Acquired directly from the Artist; Collection of Ken Madsen, Banff, AB; By descent to Private Collection, British Columbia

$3,000–4,000

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tMOLLY LAMB BOBAK In 1960, Lamb Bobak and her husband Bruno returned to Canada from an extended stay in Europe, Bruno having been offered a one-year position as artist-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick. They would choose to settle permanently in Fredericton, with Bruno becoming the director of the University Art Centre while Lamb Bobak held a teaching position at the university in addition to her work as an art instructor across the province and on television.

Lamb Bobak’s enjoyment of urban scenes and city dwellers was apparent in her work from this period. She explained, “I think that it is an interest I have had ever since I was a kid.

I simply love gatherings, mingling... It’s like little ants crawling, the sort of insignificance and yet the beauty of people all getting together.” While some of the most well-known examples are Lamb Bobak’s images of parades, sporting events and official gatherings, this vignette at the bus stop shows Lamb Bobak’s interest in the rhythms and formal compositional elements of a crowd—her brightly-coloured ants, all lined up and ready to go.

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MOLLY LAMB BOBAK, R.C.A. BUS STOP, FREDERICTON, N.B. oil on canvas signed; titled to gallery label on the reverse 15 ins x 24 ins; 38.1 cms x 61 cms provenance: Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, QC; By descent to Private Collection, Mississauga, ON

$12,000–16,000

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tJOHN LITTLE The intersection depicted in this painting no longer exists. While des Seigneurs continues to exist in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal, Dorchester—named after Guy Carleton, Baron Dorchester (1724-1808), the Governor of Quebec and Governor General of Canada— has been reconfigured so as to make way for the present-day René Lévesque Boulevard. When Jean Drapeau became mayor in 1954, he mandated the destruction of hundreds of buildings so as to construct an eight-lane boulevard, a main east–west thoroughfare through the Ville Marie borough of Montreal. After Lévesque’s death, the street was renamed in his honour in 1987, though portions of the street retain the original name—a segment in Westmount between Clarke and Atwater, as well as a segment in Montreal East.

Dorchester had been part of a neighbourhood known as the Square Mile, where the ultra-wealthy of Old Montreal began building ornate country estates in the late 18th century. Various factors contributed to the decline of the neighbourhood by the 1930s; by the middle of the 20th century, the Square Mile had become the city’s central business district. Many of the grand houses—emblematic of a golden era in Montreal’s history—were destroyed in the reconfiguration.

Little lamented how “Montreal was kind of a, that length of Dorchester Street, sort of rag tag and slick/ slock and rooming houses […] and local cafes […] Jimmy Orlando’s nightclub and all those different nightclubs.”

Little would devote his entire career to the chronicling of the disappearance of Montreal’s architectural history, noting that “if we knock down all our old buildings and neighbourhoods, we’ll become a people without a past.”

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3 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A. DORCHESTER ST. ET DES SEIGNEURS, MONTREAL oil on board signed; titled on the reverse 12 ins x 16 ins; 30.5 cms x 40.6 cms provenance: Continental Galleries, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, British Columbia literature: Alan Klinkhoff, John Little: City Life From 1951 (Alan Klinkhoff Gallery: Toronto, 2017), 10, 17.

$10,000–15,000 16 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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t ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON Casson’s major canvases in the early 1950s employed a more sombre palette. These are vistas “which capture nature in her more sober garb.” Grays and darkened colours dominated the restricted palette, used to dramatic effect.

The majority of Casson’s work from 1953-1955 was inspired by the area around Lake Baptise, close to Bancroft, Ontario.

In the autumn, Casson would rent a cottage on the lake and invite fellow artists to join him to paint.

Some years, the artist would bring his wife Margaret to Lake Baptiste in the summer to create sketches that he would use as a base for more complete canvases. Indeed, art historian Paul Duval notes that “some of Casson’s finest canvases were based on sketches done at Lake Baptiste.”

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4 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. LUSHE’S WHARF, LAKE BAPTISTE, CA. 1954 oil on board signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 9.25 ins x 11.25 ins; 23.5 cms x 28.6 cms provenance: Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Paul Duval, A.J. Casson / His Life & Works / A Tribute (Prentice-Hall: Toronto 1980).

$25,000–35,000

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tALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON An impressive winter scene, “Ste. Cecile de Masham” captures this quaint Quebec town beautifully with the snow-covered barn houses and rolling hills. The horsedrawn sleigh is a significant subject in this painting and a central theme throughout Jackson’s village scenes.

Jackson painted village scenes in Quebec for thirty years and notes in his autobiography that he has lost track of how many Quebec canvases he has painted, “at first, in my painting, I was interested in the old farm houses, in the barns and the trees. Later it was snow that captured my attention; the sun and the wind continually changed its colours and texture.”

By the 1940s, the villages Jackson painted were becoming more modern, as carriages were replaced with snowmobiles and modern housing was taking the place of rustic barns. As a result, Jackson relocated his annual trip to the Gatineau region near Ottawa and embraced the rolling hills and surrounding villages, such as Ste. Cecile de Masham.

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ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. STE. CECILE DE MASHAM, CA. 1945 oil on canvas signed; titled to gallery label on the reverse 25 ins x 32 ins; 63.5 cms x 81.3 cms provenance: Roberts Art Gallery, Toronto, ON; Master’s Gallery Ltd., Calgary, AB; Private Collection, Winnipeg, MB exhibited: Trailblazer Donor Event, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, 12 May 1999 literature: A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson (Clarke, Irwin & Company: Toronto, 1964), 69.

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t JOHN LITTLE Little painted rue Panet several times during his career. Located in the Ville-Marie borough of Montreal, rue Panet sits in Montreal’s present-day Gay Village. The street was given its name at the beginning of the 19th century, and while several families bearing the name Panet have lived there, there is no definitive answer as to the street’s namesake.

The Maison Radio-Canada building can be seen at the end of the street, a structure that was inaugurated in 1973, five years before Little painted this scene.

The construction of the Radio-Canada building necessitated the relocation of 5000 people and the reconfiguration of the surrounding neighbourhood.

The assault on Montreal’s traditional architecture was a central preoccupation for the artist, who was outspoken in his defense of old buildings—“the stuff that is really good to paint.” Much of his work attempts to chronicle the city’s urban heritage before it disappears, seen by Little as an architectural “family album.”

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6 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A RUE PANET, MONTRÉAL, 1978 oil on canvas signed; signed, titled and dated ‘78 to the stretcher on the reverse 18 ins x 24 ins; 45.7 cms x 61 cms provenance: Private Collection, British Columbia

$15,000–20,000

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t JOHN KASYN Kasyn returned to paint Ontario Street several times.

Ontario runs north-south in the east end of Toronto, from the Old Town up through Cabbagetown. Like John Little, whose work is also represented in this auction (please see lots 3, 6 and 20), Kasyn was concerned with capturing the overlooked, the humble and the disappearing facets of Toronto architecture.

Judy Stoffman, writing for the Toronto Star, notes of Kasyn: “You might call him the painterly equivalent of the reclusive Toronto poet Raymond Souster, a man who looks intensely at a narrow spectrum of urban subjects and captures them just as they are disappearing.” Kasyn spent years taking pictures of the facades and back alleyways of the city’s houses, creating an archive of over 6,000 images on which his paintings were based. In the artist’s own words, “I’ve done every street in Toronto; I don’t think there is a lane I haven’t walked along…Cabbagetown had the most houses I really liked. I used to go early every Sunday, when there was no traffic, and roam till evening. Then I had to try to remember where I’d left my car.”

Judy Stoffman, Toronto Star. “House painter --- Artist John Kasyn spent four decades documenting old semis and back stoops that formed the pre-renovated character of unglamorous Toronto neighbourhoods. His works sell like hotcakes.” 16 December 2000.

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7 JOHN KASYN, O.S.A. ONTARIO STREET, 1969 oil and Lucite on board signed; signed, titled and dated ‘69 on the reverse 16 ins x 20 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$6,000–8,000

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t ETHEL SEATH A founding member of both the Beaver Hall Group and of the Canadian Group of Painters, Seath devoted her life to both painting and teaching, both of which are testament to her artistic merits. Seath began making trips into the local landscape to paint beginning in 1911 when she was studying at the Art Association of Montreal under Maurice Cullen, who would lead “lively excursions” into the Quebec countryside. She later continued this habit, painting on vacations with friends.

Seath’s bold colours and exploration into the field of design are well characterized in “Wheat Fields”. The haystacks carry inflections of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, schisming away from pure objectivity into something more lyrical and abstract. Of abstraction, which began to enter her work during later years, Seath told her students: “don’t slam it! You may grow into it.”

Of “Red Church”, it is entirely possible that this may have been painted in the Eastern Townships outside of Montreal, as it resembles several brick churches characteristic of the region. It emblemifies the vibrant yet earthy palette that characterized Seath’s work, while also echoing the refrain she often gave to her pupils: “Don’t be shy,” she would say, “fill the page, make a mess!”

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8 ETHEL SEATH RED CHURCH watercolour signed sight 13.75 ins x 9.5 ins; 34.9 cms x 24.1 cms provenance: Family of the Artist; Private Collection, London, ON literature: Roger Little, Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition (Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc.: Montreal, 1987) Reproduced online at Alan Klinkhoff Gallery

$3,000–4,000

9 ETHEL SEATH WHEAT FIELDS watercolour signed sight 16.75 ins x 22.25 ins; 42.5 cms x 56.5 cms provenance: Family of the Artist; Private Collection, London, ON

$4,000–6,000

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t JAMES WILSON MORRICE Morrice’s “Autumn in Paris” was painted as a pair with “Paris Scene, Early Spring”, around 1894. Both have sometimes been catalogued as having been painted in 1907, however, Lucie Dorais, one of the foremost scholars and compiler of the catalogue raisonné for the artist, notes that this is erroneous, and that the circa 1894 date is correct. The two paintings were kept together until 1981, when they were sold separately by the Hett Gallery.

While in Paris, Morrice made the acquaintance of American painter Maurice B. Prendergast (18591924). Morrice would introduce him to English avantgarde artists Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley.

Dorais notes that both artists used similar sized wood panels during their time in Paris, another link with Prendergast’s work at the time.

We would like to thank Lucie Dorais for her research and contributions to this essay.

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10 JAMES WILSON MORRICE, R.C.A. AUTUMN IN PARIS, CA. 1894 oil on wood panel unsigned, with Studio Stamp on the reverse; also inscribed verso: “344” (in Studio Stamp, Scott Inventory), “#56” (in a rectangle, perhaps F.R. Heaton Inventory); more recent: “STB695”; “No7443” 6 ins x 3.8 ins; 15.2 cms x 9.7 cms provenance: Wm Scott & Sons (estate of the artist); Continental Galleries, Montreal, QC; Sold to Mrs. Marion Doig, Brandon MB, 8 June 1949; Christie’s (Montreal, QC), 2 May 1973, lot 93B; Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC; The Art Emporium, Vancouver, BC, 20 May 1978, No. 4072; Peter Pocklington, Edmonton, AB; Hett Gallery, Edmonton, AB inv.

HGA539, from Pocklington; Sold to Tibor Takacs, Toronto, ON 13 May 1981; Private Collection, Toronto, ON exhibited: Brandon Art Club - Fine Arts Collections, Brandon, MB, Mar 1949

$15,000–25,000

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tARTHUR DOMINIQUE ROZAIRE Rozaire was a prolific painter, creating the majority of his works en plein air. He achieved acclaim from the beginning of his career, with the Montreal Gazette writing “he has strength: his brushwork is sure, he shows a keen appreciation of atmospheric values; he is a colourist of exceptional gift.”

Like many of his Impressionistic counterparts, A.K. Prakash notes that Rozaire’s landscapes “are suggestive rather than true, as he investigated the subtle mysteries of nature and his own emotional response to it. He was always accurate in his portrayal of light and atmosphere, determined to capture exactly what he saw around him in the brilliant sun on a snow-covered landscape, the dusk of evening, or the fog of a rainy summer day.” So emblematic is this painting of Rozaire’s work that Prakash chose to include it in his survey of the artist’s work in his seminal work, Impressionism in Canada: A Journey of Rediscovery.

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11 ARTHUR DOMINIQUE ROZAIRE, R.C.A. MISTY MORNING, CLAM DIGGERS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE, CA. 1912 oil on panel signed 17.75 ins x 13.75 ins; 45.1 cms x 34.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary, AB; Private Collection, Winnipeg, MB literature: A.K. Prakash, Impressionism in Canada - A Journey of Rediscovery, Arnoldsche Art Publishers: Toronto, 2015, illus. p. 521.

$7,000–9,000 46 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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tMANLY EDWARD MACDONALD After years spent studying abroad in both Europe and the United States, MacDonald established a studio in Toronto. From there, he often travelled to the Bay of Quinte and Prince Edward County areas to paint en plein air. The region was close to his heart—MacDonald was born in nearby Point Anne—and the artist’s warm sentiments for the local landscape and people can be felt in his semiImpressionistic paintings. MacDonald favoured a more traditional painterly route, a stance he would maintain throughout his career. Indeed, the artist would resign from the Ontario School of Artists in 1951 in protest, citing the “creeping modernism” felt in the popularity of artists such as the Painters 11.

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12 MANLY EDWARD MACDONALD, R.C.A. HAYMAKING, PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY, ONT oil on board signed; titled to gallery label on the reverse 10.75 ins x 14 ins; 27.3 cms x 35.6 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$2,000–3,000

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tALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON 1955 marked the end of an era for Jackson, as he had moved out of his long-term Toronto studio at 25 Severn Street. Jackson first moved into this studio in 1914 with Tom Thomson and it became a communal artist-space for many years until it was sold by Lawren Harris in 1948. Jackson notes, “so I left the Studio Building with few regrets. I had lived there for thirty-five years and it was time to move”.

In March 1955, Jackson bought land in Manotick, Ontario and spent the autumn sketching in Algoma and the winter in the Ottawa Valley region with Ralph Burton. This double-sided painting was produced that year. The frontside presents a quiet winter scene with a river running between a log pile in the foreground and a rustic barn in the back. The colours and themes of the painting suggest that it could have been painted during Jackson’s November trip to the Ottawa Valley region. The verso of the panel looks to be painted earlier in the year, before the winter snowfall, and could have been produced during Jackson’s early-autumn sketches in Algoma.

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13 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. UNTITLED, 1955 double-sided oil on panel signed and dated 10.5 ins x 13.5 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.3 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario literature: Jackson, A.Y., A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson (Clarke, Irwin & Company: Toronto, 1964), 189.

$20,000–30,000

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tROBERT BATEMAN A rare and early Robert Bateman work, “Red Tailed Hawk” is a true example of Bateman’s experimental period of the 1960s, in which he closely studied abstract expressionism: “I was strongly influenced by the work of Franz Kline, and I was painting pictures that presented strong positive and negative spaces.”

Kline’s influence is present in this painting with the hawk flying between the highly-contrasted foreground and sky. Bateman also paints the hawk from an interesting perspective, as if we are looking out from a tall window at the height of the tree trunk.

A dedicated naturalist, Bateman pays close attention to the essence of the animal he is painting, “for me, the first thing a painting of an animal must convey is the distinctive personality of the species … The expression of a red-tailed hawk has a combination of docility and fierceness and a certain serious dignity.”

The realism of the hawk, met with this early-Bateman style makes this painting a rarity and true gem in the artist’s oeuvre.

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14 ROBERT BATEMAN, R.C.A. RED TAILED HAWK, CA. 1965 acrylic on board signed 30 ins x 48 ins; 76.2 cms x 121.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ajax, ON literature: Ramsay Derry with an introduction by Roger Tory Peterson, The Art of Robert Bateman (Pomegranate: Petaluma, California, 2006), 102-104.

$30,000–50,000

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TAKAO TANABE t

One of eight “Summer Foothills” paintings produced in 1979, Tanabe revisited and reworked the subject often between 1977 and 1983. In addition to the acrylic paintings, the series also includes watercolours and a small number of drawings.

During this period, the artist and his wife Anona were based in Banff, Alberta—where Tanabe lived from 1973-1980. The two would make weekend excursions on the backroads of Alberta in search of the views Tanabe would capture with his camera and then use as a basis for his paintings.

“Summer Foothills” employs Tanabe’s ‘one-shot’ technique, in which the artist would apply pigment with a single, rapid application—once for the sky and once for the land. In this they harken to Japanese ink paintings, which leave no room for revision. By the end of Tanabe’s stay in Banff, he began shifting his practice away from one-shot paintings, though this particular work is a late example of the type.

While Tanabe is famous for not commenting on specific works, in an interview with Nancy Tousley given in August of 1979, he explained: “I don’t feel the tug to paint a view that somebody can recognize as being seen from their front porch or from some crossroads…mostly it’s an idea about space that I have and that I’ve had for many years, especially about the flat prairie. So for me it’s really a sense of the place, but really a generalized sense of space. What I think about the prairie is perhaps romantic but it is an enormously simple-looking space and within all that simplicity it’s very, very rich, very subtle. I think those are the things I have been trying to get in the paintings. It’s surprising how many bumps, hollows and changes of colour there are.”

We would like to thank Anona Thorne for her contributions to this essay.

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15 TAKAO TANABE SUMMER FOOTHILLS 4/79 (EVENING), 1979 acrylic on canvas signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 66 ins x 45 ins; 167.6 cms x 114.3 cms provenance: Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Calgary, AB; Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, ON; Consignor Canadian Fine Art, Toronto, ON 29 May 2014, Lot 3; Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Nancy Tousley, “Takao Tanabe: The Prairie Paintings,” Takao Tanabe, ed. Ian Thom. (Vancouver Art Gallery and Douglas & McIntyre: Vancouver, 2005), 88.

$15,000–25,000

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tJEAN ALBERT MCEWEN In 1971, Jean McEwen returned to painting in oil after a period spent using acrylics with a series called Miroir Sans Image (Imageless Mirror). The clear representation of a “frame” with golden corners surrounds the central layers of paint. This lot, “Vert - Number 5”, showcases small hints of bright turquoise that peek out from darker layers of varnished forest green. The subtle variation of greens - from subdued on the frame portion, to verdant across the central square - creates the impression of a painting that is alive, breathing, and swelling outward from the centre.

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16 JEAN ALBERT MCEWEN, R.C.A. MIROIR SANS IMAGE, VERT - NUMBER 5, 1971 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘71; also signed and titled to the overflap 40 ins x 40 ins; 101.6 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$30,000–40,000

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tHORTENSE CROMPTON MATTICE GORDON From the same generation as the Group of Seven, Hortense Gordon broke away from the traditional style of her peers and became a trailblazer for modern abstract painting in Canada. Gordon painted landscape and still life compositions in her early years and transitioned into a non-representational style as a result of her travels to New York and Europe.

Following her husband’s death in 1940, Gordon enrolled in German artist Hans Hofmann’s School of Art, in Provincetown, Massachusetts two years before “Composition” was painted. Hoffmann’s teachings can be seen in Gordon’s work from this period as she began to refine the shapes, colour and spatial composition of her paintings. In 1952, four years after “Composition” was painted, Gordon had her first solo-exhibition in New York, which was well-received.

“Composition” was painted at a transformational period in Gordon’s life, where she began to find more freedom in her style and was exhibiting internationally before becoming the oldest member and only one of two women of Painters Eleven.

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17 HORTENSE CROMPTON MATTICE GORDON, R.C.A. COMPOSITION, CA. 1948 oil on canvas signed 27.5 ins x 27.5 ins; 69.9 cms x 69.9 cms provenance: Kastel Gallery Ltd., Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$10,000–15,000

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tLÉON BELLEFLEUR One of the last proponents of Surrealism in Quebec, Bellefleur was influenced by the work of Klee, Kandinsky and Miró. Bellefleur has been called a painter of lyrical abstraction, for there is a strong element of poetry in his work (not just in their titles); he counted the Québécois poets Roland Giguère and Gilles Hénault as friends, often illustrating their poems.

Bellefleur began his paintings without a subject, title, or range of colours in mind. A subject would often suggest itself to him either during the process or after.

In this painting, the end result is a distinct motif that stands out against a dark ground resembling deep space, which the artist interpreted as a chimera—a mythical hybrid beast, composed of parts of more than one animal. His handling of paint, dragging it with a palette knife and drawing into it while wet, suggests that the creature is in motion—hence, “return.”

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18 LÉON BELLEFLEUR, R.C.A. RETOUR DE LA CHIMÈRE, 1991 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘91; also signed, titled and dated on the reverse 45 ins x 57.5 ins; 114.3 cms x 146.1 cms provenance: Galerie 2000, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Ottawa, ON; Waddington’s, Toronto, ON, Canadian Fine Art, 29 May 2017, Lot 34 Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$25,000–35,000

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tSOREL ETROG Accompanied by excellent provenance, Etrog’s “Sun Life Study” was first in the possession of Toronto’s Gallery Moos, opened by Walter Moos. The lives and careers of both artist and gallerist were deeply intertwined. Lifelong friends, Etrog and Moos embarked on the Canadian art scene at the same time; Moos signed Etrog shortly after launching his gallery in 1959 and Etrog held his first one-man show in Canada there that same year. The show was a commercial and critical success, catapulting both men’s careers to great heights.

“Sun Life Study”, the full-sized version of which dominates the central intersection of University Avenue and King Street West in Toronto’s downtown core, is a majestic example of Etrog’s later art. It demonstrates the artist’s command of both the sculptural medium and geometrical abstraction.

Dr. Alma Mikulinsky is an art historian and curator whose latest book Sorel Etrog: Life and Work was published in 2020 by Art Canada Institute. An authority on European Avant-Garde; her texts on Pablo Picasso were commissioned by leading museums such as Tate Modern and the Museé National Picasso-Paris. She opened two exhibitions this fall: Links as Bones: Sorel Etrog and the Fragile Body at the Art Gallery of Windsor and Guernica Remastered at Remai Modern.

19 SOREL ETROG, R.C.A. SUN LIFE STUDY, 1984 bronze numbered 5/10 16 ins x 8 ins x 5.5 ins; 40.6 cms x 20.3 cms x 14 cms provenance: Gallery Moos Ltd., Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$15,000–20,000

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tJOHN LITTLE Situated in the then-working-class neighbourhood of SaintHenri, Little turns his gaze to Chez Ma Tante (“At my aunt’s house”). While there is a much-beloved Chez Ma Tante hot dog restaurant still extant in the north end of the city—having been established in 1929— Little’s subject is located in the southeastern part of the city. It is more than likely that as with the majority of Little’s chosen subjects, the building in question was at risk of imminent demolition. Indeed, no street bears the name of Fulford today—city records appear to indicate that it was demolished in order to build the Ville Marie Expressway.

Alan Klinkhoff Gallery’s superb monograph on the artist notes that Little loved the Griffintown, Pointe St. Charles, SaintHenri and Little Burgundy neighbourhoods, which “for Little represent the vitality of Montreal and the essences of city life.

They are far removed from the “prosaic” lifestyle of his lawns and houses of the Town of Mount Royal. Those are the areas where Little went looking for great composition.”

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20 JOHN LITTLE, R.C.A FULFORD STREET, ST. HENRI, MONTREAL oil on canvas board signed; titled on the reverse 10 ins x 12 ins; 25.4 cms x 30.5 cms provenance: Alan Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Arlington, VA literature: Alan Klinkhoff, John Little: City Life From 1951 (Alan Klinkhoff Gallery: Toronto, 2017), 56.

$7,000–9,000

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tALFRED JOSEPH CASSON While it seems strange to see a canvas by a Group of Seven member that was painted in the 1970s, it must be remembered that Casson was the youngest member of the group, and by far the longest lived.

Unlike other members of the Group, Casson had spent his working life focused on his successful commercial career rather than on fine art. Painting only became his full-time focus upon retirement in 1957. Casson took Ontario’s farmland, forests and villages as his subjects, focusing them into what the National Gallery describes as “highly finished, carefully composed designs, with a stillness that sometimes seems ominous.” Indeed, composition was important for Casson, whose strong design background can be felt in his work.

Barry’s Bay is a small community in the Madawaska Valley in Ontario, on the shores of Kamaniskeg Lake.

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21 ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. COUNTRY ROAD NEAR BARRY’S BAY, CA. 1970 oil on board signed; signed, titled and inscribed “The property of my wife” on the reverse sight 12 ins x 14.75 ins; 30.5 cms x 37.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$20,000–25,000

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tEDWIN HEADLEY HOLGATE Rosemarie Tovell, writing in her 2005 publication, Edwin Holgate, designates “Nude by a Lake” as “Holgate’s most majestic wood engraving.” She adds that “the masterful execution of this print and the monumental quality of the nude make it one of Holgate’s most striking images.”

It appears that Holgate himself was particularly pleased with this composition, pricing it above his other wood engravings in his 1933 show, Exhibition of Paintings and Wood-cuts by Edwin H. Holgate—selling it for the sum of $10.

The printing block for this image is held by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

VIEW THIS LOT 86 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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tEDWIN HEADLEY HOLGATE During the 1920s, Holgate journeyed to the north shore of the St. Lawrence River to paint on several occasions, including two trips to the Baie St. Paul with A.Y. Jackson in 1923 and 1924. In the spring of 1926, along with Albert Robinson, the painters ventured further along the river to La Malbaie. Writing to Clarence Gagnon in a letter dated May 7, 1926, Holgate wrote: “[…] This March I went off with Père Raquette [A.Y. Jackson] to La Malbaie—where—after two weeks we were joined by Robinson. I stayed just over three weeks—worked continuously—and came home somewhat improved and somewhat more [indistinct] in snow-painting. [...] I also got a number of drawings—one of which has developed into a woodblock already.”

As an aside, Jackson earned his nickname of Père Raquette (Father Snowshoe) from Holgate, who would glide across the snowy landscapes on cross country skis, while Jackson lagged behind on unwieldy snowshoes.

Additional Resources: Alan Klinkhoff Gallery

VIEW THIS LOT 88 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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22 EDWIN HEADLEY HOLGATE, R.C.A. NUDE BY A LAKE, CA. 1932 wood engraving signed and numbered 35 image 8 ins x 6.75 ins; 25.4 cms x 21.6 cms provenance: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Ontario literature: Rosemarie Tovell, “’Crisp Whites and Rich Black’: The Wood Engravings,” Edwin Holgate, (The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Montreal, 2005), 68.

“Nude by a Lake,” blog entry May 10, 2018.

$7,000–9,000

90 Canadian Fine Art Auction

23 EDWIN HEADLEY HOLGATE, R.C.A. LA MALBAIE, CA. 1926 wood engraving signed and numbered 7 image 4 ins x 4.25 ins; 11.4 cms x 11.4 cms provenance: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Ontario exhibited: The Prints of Edwin Holgate, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON, 22 Oct 1989 - 20 Jan 1990, cat. no. 27

$4,000–6,000

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t

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t WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS Phillips boarded the steam ship Wolverine for a tour of Lake Winnipeg in 1928 and was moved by the sight of the old York boats—the signature trading vessel of the Hudson’s Bay Company—discarded on the shores. He wrote that “it was easy to imagine the fast canoes or the brigades of York boats coming round the bend. They say you could hear the crews singing before the boats came in sight.

I could imagine that too, and the eager-ness and interest of the nice folk at the fort as they waited....

There are none left now. The last lay rotting on the banks of the Nelson: the sturdy frame that withstood the shocks of a passage of the rapids a thousand times, now yielding to the action of the weather.”

This image was featured on a postage stamp in 1997 in the “Masterpieces of Canadian Art” series.

Editions are also held in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Glenbow Museum and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

VIEW THIS LOT 94 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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24 WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS, R.C.A. YORK BOAT ON LAKE WINNIPEG, 1930 woodcut printed in colours signed with monogram to the plate and signed, titled, and numbered 54/150 in pencil to the margin image 10.25 ins x 13.75 ins; 26 cms x 34.9 cms provenance: Acquired directly from the Artist; Collection of Ken Madsen, Banff, AB; By descent to Private Collection, British Columbia

$15,000–20,000

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tPETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD Sheppard’s work in the last 20 years of his life is often written about as a sort of retirement.

His biographer Tom Smart noted that “Sheppard’s most innovative years were behind him. He painted for the pleasure of it…[he] went to a creative place where he could satisfy whatever inner compulsion he still had to express himself, and which gave him the means to indulge in his habit: painting outdoors and in his studio.” While “Late October” is most definitely an image out of step with the modernist churn of its time—the clamorous 50s—what we are witnessing is the aggregation of one man’s career.

Painting need not always take its cues from the zeal of youth. Like any other pursuit, it is the cumulative effect that equates to true mastery—all of the tiny untranslatable lessons that take years to learn, one brushstroke at a time, slowly stacking up in an artist’s painterly arsenal. One is reminded of the great masters of European art— active neither in the salons nor the streets, but content to continue to pursue their craft with grace and subtlety from a perch further down the road. That might be the perfect metaphor for this painting: there is rain, but the painter now knows how to weather it, unhurried at his easel.

VIEW THIS LOT 98 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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25 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. LATE OCTOBER, 1956 oil on board signed; titled to label on the reverse 28 ins x 34 ins; 71.1 cms x 86.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario exhibited: Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Exhibition, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, QB literature: Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work (Firefly Books: Toronto), 225.

$20,000–30,000

100 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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t GEORGE AGNEW REID Reid served as the Principal of the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University), retiring from the position in 1927—the same year this painting was completed. While Reid is best known for his emotional narrative genre pieces, it is possible that this painting is somewhat of a metaphor for this moment in his own life, as the farmer takes a pause to look back and admire his day’s work. Reid was born into a Scottish farming family of 9 children. His father discouraged his early inclinations to become an artist, pushing him instead into farm work. Reid persevered and received training at the Ontario College of Art in 1879—an institution that, cyclically, he would end up running decades later.

VIEW THIS LOT 102 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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26 GEORGE AGNEW REID, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. THE END OF DAY, 1927 oil on canvas, laid on board signed and dated 27.25 ins x 19.5 ins; 69.2 cms x 49.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$7,000–9,000

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27 GEORGE AGNEW REID, O.S.A., P.R.C.A. PIONEER HOMESTEAD watercolour on paper signed sight 8.25 ins x 7.25 ins; 21 cms x 18.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$800–1,200 VIEW THIS LOT

106 Canadian Fine Art Auction

note: Reid’s focus on genre paintings fused European academic techniques with scenes excerpted from rural Canada, the backdrop of his own childhood. Reid often took a romantic view to scenes from the fledgling nation, well evidenced here by the woman waving to the male figure on his way to her door. Whether he is a relation or a stranger, Reid assuredly allows the viewer to fill in the blanks, a technique he was fond of using through his usage of enigmatic titles.

The protagonist in this watercolour bears a strong resemblance to the central figure in Reid’s “The Call to Dinner”, held in the permanent collection of the McMaster Museum of Art. Both women share a similar pose, one arm shading their eyes from the light—though the figure in this painting is depicted in what appears to be a more joyous moment of greeting.

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t HENRIETTA MABEL MAY May’s early work was inspired by the Impressionists, while later landscapes show the influence of the Group of Seven. Artists from the Group were involved with both the Beaver Hall Group and of the Canadian Group of Painters, May being a cofounder of both cooperatives. A.Y. Jackson was a particular influence, and the two artists would maintain ties throughout their lives.

May has been dubbed “the Emily Carr of Montreal,” and indeed the two artists—both members of the CGP—share a similar rhythmic sense and rich palette.

There is a tremendous sense of movement in this composition, as well as a clear affection for the landscape that she depicts. Form and colour unite here to produce a scene that is both simple and sublime.

VIEW THIS LOT 108 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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28 HENRIETTA MABEL MAY, A.R.C.A. UNTITLED oil on canvas signed 18.25 ins x 22 ins; 46.4 cms x 55.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Prince Edward Island

$15,000–25,000

110 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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tBRUNO JOSEPH BOBAK Over his long career, Bobak’s art remained true to its representational core. Working in a moment where abstraction took centre stage, the artist was looking to Monet, Turner and Munch. Herménégilde Chiasson writes that “it was a miracle almost that some artists, like Bobak, were able to keep their eyes focused on that ageless and obsessive art project: the representation of the human figure and its environment… To survive, realism in painting had to turn to other considerations. As Abstract Expressionism was making headlines, Bobak turned to that very same school of painting to establish a different perspective and rely on an emotional intensity that has since infused his work.”

VIEW THIS LOT 112 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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29 BRUNO JOSEPH BOBAK, R.C.A. UNTITLED oil on canvas signed 30 ins x 40 ins; 76.2 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario literature: Bernard Riordon, Herménégilde Chiasson, and Herb Curtis, Bruno Bobak: The Full Palette (Goose Lane Editions and Beaverbrook Art Gallery: Fredericton, NB., 2006), 14.

$5,000–7,000

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tJAMES EDWARD HERVEY MACDONALD There is a touching quality to this floral study, painted by a man most renowned for his vast and wild landscapes. Here, the natural world is condensed into a few blooms, which are then further distilled into a handful of lyrical brushstrokes. This is a humble, intimate painting, perhaps created when the artist was convalescing, unable to access the great wilderness he so loved. MacDonald once explained that “there certainly is a beauty of plainness as well as a beauty of ornament. You can take your choice & attempt both. You will find, everything considered, the beauty of plainness harder to achieve.”

VIEW THIS LOT 116 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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30 JAMES EDWARD HERVEY MACDONALD, O.S.A., R.C.A. FLORAL STUDY oil on canvas signed; signed on the reverse 9.75 ins x 8 ins; 24.8 cms x 20.3 cms provenance: Sotheby’s, Toronto, ON, 26 May 2011, Lot 88; Private Collection, Saint Augustine, FL literature: Bruce Whitman, J.E.H. MacDonald (Quarry Press: Kingston, 1995), 65.

$25,000–35,000

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PETER t CLAPHAM SHEPPARD Sheppard used the landscape as, in the words of art historian Tom Smart, “a visual touchstone that supported an impulse to explore the purely expressive properties of colour.” Indeed, there is virtuosity in the painter’s palette here, as Sheppard is able to take a spin around the entire colour wheel, doing so without descending into the chaotic paint-by-numbers enthusiasm of the Sunday painter keen on using all the pigments in the box. Instead the effect is luminous rather than disorderly—a vivacious yet serene moment created alla prima on a warm summer’s night.

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31 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. SUNSET, ALGONQUIN PARK oil on board, double-sided signed; with a harbour scene and estate stamp on the reverse 8.5 ins x 10.5 ins; 21.6 cms x 26.7 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario literature: Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work (Firefly Books: Toronto, 2018).

$2,500–3,500

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CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF t No other Canadian painter matches Cornelius Krieghoff’s diverse and drolly indifferent views of life.

Exemplary, “A Spill on the Road”, portrays wintertime merriment and mishaps in nineteenth century Quebec with a gentle twist. Few examples of this theme were catalogued by the pioneering Krieghoff scholar Marius Barbeau in his 1934 catalogue raisonné, and more than a generation later Krieghoff’s second major scholar, J. Russell Harper, counted only four examples of overturned sleighs in his summary catalogue of Krieghoff’s work.

It is folly to see Krieghoff’s paintings as records of events in nineteenth century Quebec. Nonetheless, much is revealed by a closer look at a painting made more than a century and a half ago. The overturned berline-barque disgorges its driver in a blue cloth coat, and a young couple dressed in fur coats. The young man drenched in snow tumbles onto his back, and she is athwart the beleaguered driver who pinned the pig in his fall. Behind them, a farmer settles the enraged horse foundering in snow after it veered right and snapped the left shaft of its harness. The woman’s errant mitten “A Spill on the Road” is accented by points to the pig’s tracks leading from three fine examples of the motif in The the farmhouse to the accident scene Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery to make it clear: the pig did it. Despite of Ontario. The same rustic berlinethe calamity, she beams at us, rolling barque appears in “Run Off the Road atop the driver, tugging his hair, her in a Blizzard” (ca. 1861) while “A Winter petticoats and stockings revealed, and Incident” (ca. 1860) shows a couple ready for another go. riding comfortably in their berlinebarque that just ran a sleigh of logs into a ditch. “Off the Road – The Upset Gregory Humeniuk is an independent Sleigh” (ca. 1856) echoes “A Spill on the art historian, writer and curator who has researched and published aspects of Road” down to the choreography of Canadian and international art from the the sleigh’s occupants, the horse, and mid-nineteenth century to the present, as pig. Like Krieghoff’s majestic paintings well as cultural policy and governance. of merrymaking that renewed—not Through fifteen years at the Art Gallery repeated— themes, this similarly small of Ontario he dealt with Canadian group of works epitomizes his ability and European historical, modern, and to renew compositions and compound contemporary art. We thank him for contributing this essay. their humanity.

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32 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF A SPILL ON THE ROAD oil on canvas, laid down on canvas signed; titled to label on the reverse 12 ins x 20 ins; 30.5 cms x 50.8 cms provenance: Atelier Janos Lukacs, Montreal, QC; Collection of H. Myles and Elizabeth Morton, Belleville, ON; By descent to Private Collection, Cobourg, ON

$100,000–150,000

126 Canadian Fine Art Auction

33 CORNELIUS KRIEGHOFF THE HUNTER oil on canvas, laid down on canvas signed; titled to gallery label on the reverse 11.175 ins x 9 ins; 28.4 cms x 22.9 cms provenance: Atelier Janus Lukacs, Montreal, QC; Collection of H. Myles and Elizabeth Morton, Belleville, ON; By descent to Private Collection, Cobourg, ON

In 1853, Krieghoff relocated to Quebec City, in search of new clients and patronage. His Quebec City period was among the most fulfilling and productive of his career.

Krieghoff held a romantic view of the local Indigenous population, and returned often to the subject of the hunter on snowshoes. In these scenes, Krieghoff often added the detail of the animal’s tracks, visible here in the foreground, heightening the drama of the chase. Unlike other interpretations of this subject, here the hunter seems very much at ease, pipe in mouth—even his gait seems more relaxed than in other variations, in which the man leans forward as if into a mighty wind.

$15,000–25,000

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t

128 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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t WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS Though best known for his richly painted landscapes, Goodridge Roberts’ oeuvre emphasized three areas equally: the figure, the landscape and the nude. With a wink, Goodridge Roberts combines two of these interests into one composition by hanging a landscape painting behind his model.

With its frontal composition and warm palette, this is a characteristic nude for the artist. Biographer James Borcoman writes that, increasingly, at the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s, Roberts paints pictures that are emotional, expressionistic outpourings: “Colour is more strident than in the past. The brushwork is more dominant and its gestural quality is invested with urgency,” the same qualities that appear in this lot.

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34 WILLIAM GOODRIDGE ROBERTS, R.C.A NUDE SEATED ON WHITE CLOTH, CA. 1958 oil on canvas signed; inscribed 5/3/76 on Art Emporium label on the reverse 48.75 ins x 32 ins; 123.8 cms x 81.3 cms provenance: The Art Emporium, Vancouver, B.C.; Private Collection, Toronto, ON; Heffel Fine Art, Toronto, ON, 25 Nov 2010, Lot 67; Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: James Borcoman, Goodridge Roberts, A Retrospective (The National Gallery of Canada: Ottawa, 1969), 42-43.

$10,000–15,000

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t DAVID ALEXANDER COLVILLE Collectors of this work will be owning a piece that once hung in New Brunswick’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery; another serigraph in this edition is held by the National Gallery in Ottawa, gifted by Colville’s longstanding Toronto art dealer Mira Godard.

As in many of Colville’s scenes, the familiar produces the filmic. Here, the artist’s wife Rhoda is seen returning to bed. Presumably the lone foot peeking out from the covers is Colville’s own—a domestic self-portrait. Does the title allude to the artist asleep or to the possibility that Rhoda, the central figure in this composition, embarked on a hidden agenda before slipping silently back into bed? Writer and curator Ray Cronin notes that Colville “used images of himself and Rhoda in domestic settings to make powerful, complicated paintings that speak to fundamental truths and mysteries of human connection. How can we know anyone, even the person we have lived with for decades?”

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35 DAVID ALEXANDER COLVILLE, R.C.A SLEEPER, 1975 colour serigraph on paper signed, dated and numbered “artist’s proof 2/20” sight 17.5 ins x 21.5 ins; 44.5 cms x 54.6 cms provenance: Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB

$4,000–6,000

136 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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MARC-AURÈLE DE FOY SUZOR-COTÉ t

In May 1923, it was proposed that sculptures of Pierre Lemoyne d’Iberville and Louis Jolliet be added to the facade of the National Assembly of Quebec. SuzorCoté was awarded the commission for Joliet, though appears not to have begun work until 1925 when he submitted photographs of two maquettes, one depicting a hydrographer taking notes and the other a coureur du bois. Suzor-Coté also worked on a third version of Jolliet, “The Pioneer,” which he mentions in a letter to Charles-Joseph Simard, then the provincial under-secretary. “The Pioneer” is a simple variation of pose and implements to the other two that he submitted for consideration. It is evident that Suzor-Coté was trying to ascertain which role most emblemified Jolliet—was he a hydrographer, a coureur du bois or a pioneer?

The artist ended up choosing all and none, simplifying the final version so as to better harmonize with the ornamentation already present on the facade of the building.

While Suzor-Coté only began his explorations into sculpture in 1911, he would have been highly sensitized to it much earlier, having shared a studio with the sculptor André de Manneville in the late 1890s in Paris. Suzor-Coté was a quick study in this new medium, and his works were sought after by collectors on both sides of the border—a trend which continues to this day. The bronzes were cast in New York at the Roman Bronze Works, hence the inscription “Copyright Canada + United States.”

36 MARC-AURÈLE DE FOY SUZOR-COTÉ, R.C.A. LE PIONNIER bronze signed and dated, also inscribed “Roman Bronze Works, NY” “Copyright Canada + United States” excluding base height 20.75 ins; 52.7 cms provenance: Private Collection, Montreal, QC; Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Pierre L’Allier, Suzor-Coté, L’Oeuvre Sculpte (Musée du Québec: Québec, 1991), 94-95, illustrated on page 94.

$8,000–12,000

VIEW THIS LOT

138 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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tWILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT Bartlett was raised in an artistic tradition that valued the picturesque. The artist turned his eye to the Canadian landscape, recording views that would be the most pleasing to his European contemporaries. Henry C. Campbell, former Chief Librarian at the Toronto Public Library, points out that “his work would be seen by many who might wish to invest capital in new lands, as well as by restless younger sons and daughters attracted by the promise of a new country and land for settlement.” These were “scenes which could be recognized by Europeans and which attracted them by the same romantic pull with which they were attracted to the gorges and waterfalls in their own lands.”

Much of his travel throughout Canada was conducted via ship. Accordingly, many of his views are of bodies of water seen from along his route, captured from points of settlement or trade. Bartlett would create sketches of these locales that he would expand into paintings at a future date—sometimes years later. Bartlett was known to alter these original impressions, supplementing his quick drawings with the work of other artists, including George Heriot, James Pattison Cockburn, Robert A. Sproule, George Bourne and Joseph Bouchette. This has resulted in some embellishments, particularly with respect to height and scale. Despite these enhancements, Bartlett’s scenes seem to have captured the prevailing sentiment. Sir Francis Bond Head, governor of Upper Canada, noted that, to European eyes, “the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the clouds are whiter, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers larger, the forests bigger, the plains broader.” Perhaps Bartlett got it right after all?

VIEW THIS LOT 140 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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37 WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT QUEBEC oil on board signed and titled sight 20.5 ins x 24.5 ins; 52.1 cms x 62.2 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Janice Tyrwhitt and Henry C. Campbell, Bartlett’s Canada: A Pre-Confederation Journey (McLelland and Stewart Limited: Toronto, 1968), 12, 16, 19, 22.

$3,000–5,000 142 Canadian Fine Art Auction

38 WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT HALIFAX, FROM DARTMOUTH oil on board signed and titled sight 19.5 ins x 23.5 ins; 49.5 cms x 59.7 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$3,000–5,000

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WILLIAM PATERSON EWEN t

After returning to Montreal from military service in Europe in June 1946, Paterson Ewen enrolled in a BA program with a science major at McGill University. He spent summer 1947 in Quebec City and painted his first two works.1 In the fall, he transferred to a Fine Arts program at McGill University and in early 1948 entered the School of Art and Design at the MMFA, studying with Arthur Lismer, Goodridge Roberts, Marian Scott and others. He also attended meetings of a leftwing cultural group and heard presentations by members of the Automatiste abstract group. Ewen later stated, “I chose to integrate into the 80% French-Canadian side of Montreal.” 2 He graduated in April 1950, and in spite of continuing with figurative and image works, showed with members of the Automatistes that year, and again in the May 1951 group show “Les Étapes du Vivant” (Stages of the Living) organized by artists Claude Gavreau, Pierre Lefebvre and JeanPaul Mousseau. The objective was to show “how the visual arts evolved from nature to the representation to automatisme.” 3 “Montreal from Priest’s Farm” would have amply illustrated this proposition, and arguably is the most ambitious of Ewen’s Montreal pictorial paintings. Yet even at this stage of his art practice, the pictorial did not rest in the descriptive alone. The graphicallyexpressed bare trees dominate much of the painting in the foreground and midground and obscure the view of the city below.

Gavreau admired “the brutal way [Ewen] painted…against almost everything.”4 Critic VIEW THIS LOT 146 Canadian Fine Art Auction

Rodolphe de Repentigny quoted Ewen in a 1955 review: “the realism of the scene was lost.” 5 By that, he meant that Ewen was not denying the view but worked through it in the act of painting. It is worth considering this in the context of British painter Leon Kossoff (born 1926, a year after Ewen), who drew his cues from the environs of London, England but transformed it through paint in a visceral way. Rather than the end of a style for Ewen, this Montreal painting forcefully demonstrates his interests in “materiality” and locality. Ewen returned to landscape work proper with watercolours of Middlesex County in the late 1980s; two examples are in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Priest’s Farm is located on the slopes of Mount Royal, an estate of orchards and fields that was a site for sports and leisure for the students and priests of the Collège de Montréal and the Grand Séminaire.

Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art historian. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Queensland. We thank him for contributing this essay.

Both, collection McIntosh Gallery, Western University, London Ontario 1

2

Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years (Mendel Art Gallery, 1987) p.36

3

Mendel, p.16-17

4

Mendel, p.16

5

Mendel p.17

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39 WILLIAM PATERSON EWEN, R.C.A. MONTREAL FROM PRIEST’S FARM, 1951 oil on canvas signed and dated; titled and dated to gallery labels on the reverse 34 ins x 40 ins; 86.4 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Estate of Dr. Barbara Wand, ON exhibited: Paterson Ewen Retrospective, London Regional Art Gallery, ON, Nov 1976, checklist no. 6; Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, London Regional Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Windsor, Concordia Art Gallery, Montreal, St. Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax, 20 Nov 1987 - 13 Dec 1988 literature: Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years, Mendel Art Gallery, 1987. Illustrated page 14

$15,000–25,000

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ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON t

A.Y. Jackson’s “Early Spring, Algonquin Park” is an ambitious, unremarked view of a pivotal site in modern Canadian painting by a central figure of the Group of Seven. Ontario’s Algonquin Park and its Canoe Lake are synonymous with Tom Thomson, who began painting there in 1912. In February-March and September-October 1914 Jackson first sketched there, not to return until 1941. Based on an 8-1/2 by 101/2 inch 1914 oil study sold in 1992 as “Birches, Canoe Lake”, this 32 by 40 inch canvas employed Jackson’s larger than average format that he used from at least 1914 to the early 1960s, and for masterworks such as the National Gallery of Canada’s “The Red Maple” (1914) and the Art Gallery of Ontario’s “Barns” (ca.

1926).

The two labels on this painting’s stretcher became red herrings. The earliest is from the 1927 Canadian National Exhibition, where it was Jackson’s sole canvas. His busy 1927 began with a spring sketching trip to Quebec’s Charlevoix region with his friend Dr. Frederick Banting. From July to September they were in the Canadian Arctic when this painting was sent to Toronto on his behalf courtesy of Montreal’s Johnson Art Galleries with the title “Autumn, Canoe Lake”.

The other label is from the NGC, undated, and indicates the painting was in the collection of fellow Montreal artist Lilias Torrance Newton (1896-1980).

A list of his works Jackson prepared in 1933 for the anthropologist Marius Barbeau cites “Birch Woods” (1914) as his only work in Newton’s collection.1 Twentyone years later, another list drafted by Jackson to supplement the Art Gallery of Toronto’s (now AGO) 1953 retrospective exhibition catalogue of his work includes Newton’s work as “Birch trees” (1914) with measurements of 32 by 40 inches.2 The shift from “Birch Woods” to “Birch trees” is easily understood 150 Canadian Fine Art Auction

as Jackson’s paraphrase of a descriptive title, and the absence of “Autumn, Canoe Lake” from Jackson’s own lists suggests he neither gave, nor recognized, the title.

A provocative and compelling hypothesis is that “Autumn, Canoe Lake”, exhibited in 1927, rightfully dated 1914, was number 281 in the 1914 CNE exhibition as, “Early Spring, Algonquin Park”.

Jackson’s two paintings in that exhibition – “A Frozen Lake” (no. 280) and “Early Spring, Algonquin Park” (no. 281) – were each offered for 800.00 CAD and the former was acquired by Dr. James MacCallum within the year. That 32 by 40 inch painting entered the NGC in 1944 as part of MacCallum’s bequest, and is currently known by the NGC as “Frozen Lake, Early Spring, Algonquin Park” (NGC 4732). The shared prices connote shared dimensions, and no other 32 by 40 inch painting is known from Jackson’s first Algonquin trip. Understanding the present painting as the companion to “A Frozen Lake” at the 1914 CNE, its barren trees, saturated terrain, and vaporous crepuscular sky all reasonably suggest it is “Early Spring, Algonquin Park”.

Gregory Humeniuk is an independent art historian, writer and curator who has researched and published aspects of Canadian 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.

A.Y. Jackson, “List of Paintings and Activities from 1910 to 1922 Prepared by Himself at the Request of Marius Barneau, June 1933,” Artists files, Edward P. Taylor Research Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

1

A.Y. Jackson, “A.Y. Jackson 3/4 Collection List: List of Important Pictures in Collections Made for Who’s Who in Ontario Art Committee by A.Y. Jackson; this to supplement pictures in the Retrospective Exhibition October 1953,” (1954), Artist’s files, Edward P. Taylor Research Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

2

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40 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. EARLY SPRING, ALGONQUIN PARK, 1914 oil on canvas signed; titled to gallery labels on the reverse 32 ins x 40 ins; 81.3 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Collection of Lilias Torrance Newton, Montreal, QC, 1933; Joyner Fine Art, Toronto, ON, 22 Nov 1988, lot 121; Maynards, Vancouver, BC, 6 Jun 1995, lot 101; Private Collection, Winnipeg, MB exhibited: Canadian Paintings, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Aug 29 - Sept 14, 1914, no. 281, as Early Spring, Algonquin Park; Canadian Paintings, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Aug 27 - Sept 10, 1927, no. 150, as, Autumn, Canoe Lake (c/o Johnson Art Galleries, Montreal) literature: Catalogue of Department of Fine Arts. Exh. cat. Toronto: Canadian National Exhibition, 1914: no. 281, p. 70, as Early Spring, Algonquin Park.

Catalogue British, Belgian, French and Canadian Paintings, British and Canadian Sculpture. International Graphic and Applied Art and Salon of Photography. Exh. cat. Toronto, Canadian National Exhibition, 1927: no. 150, as Autumn, Canoe Lake.

$400,000–600,000

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tPETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD There is a wonderful symmetry to “Royal Winter Fair,” a scene of livestock being observed, admired, and judged on their way to the auction block in much the same way that we observe, admire and judge art. Whether a wry comment on the nature of the art business or simply an unbiased subject that happened to pique Sheppard’s interest, the echo remains.

Like many of his peers, Sheppard worked in the realm of commercial art so as to support his interest in creating “fine” art. From a young age, Sheppard trained to be a commercial lithographer, ultimately becoming among the best in the country. Yet in his mind, the realms of commercial and fine art were not meant to overlap, and was intentional in his approach to each. Commercial art “was directly linked to promoting sales through visual means” while fine art had the purpose of “edifying the mind and providing decoration.” Yet art and commerce were not so easily teased apart, as full-time artists were reliant on patronage and sales. Artists of note were expected to submit their work to juried exhibitions and salons, including the Canadian National Exhibition—where one might look at livestock, sports matches, and some of the finest art the country was producing at the time. Perhaps the veil between the commercial and fine art worlds lifts a little higher than usual in this painting—a painterly wink indeed.

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41 PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A. ROYAL WINTER FAIR oil on canvas signed 16.25 ins x 20.25 ins; 40.6 cms x 50.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario literature: Tom Smart, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work, (Firefly Books: Toronto), 40.

$15,000–20,000

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ANNE DOUGLAS SAVAGE lively green of a rubber plant tThe suggests the new growth of early

spring but falling yellow and orange leaves reveal that Anne Savage’s “Houses in Westmount, Quebec” was painted in autumn. Savage’s subject, a white and grey house, is illuminated by a late afternoon sun that casts a zigzagging gold shadow across the facade. The work is painted in the loose hand of a mature and confident artist. Given the artist’s incredible attention for detail, and bold approach to composition is not surprising that Arthur Lismer once said, ‘’Give that girl a chance and she would be one of the finest painters in Canada.” 1 Anne Savage’s “Houses in Westmount, Quebec” is a unique subject for the artist. While her landscapes painted around the Laurentians and Métis Beach are well-known, urban subjects by the artist are rare and few have been recorded. “Houses in Westmount, Quebec” reveals that Savage was as skilled at capturing a street in Montreal as she was a rural farm, rolling hillside, or sandy shore.

One can only speculate why she didn’t paint more.

The subject of a houseplant in front of a window was explored by several of Savage’s peers and fellow Beaver Hall

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Group artists. Nora Collyer, Prudence Heward, Lilias Torrance Newton, Sarah Robertson, and Ethel Seath each produced works that, like Savage’s, place a still life in front of a window looking out over urban Montreal scenes. Savage and her coterie of fellow artists combined genres in their paintings, resulting in innovative works that are simultaneously still lifes and street scenes.

Evidence suggests that Savage painted “Houses in Westmount, Quebec” from a second story window in her home on Highland Avenue. The house depicted is one that she would have known well, having lived across the street from it for decades. Despite, or perhaps because of, the familiarity, Anne Savage saw something unique in the view from her window and captured it in this delightfully rich painting.

John Geoghegan is an art historian and curator based in Toronto. He has contributed to publications for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

Anne McDougall, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter (Harvest House: Montreal, 1977), 12.

1

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View from a second story window of artist’s home on Highland Avenue. Photo: Google Street View

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ANNE DOUGLAS SAVAGE HOUSES IN WESTMOUNT, QUEBEC oil on Masonite signed 30 ins x 24 ins; 76.2 cms x 61 cms provenance: Collection of Florence Hecht, Westmount, QC; By descent to the present owner

$15,000–20,000

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tPAUL VANIER BEAULIEU Still life was an enduring and important subject for Beaulieu. Beaulieu, like many modernists, did not undertake still life with a view to replicating what lay before him, rather preferring to work from memory and imagination. Beaulieu’s essentials were line, form, and colour. Upon first glance, this painting appears distinctly botanical — perhaps a quince and a cluster of olives — yet there is something delightfully muscular about Beaulieu’s composition that also can be read as a heart and lungs. Perhaps this painting might be viewed as an ode to the power of the human body, or a comment on the singular oneness of flora and fauna.

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43

PAUL VANIER BEAULIEU, R.C.A. SANS TITRE oil on canvas signed 7.5 ins x 9.5 ins; 19.1 cms x 24.1 cms provenance: Private Collection, Montreal, QC

$3,000–4,000

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tALEXANDER COLVILLE Colville was an artist who took inspiration from his immediate surroundings, using his own home and family as the basis for many of his compositions.

Here, he used himself and his wife Rhoda as models in this enigmatic serigraph, though the result is less self-portrait than an attempt to present more universal protagonists.

The mirror in Rhoda’s hand is based on an eighteenth dynasty Egyptian bronze artifact held in the permanent collection of Berlin’s National Gallery. Colville had sketched the item in 1971, during his residency as a Visiting Artist under the Berliner Künstlerprogramm.

The artist nods to his artistic life by including a corner of his 1956 work “Cat on Fence” in the upper-left of the composition. Art historian Ray Cronin writes that animals often serve as a foil to humans in Colville’s work, who revisited ideas about the dichotomy between human and animal worlds throughout his career. Biographer Tom Smart adds that for Colville, “the cat is the emblem of unknowing.”

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44 ALEXANDER COLVILLE MORNING, 1981 serigraph, printed in colours signed, dated and numbered 40/70 in pencil to margin image width 22 ins; 55.9 cms provenance: Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB literature: Ray Cronin, Alex Colville, Black Cat, 1996, Art Canada Institute, 2017.

Tom Smart, Alex Colville: Return (Douglas & McIntyre: Vancouver , 2003), 80.

$6,000–8,000

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NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU t

Considered the Grandfather of Woodlands style painting, Norval Morrisseau weaves together Anishinaabe spiritual narratives with his own flair for working outside the norm. In Morrisseau’s “Mermaid”, completed between 1958-1962 and done with tempera on millboard, we see the artist once again return to his solo Mermaid figures.

Morrisseau often would turn to explicit Indigenous narratives that both asserted stewardship and Indigenous authority, while still being able to move through settler art spaces which celebrated his art as something foreign and exciting.

In “Mermaid” we see the artist paying homage to the Anishinaabeg Nibiinaageb who appear throughout Anishinaabe mythology as teachers and helpers, as well as falling under their own Clan known as Giishkizhigwan. Morrisseau often used mermaids and water spirits in his paintings as a means to keep alive the teachings from his childhood. By addressing the expectations of who Indigenous art was made for, he created distinct narratives familiar to many of Morrisseau’s own community members, though unrecognizable and perhaps disturbing to some settler onlookers.

The Mermaid exists in a dualistic form, always between animal and human, as well as between genders. Morrisseau can often be seen playing with convention and pushing back against the socially imposed taboos introduced by Christianity.

While Morrisseau’s mermaid bares its breasts, it does not read as distinctly female, nor distinctly fish-like. Instead he leaves us somewhere in between, in a place beyond Western understandings of being. Pushing the viewer to think outside themselves and imagine a world (potentially one underwater) that exists beyond what we can comprehend, though exists nonetheless.

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.

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NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU, R.C.A. ANISHINAABE (OJIBWE) MERMAID, CA. 1962 tempera on board signed in syllabics; titled and dated to gallery label on the reverse 35 ins x 54.5 ins; 88.9 cms x 138.4 cms provenance: Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Prince Edward Island

$15,000–25,000

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NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU t Prolific and self-taught painter Norval Morrisseau has become cemented in Canadian Art History as one of the founding members of the Indian Group of Seven as well as for being a champion of Indigenous arts at a time when Residential Schools and government policy were attempting to destroy Indigenous traditions and culture.

a knowledge that has been shared, upheld and celebrated by many Indigenous artists since.

In this painting we see Morrisseau once again return to his water serpents, here presented in a rich acrylic on board. The serpent’s large frame and frightening features take up the body of the canvas, powerfully demanding the authority Hailing from Bingwi Neyaashi and attention of the viewer, much like Anishinaabek, Morrisseau grew up they would in Anishinaabe stories. around Lake Superior and was well Morrisseau’s respect and admiration versed in the stories of the massive for these large beasts is clear in the underwater serpents that live in ways he details the serpent with the great lakes and take down ships webbed toes, large teeth and jarring and people without a thought. This multi-coloured eyes. By giving us familiarity comes through in the artist’s a view into the belly of the beast, work as water spirits and serpents we are shown there are more to show up regularly in his paintings, these spirits than meets the eye. An speaking to an oral history that runs as interwoven world within an already deep as the Great Lake itself. hidden life, which aesthetically connects to the orbs that circle the This familiarity comes through in serpent, showing the spiritual power many of Morrisseau’s works that these animals have for Great Lakes speak directly to the stories and Anishinaabe people. histories he grew up around. The use Emma Steen is a freelance curator and writer, as of an explicit Indigenous aesthetic well as the Community Relations Manager for the and worldview have left Morrisseau Indigenous Curatorial Collective. Her area of interest lies in art that explores bodies, sex and love with as one of the most important anti-colonial intention.

Indigenous artists in contemporary art history, creating works that assert

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46

NORVAL H. MORRISSEAU, R.C.A. ANISHINAABE (OJIBWE) THE WATER SERPENT acrylic on board signed in syllabics sight 32 ins x 40 ins; 81.3 cms x 101.6 cms provenance: Private Collection, Calgary, AB

$12,000–16,000

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t SOREL ETROG This powerful example of Etrog’s Hinges period style presents a figure identified by an action— walking. “Piéton” (pedestrian in French, one of the six languages the artist spoke) appears with parted legs, in mid-stride. The rest of the body is reorganized in response to this shifting of weight and the movement of muscles.

In this work, Etrog uses the hinge, a simple device that allows two perpendicular surfaces to open and close, as a tool to overcome what was historically conceived as one of sculpture’s inherent limits—the depiction of movement.

Dr. Alma Mikulinsky is an art historian and curator whose latest book Sorel Etrog: Life and Work was published in 2020 by Art Canada Institute. An authority on European Avant-Garde; her texts on Pablo Picasso were commissioned by leading museums such as Tate Modern and the Museé National Picasso-Paris. She opened two exhibitions this fall: Links as Bones: Sorel Etrog and the Fragile Body at the Art Gallery of Windsor and Guernica Remastered at Remai Modern.

47 SOREL ETROG, R.C.A. STUDY FOR PIÉTON, CA. 1975 bronze 8 ins x 1.9 ins x 3.3 ins; 20.3 cms x 4.75 cms x 8.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Pierre Restany, Sorel Etrog, Prestal: Munich, 2001, Piéton illus. in colour p. 120

$7,000–9,000

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t JOSEPH YVON FAFARD The intimacy that Joe Fafard has with his cast bronze subjects is the central theme of his Mes Amis series. Exhibited in 2015 at Slate Gallery, Mes Amis includes sculptures of those that have inspired Fafard and his work.

“Painter and His Model” presents an important duo-portrait of a young Fafard with Austrian Expressionist, Egon Schiele. In an interview with CBC, Fafard discusses his admiration for Schiele noting that Schiele “produced a great body of work that is now amongst the world’s treasures. I wanted to do something that would be like his work that was energetic and took risks.” Shiele often painted his subjects with elongated and poorly nourished bodies that evoked a sense of pain and suffering. You can see this influence in Fafard’s portrayal of a naked and vulnerable Schiele that is shown embracing Fafard while his body is marked with wounds and bruises. Both subjects are purposely looking away, possibly into a mirror, as the expression on Schiele’s face with the raised eyebrow and semi-frown strongly resembles the expression found in his famous self-portraits.

48 JOSEPH YVON FAFARD, R.C.A PAINTER AND HIS MODEL (EGON SCHIELE), MES AMIS SERIES, 2015 chemical patina on bronze signed, dated and numbered 1/3 28 ins x 10 ins x 10 ins; 72.4 cms x 25.4 cms x 25.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Vancouver, BC; Consignor, Toronto, ON, Canadian Fine Art, 25 May 2017, Lot 49 Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$20,000–30,000

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RENÉ MARCIL t

Accompanied with impeccable provenance and authenticity, Waddington’s presents two major works

by Marcil, “Abstract # 44”, 1958 and “Abstract # 37”, 1957. Both works were created in Paris at his studio on rue Séguier, Quai des Grands-Augustins.

While living in Paris, Marcil became a Montparno, a name for the artists and intellectuals who were regulars at the Montparnasse cafés and restaurants such as La Closerie des Lilas and brasserie La Coupole. He enjoyed discussions with his peers including Sonia Delaunay and Ernest Hemingway amongst others.

James Johnson Sweeney, director of The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, in a letter to Marcil on May 9, 1956 commented that “the free handling of your broad color area was very happy.’’

Works by Marcil are present in the Collections Nationales de France, Ministère de la Culture de France, Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and in the Sweeney collection.

Poetic in colour and composition, “Abstract # 44”, is a luminous abstract figurative with its deep-green colour scheme reminiscent of La Closerie des Marcil evolved towards Abstract Lilas’ green garden and hedges of lilacs Geometric and Abstract Figurative surrounding the terrace while the red creating paintings composed of structured square bottom right along with red lines and irregular forms. Using his vivid Fauvist and a brown rectangle draw parallels colour palette, Marcil achieved a striking with the red stools lining the mahogany balance between form, colour and space. bar while the narrow white stick is most He would often say, “for me, abstract and likely Marcil’s version of a Cocktail Martini figurative are one of the same.’’

Stick. The bar at La Closerie des Lilas was Marcil’s favourite hangout in Paris.

The Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Galleries, Marcil loved cactuses, he had many in his 57th Street at Madison Avenue, New studio, a likely source of inspiration for the York exhibited Marcil’s work from the figuration on the right side. mid-1950s until its closure in the mid1960s. Curator Elizabeth Flinn from the Waddington’s thanks the Patrimoine Marcil for contributing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the above essay. refers to Marcil’s work as ‘’poetic in color and composition.’’ Artworks by Marcil were included in a Modern Art group exhibition alongside paintings by Pollock and Magritte.

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49 RENÉ MARCIL ABSTRACT 44, 1958 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘58; signed on the reverse 29 ins x 39 ins; 73.7 cms x 99.1 cms provenance: Patrimoine Marcil, Geneva, Switzerland

$20,000–30,000

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50 RENÉ MARCIL ABSTRACT 37, 1957 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘57; signed and dated ‘57 on the reverse 50.25 ins x 40.25 ins; 146.1 cms x 113.7 cms provenance: Patrimoine Marcil, Geneva, Switzerland

$30,000–50,000

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tOSCAR CAHÉN Oscar Cahén’s work was largely unseen for 40 years following his untimely death at the age of 40 in 1956; however, he is now considered an important illustrator and painter. Fleeing Nazi Germany, Cahén arrived in Quebec as a refugee in 1941. His talent for drawing was quickly recognized and soon appeared in Maclean’s magazine. By 1949, Cahén had moved to Toronto, where his success as a commercial artist gave him the freedom to experiment with abstraction in his personal work. With artists Harold Town and Jack Bush, Cahén formed the Painters Eleven, a group dedicated to forwarding abstract art in Canada.

This untitled work dates from the year of Cahén’s first solo exhibition (at Hart House) and features the oval forms and vibrant colour that characterize his paintings. Assuming control of the estate in the 1990s, Cahén’s son made work available for exhibition, allowing scholars and the public to re-discover this exceptionally creative artist.

Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based collector of contemporary art (and many other things) and a writer who has written for ArtReview, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Canadian Art and Border Crossings. Associate director of Angell Gallery from 2017 to 2019, Clarke has returned to his previous career in healthcare policy and communications.

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51 OSCAR CAHÉN UNTITLED, 1954 mixed media on paper 22.5 ins x 34.5 ins; 57.2 cms x 87.6 cms provenance: Estate of the Artist; Private Collection, British Columbia

$15,000–20,000

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tTHOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON The same year this canvas was painted, critic Robert Fulford wrote in Canadian Art magazine that “a Hodgson canvas seems to storm over us, filling our eyes with its swarm of apparently unrelated images. It is not until long after our first glimpse of the work that its organization and structure become apparent. At first it appears to be a jumble of squiggles and smears, arrows and parabolas. But when we examine it closer and allow the painting to assert itself we begin to see the way in which one image leads into another, and also the way in which each of the several levels is securely anchored in space. And while examining it, and others by Hodgson, we begin to see that the strange colours – purple, purplish red, dull green – are not only the result of a rather eccentric colour sense but also are the result of Hodgson’s desire to break away from all traditional usage and create new worlds of space and light.”

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52 THOMAS SHERLOCK HODGSON R.C.A. UNTITLED, 1961 oil on canvas signed and dated ‘61 sight 36.5 ins x 25 ins; 92.7 cms x 63.5 cms provenance: The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$8,000–12,000

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t SOREL ETROG Sorel Etrog broke both legs and badly injured his right hand as a result of a life-threatening car accident in 1967. For a sculptor who prided himself on his mastery of the technical ins-and-outs of sculpture, the prospect of losing his dexterity was devastating. As he slowly recovered, he became fascinated with the human hand, a motif that dominated much of his work from the late 1960s.

“Small Chair (Hand)” is a fine example of this motif. This major work demonstrates how the artist explored the intricate mechanism of the hand, yet envisioned it as distorted and damaged with fingers knotted and thus immobilized. Transforming the hand into a chair, Etrog further insisted on the inability of the appendage to function—it could carry weight but not perform even the most rudimentary action.

Dr. Alma Mikulinsky is an art historian and curator whose latest book Sorel Etrog: Life and Work was published in 2020 by Art Canada Institute. An authority on European Avant-Garde; her texts on Pablo Picasso were commissioned by leading museums such as Tate Modern and the Museé National Picasso-Paris. She opened two exhibitions this fall: Links as Bones: Sorel Etrog and the Fragile Body at the Art Gallery of Windsor and Guernica Remastered at Remai Modern.

53 SOREL ETROG, R.C.A. SMALL CHAIR (HAND) bronze stamped signature and numbered 3/7 17.25 ins x 9.25 ins x 9.25 ins; 43.8 cms x 23.5 cms x 23.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Port Saint Lucie, FL literature: Pierre Restany, Sorel Etrog, Munich, 2002, page 77 Florian Rodari, “Secret Paths, 1999-2000” in Ihor Holubizky (ed.), Sorel Etrog: Five Decades, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, page 103

$20,000–30,000

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tRONALD LANGLEY BLOORE Bloore received a Canada Council Senior Arts Fellowship Grant in 1962, which allowed him to travel extensively throughout Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. There he became interested in the architecture and symbolism of early civilizations, which would come to inform his future work. Upon his return to Canada, he renounced both his previous work as well as the use of colour, instead choosing to paint primarily in white. Bloore began exploring what he referred to as “symbol-like elements,” forms which he believed were deeply rooted in the visual culture of antiquity.

Here Bloore takes the chasuble as his inspiration. The chasuble is the outermost garment worn by Roman Catholic priests, as well as by some Anglicans and Lutherans while celebrating the Eucharist.

The garment is based on the paenula or casula (“little house”) cloak worn in Greco-Roman culture, made of a semicircular piece of cloth.

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54 RONALD LANGLEY BLOORE CHASUBLE, 1984 oil on Masonite signed and dated “Jan-Feb 1984” on the reverse; titled to gallery label on the reverse sight 29 ins x 42.75 ins; 73.7 cms x 108.6 cms provenance: Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$12,000–16,000

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tJOAN WILLSHER-MARTEL Born in Victoria in 1925, Willsher-Martel moved to Toronto in 1952 with a view to become an abstract artist. Willsher-Martel developed her own artistic style inspired by the Painters Eleven and Emily Carr, infused with Pointillism and Impressionism. Her works are both romantic and meticulous, resembling fourcolour process inks with a Gaussian blur — Seurat but dreamier. Often depicting the trees and landscapes of British Columbia, Willsher-Martel’s mature works are an otherworldly homage to her birthplace.

Waddington’s continues to hold the record for highest price at auction for a Willsher-Martel.

Further reading: Joan Murray, Cosmic Consciousness: the Paintings of Joan Willsher-Martel, 1950-2000 (Gallery Gevik: Toronto, 2000).

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55 JOAN WILLSHER-MARTEL ARBUTUS NO. 5, 1984 oil on linen signed and dated; signed, titled and dated on the reverse 49 ins x 39 ins; 124.5 cms x 99.1 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$5,000–7,000

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M. EMILY CARR t

In the late spring of 1933 Emily Carr set off with her two dogs Koko and Tantrum and her pet white rat Susie on her last major painting expedition.

This final painting sojourn outside the local confines of Victoria was undertaken in a quest to capture the spiritual mountain themes she has so admired in the works of Lawren Harris and others. Carr boarded the Pacific Great Eastern Railway at its terminus in Brackendale near Squamish after sailing up Howe Sound from Vancouver. The rail journey lasted from May to June and would take her snaking along vast mountain ranges and through scenic valleys with their small settlements where she disembarked for several days at a time to explore and paint.

In her journal entry on June 7th Carr captures her excitement: “The settling down in the train with creatures comfortably arranged for and my eyes all agog to absorb scenery. Mountains towering—snow mountains, blue mountains, green mountains, brown mountains, tree-covered, barren rock, cruel mountains with awful waterfalls and chasms and avalanches, tender mountains all shining, spiritual peaks way up among the clouds.”

Her last stop was Pemberton, where she would have taken in the imposing Mount Currie looming over

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the valley and the small settlement found there in 1933. “Pemberton” is both an outstanding and a rare example of one of the surviving mountain paintings Carr composed during her visit there. In the painting the central focus is on the majestic mountains thrusting upward from the valley floor with their peaks affecting the trajectory of the blue sky that careens off their snow capped peaks. The village in the foreground is dwarfed by the scene and Carr’s skilled interpretation makes it feel fragile and tentative. Carr’s iconic canvas “Pemberton Meadows” with its mountains towering over a few rows of houses is reminiscent of the scene found here and likely formed part of her inspiration. Carr never continued the pursuit of mountain themes after 1933 but she left us with a few exceptional examples such as the dramatic landscape painting Pemberton.

Dr. Michael Polay is an Emily Carr researcher and author. Recent work includes his contribution to the publication Emily Carr: Fresh Seeing, French Modernism and the West Coast and the associated exhibition that toured Canada in 2020-21. We thank him for contributing this essay.

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56 M. EMILY CARR PEMBERTON, 1933 oil on paper, laid down on canvas signed, titled and dated 23.5 ins x 35.5 ins; 59.7 cms x 90.2 cms provenance: Art Emporium, Vancouver, B.C.; Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art, Vancouver, B.C.; Private Collection, ON literature: Carr, Emily, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (Clarke Irwin & Company Limited: Toronto, 1966), 35.

$150,000–250,000 Carr, Emily. Pemberton Meadows, 1933. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust VAG 42.3.36.

Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.

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ARTHUR LISMER t

Canada’s history, industry and culture, including its art, have been shaped by the landscape. For millennia, artists—Indigenous and immigrant, professional and amateur—have been inspired by the majestic beauty of this country’s forests, lakes, mountains and skies.

Although Steve Driscoll’s work is often discussed in relation to the Group of Seven, he doesn’t simply draw inspiration from them; rather, his paintings extend and contemporize their legacy. Like Lismer and his cohorts, Driscoll experiences the landscapes he paints firsthand by camping, hiking and portaging Arthur Lismer, who emigrated from throughout northern Ontario.

England, was a founding member However, instead of packing an easel, of the Group of Seven, arguably canvas and paint, Driscoll carries a the most well-known and influential camera. Current technologies play an affiliation of artists this country important role in shaping his practice has produced. Lismer took his first conceptually. Driscoll documents painting trip to Georgian Bay in 1913 with digital cameras and then uses and was a dedicated painter for his the images to produce works inentire life. Lismer, Lawren Harris, A.Y. studio, often at sizes Lismer could Jackson and other Group of Seven only dream of. Driscoll’s instantly members sought to express the recognizable layers of tinted urethane spirit of the young country through give the works their reflective screenits landscape, creating images in like transparency. By capturing and vivid Impressionistic colour and bold manipulating his source material brushstrokes. Lismer’s “Two Trees, digitally, Driscoll seems to suggest B.C.” is an excellent example of his that it has become easy – perhaps mid-career style, during which he too easy – for people to re-shape and replaced Impressionism with roughre-present the world as they want it hewn and angular approaches to form to be seen. But, then again, isn’t this and paint handling. His paintings of what artists—Lismer included—have this time also feature tightly framed always done? compositions that focus on details, such as this painting’s vegetation Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based collector of in the foreground and the sliver of contemporary art (and many other things) and a blue sky peeking through the dense writer who has written for ArtReview, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Canadian Art and Border Crossings. canopy of trees.

Associate director of Angell Gallery from 2017 to 2019, Clarke has returned to his previous career in healthcare policy and communications.

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57 ARTHUR LISMER, O.S.A., R.C.A. TWO TREES, B.C., 1959 oil on panel signed and dated ‘59 16 ins x 12 ins; 40.6 cms x 30.5 cms provenance: Sale of Canadian Art, The Women’s Committee of the Art Gallery of Ontario; Private Collection, Waterloo, ON; Waddington’s, Toronto, ON, Canadian Fine Art, 20 Nov 2017, Lot 48; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$12,000–15,000

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58 STEVE DRISCOLL SILVER BASIN, 2015 urethane on panel signed, titled and dated on the reverse 46 ins x 102 ins; 116.8 cms x 259.1 cms provenance: Private Collection, Dallas, TX

$7,000–9,000

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tALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON The lore of the boxcar trips north of Lake Superior between 1919 and 1925 by members of the Group of Seven is well known. On each of those trips were A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. For six years in a row they perfected their camping techniques and sketched in oil the wild colours of fall on the north shore of Lake Superior and in Algoma Country. Sketches in pencil were produced as well, perhaps more as a diary entry than an idea for a future fully-realized oil painting.

Jackson recalls in A Painter’s Country: “There were few places to stay in this country, so we took with us a tent and camping equipment. We chose our camp sites [sic] with great care, always near water, protected from wind, and on ground that sloped away from the tent...It was a strenuous life. Harris was up before daylight, making a lot of noise with pots and pans as he got breakfast. The rain would be pattering on the tent when Harris would call, ‘Come on, get up.’”

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59 ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A. CAMP AT LAKE SUPERIOR pencil on paper signed and titled sight 7.75 ins x 10.5 ins; 19.7 cms x 26.7 cms provenance: Gallery Dresdnere, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, ON literature: Jackson, A.Y., A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson (Clarke, Irwin & Company: Toronto, 1964), 57-58

$6,000–8,000

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tWILLIAM KURELEK In his adult years, Kurelek was able to visit Ukraine, the country of his family’s origins. Under the Communist regime, tourists were not permitted unfettered access to the country, and were instead escorted by government tour operators. On one such trip in 1970, Kurelek noted that his group was taken to admire Soviet triumphs including power stations and dams on the Dnieper. He wrote that “you know such things bore me.” Accordingly, in this painting Kurelek relegates the more industrial elements to the fringes of his composition, almost cropping them out of the frame entirely. The barge, the tugboat, and the bulldozer all become peripheral, secondary to the beauty of the river itself. Patricia Morley, one of Kurelek’s biographers, notes that Kurelek completed five paintings while on his trip to the Ukraine, “done by using every spare moment and by working at night.”

The Shevchenko Monument, from where this view was captured, houses the grave of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861). Shevechenko was the foremost Ukrainian poet of the 19th century, as well as a painter of great renown. Considered as the father of modern Ukrainian literature and a major figure in the Ukrainian national revival, Shevchenko’s work would have undoubtedly been familiar to Kurelek. Art historian Khrystyna Berehovska notes that Kurelek would look for Shevchenko’s books in translation, and also included nods to Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka in his paintings.

For a contemporary view from the Shevchenko Monument, please visit this interactive Google link

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60 WILLIAM KURELEK, R.C.A. VIEW ON THE DNIEPER RIVER FROM SHEVCHENKO MONUMENT IN KANEV, 1970 oil on board signed and dated ‘70; titled on the reverse sight 13 ins x 9.75 ins; 33 cms x 24.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, ON literature: Patricia Morley, Kurelek: A Biography (Macmillan of Canada: Toronto, 1986), 224.

$12,000–16,000

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t EDWARD BURTYNSKY A fascination with water has been an abiding theme throughout photographer and filmmaker Edward Burtynsky’s 40-year career. The social and environmental costs of human interventions within the landscape, and the role water has played, is captured in the suite of photographs—arguably one of the artist’s most significant and affecting series—depicting China’s massive Three Gorges Dam project. Initiated to prevent the seasonal flooding of the Yangtze, China’s largest river, and to provide electricity for the country’s manufacturing sector, the project also required the relocation of over a million people, none of whom, eerily enough, are present in the scene depicted in Burtynsky’s image. The building of the dam also resulted in the submerging of historic sites, farmlands and entire villages. Despite the seemingly impartial, documentary-like nature of Burtynsky’s photograph, one senses a critique of the complete disregard of people’s rights, livelihoods and histories displayed by governments and industries in the name of consumerism.

Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based collector of contemporary art (and many other things) and a writer who has written for ArtReview, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Canadian Art and Border Crossings. Associate director of Angell Gallery from 2017 to 2019, Clarke has returned to his previous career in healthcare policy and communications.

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61 EDWARD BURTYNSKY THREE GORGES DAM PROJECT, DAM #2, YANGTZE RIVER, CHINA, 2002 giclée photo based print, composite from 5, 6x7 cm colour negatives signed, titled, dated and numbered 3/12 to label on the reverse 23 ins x 86 ins; 58.4 cms x 218.4 cms provenance: Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$15,000–20,000

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TOM HOPKINS recognized this painting fondly as tWe “one of dad’s bowls.” My brother and I

are intimately familiar with the themes in our father’s work, and his bowl series is as prominent in our psyche as his boat ones. In a rare moment here, they are both represented in this piece.

He was interested in the idea of water; the interplay between open oceans, versus constrained canals. This idea also serves as a metaphor for life; the free flow of something being shaped and guided, by forms and boundaries.

The bowl and the boat were vessels to explore this theme.

Looking at where the bowl and boat live in this painting, the nature of place in our dad’s work came up. He had an ability to create imagined architectural structures that beautifully guide water, light, and mood. I remember reading C.S Lewis’ Magician’s Nephew for the first time as a child, and discovering the wood between the worlds; a sublime orchard filled with ponds that led to other worlds. Because these other worlds were often volatile, this orchard in comparison was a refuge.

I was immediately reminded of the places in dad’s paintings, and more broadly, in his life. He created places you wanted to go.

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A skilled carpenter, he built homes and studios that became oases of creativity and safety, visitors always eager to stop by. Inside these places, it smelled of fresh coffee and oil paint. Always a nook around the corner where you could take a nap to refresh the mind. In the evenings, a surprisingly cozy meal simmered on the old metal camping stove; Studio Stew (a can of pea soup improvised with some chopped ham and potato, and whatever else he could find).

He also created this kind of space in his life, where the art’s community he loved had a place to come, to talk, to rest. Neighbours, friends, students. He made time.

The flow of water, the flow of life, being pulled and pushed by the structures and pathways we build for ourselves.

It’s how you build those structures that make life worth living. And he was a master builder. This painting was a nice reminder of that.

Anna Hopkins is an actor and screenwriter based in Toronto, and Jacob Hopkins is a photographer, carpenter and film tech based in Montreal. Whenever they can, they love to collaborate together.

Waddington’s would like to thank Jacob and Anna for contributing this essay.

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62 TOM HOPKINS NOCTURNE (AS TIME PASSES), 2001 oil on Spanish jute on panel signed, titled, and dated on the reverse 62 ins x 55 ins; 157.5 cms x 139.7 cms provenance: Studio 21 Fine Art Gallery, Halifax, N.S.; Private Collection, Nova Scotia

$10,000–12,000

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tJOHN HARTMAN For a decade beginning in the mid-1980s, Hartman’s work focused on the environs of Simcoe Country and Georgian Bay where he was born and has lived and worked since 1981. He animated the landscape with life stories as an open and experiential narration of locality, local knowledge, and personal autobiographical experiences. After graduating from university in 1973, Hartman spent the fall to the following spring at Manitou Dock doing odd jobs for Andy Trudeau, whose family ran the marina, and where Hartman had his first studio.

Hartman returned to his Manitou Dock time as part of a body of work—paintings, watercolours and pastels— done between spring 1992 and spring 1993. While Hartman produced pastel studies for some of the large paintings, Manitou Dock was done directly, from memory: “I remember that [it] was made in a glorious rush of paint application.”

The aerial perspective (which Hartman has continued), looking west to the horizon, is a richly “populated” compositional space that leads the eye around, up and down. The Manitou Inn and marina buildings are in the foreground and across the midground. Andy and his wife Pat are depicted in a boat in the lower corner of the right panel, and Andy again in the upper left as a large blue figure walking across, but partially painted over as if dissolving into the landscape. Hartman wrote that he “seemed absolutely inseparable from the place.” Hartman painted himself twice; on the left side, painting the scene, and in the centre foreground, cranking in a boat for winterizing.

Hartman followed up in 1994 with a same composition Manitou Dock drypoint etching that received 1st prize for the Ernst & Young Great Canadian Printmaking Competition in 1995. Andy Trudeau (1924-2013), a Métis veteran of WWII, began drawing at age 87. Hartman organized an exhibition of these works for the Midland Cultural Centre in fall 2021.

Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art historian. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Queensland. We thank him for contributing this essay.

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63 JOHN HARTMAN, R.C.A. MANITOU DOCK, 1993 diptych, oil on linen signed; titled and dated to gallery label on the reverse overall 72 ins x 120 ins; 182.9 cms x 304.8 cms provenance: Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON exhibited: Painting the Bay, Recent Work by John Hartman, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON, 1993-1994 literature: John Hartman and Jean Blodgett, Painting the Bay: Recent Work by John Hartman (McMichael Canadian Art Collection: Kleinburg, Ontario, 1993) illustrated on page 25.

$10,000–15,000

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KAZUO NAKAMURA t

By conventional thought, an artist changes “style” when they are done with the last one, yet Kazuo Nakamura did not adhere to stylistic progression.

His work from around 1951 through 1960, a period when he was exhibiting with the Toronto-based Painters Eleven, was varied and exploratory.

Bodies of his work that shared compositional similarities can be grouped as series, but he worked concurrently in different ways to express two fundamental ideas, the observed and the unseen world. In 1954 he stated, “I think there’s a sort of fundamental universal pattern in all art and nature.” 1 Jerrold Morris, Nakamura’s gallerist in the 1960s commented that his “quest [began with] Greek philosophers for the shifting ground between spirit and matter.”2 It is tempting to see Nakamura’s early 1950s paintings such as the widely reproduced “Blue and Green and Forest”, both 1953 (The Robert McLaughlin Gallery collection), “Hillside and Landscape”, “Hillside-Green” both 1954 (The National Gallery of Canada collection), as moving from representation to abstraction. Yet in the same period, he painted “pure” abstract works (the earliest is 1951); black strokes on a monochromatic-ish ground (but never purely monochromatic3) many with an “inner structure” title; geometric graphic “block structure” paintings (which can be related to his sculptures of assembled hydrocal blocks); and white-ish “string” paintings with varying titles but invoking phenomenon such as waves and cycles. By the mid-1960s Nakamura’s guiding principle of uncovering and expressing pattern led him to

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formulate dimensional and spatial concepts. His mathematical “number structure” works became a key concern in the 1980s, yet Nakamura continued to paint rigorous “pattern landscapes” into the 1980s.

“Green Town” is not associated with a series as such, but is not “transitional.” There is a companion work with a resonant composition, Farm, 1954 (Art Gallery of Ontario collection), a near identical size with the same period framing.

Although Farm has “referential” elements —“generic” buildings—the colours and palette knife technique are the same, predominantly vertical with some horizontal wet-on-wet paint passages. The web-like stylized tree forms in Green Town appear in other period works, drawings and paintings such as Fog and Trees, 1955.4 Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art historian, as well as the co-curator of the 2001 Nakamura retrospective at the The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Queensland. We thank him for contributing this essay.

Robert Fulford, “The New World of Pattern,” Mayfair magazine, February 1954, and cited in Roald Nasgaard Abstract Painting in Canada (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008) 1

Kazuo Nakamura, the Method of Nature (The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2001) p.14 2

Nakamura worked his paint with diluted mixtures of turpentine and linseed oil, and the excess wiped off.

3

Illustrated in Kazuo Nakamura, A Human Measure (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2004) p.40 4

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64 KAZUO NAKAMURA, R.C.A. GREEN TOWN, CA. 1955 oil on Masonite signed; also signed and titled on the reverse 17 ins x 22 ins; 43.2 cms x 55.9 cms provenance: The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$20,000–30,000

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tGERSHON ISKOWITZ Though stylistically similar, Iskowitz continuously reinvented the palette with which he painted his signature compositions. Though all of these abstractions can trace their lineage to a flight Iskowitz chartered from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba, Iskowitz continued to reinvent and reinterpret, as if applying a new filter to a seminal memory. Never has a painter mined deeper and more vigorously into a particular vein, in this case the barren northern landscape what van Gogh did with his floral subjects.

Indeed the comparison is apt, for this composition echoes van Gogh’s Irises with its rich purples dancing against warm yellows.

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65

GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A. PRELUDE #5, CA. 1968 oil on canvas signed and titled on the reverse sight 30.25 ins x 22.25 ins; 76.8 cms x 56.5 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$8,000–12,000

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tROBERT HOULE Saulteaux artist, critic and curator Robert Houle has become one of the most recognizable contemporary artists working out of Canada.

His Modernist aesthetics and investigations into Western and Anishinaabe objectivities have become a staple in his painting style that continue to push the boundaries of what galleries and collectors expect Indigenous art to look like. Houle’s 1989 “Blue Oil”, which uses both oil on canvas as well as porcupine quills as decal, falls into the iconic stylings of Houle’s through a combination of abstraction and traditional Saulteaux material and visual culture.

Much of Houle’s abstract work has strong political ties, using Modernist and Abstract imagery to discuss critical narratives of Indigenous treatment at the hands of the Canadian government. In works like these Houle often turns to the colour blue to represent his Indigenous identity and the importance of water, a topic often at the centre of many Indigneous and government turmoils.

In “Blue Oil” we see the use of a bold deep blue background, bright streaks of pinks and green and four circles decorated with porcupine quills in the right-centre of the canvas. Houle’s works are often striking and force the viewers’ eyes to dance across the work over and over again trying to take it all in. This effect ties in Houle’s overarching narrative of accessibility, being approachable and intimidating all at once, consumable yet abstract.

In this way Houle’s “Blue Oil” showcases the artist’s strengths, the finesse and knowledge of previous art movements before him, and the deep histories of Anishinaabe artmaking that he is continuing.

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.

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66

ROBERT HOULE, R.C.A. SAULTEAUX (OJIBWE) BLUE OIL, 1989 oil on canvas signed 60 ins x 72 ins; 152.4 cms x 182.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$12,000–16,000

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WILLIAM PATERSON EWEN t

Ewen exhibited in four group exhibitions and had his first solo at Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto, in 1969. The price inscribed on the verso, suggests that it was included in one or more of these exhibitions. It is possible that Life Stream was included in Paterson Ewen Retrospective, London Art Gallery, November 5-19, 1976; checklist no.29 and catalogued as from the collection of the artist.

One of the earliest examples of a vigorous abstracted painting by Paterson Ewen is “Still Life”, 1950 (collection Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MMFA). It offers an apt comparison to Paul-Émile Borduas’ work, as Ewen was acquainted with him. Ewen’s first pure abstract was done in late 1954.1 Such work was first exhibited at Espace 55, Montreal in February 1955.2 It is generally written that the first “Life Stream” titled work was done in 1958 and inspired by a Haida canoe motif in the Royal Ontario Museum.3 There are several others as well as a related 1959 work titled “Courant de Vie” (“Current of Life”) in the collection of the MMFA. The minimal composition “Life Stream” works (not all are so-titled) continued after Ewen moved to London, Ontario in 1968; the last in 1971. They were first shown at the Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto in 1967. While the compositions varied, they were in tune with the hard-edge and minimal painting that was in the air internationally but distinct from artists such as Guido Molinari and Yves Gaucher.

Ewen’s objective was not a systemic-geometric composition; he saw his minimal lines as “the trace of something moving through space,”4 VIEW THIS LOT

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or time. A 1968 painting with a purple ground is titled “Life Stream with Time Intervals B”.5 Several of the works from 1968 to 1971 have a comparable single curved line—either solid or dotted—on a coloured or white ground (four of these untitled works from 1969, are in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario). To date only three other curved line “Life Stream” works with a colour ground are known. The bold orange ground of “Life Stream” is unique, although Ewen used it in other geometric paintings in the 1960s. Its dotted line, done with masking tape, is significant as it led to a breakthrough with his 1970 painting “Traces Through Space” (AGO); by dipping a piece of felt in paint and making a dotted line, “I realized I was into phenomenon,”6 and led to his first “phenomenon” painting, “Rain Triptych” 1970 (AGO); the dotted lines became rain.

Rather than a period or a transition, the “life stream motif” remained with Ewen and reappeared in late career works such as the 1996 watercolour “Traces of a Heavenly Body Out of Order” (Museum London), and the mixed media work “Flying Rope”, 2000 (AGO).

Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art historian.

He received his PhD in art history from the University of Queensland. We thank him for contributing this essay.

Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years (Mendel Art Gallery, 1987) p.19, then private collection.

1

Paterson Ewen (Art Gallery of Ontario/Douglas & McIntyre, 1996) p.99 2

There is a relatable painting with a horizontal central band dated 1957 and titled Livestream. Lot 158, Sotheby’s/Ritchie’s, Toronto, 26 May 2008.

3

4

Mendel, p.33.

5

Included in the 1976 retrospective at the London Art Gallery.

6

Paterson Ewen, AGO p.119.

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67 WILLIAM PATERSON EWEN, R.C.A. LIFE STREAM, 1969 acrylic on canvas signed, titled and dated on the reverse 60 ins x 50 ins; 152.4 cms x 127 cms provenance: Estate of Dr. Barbara Wand, Ontario

$30,000–40,000

252 Canadian Fine Art Auction

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BERTRAM CHARLES BINNING t Binning was known chiefly for his work as a draughtsman before he took up oil painting in 1948, though the disciplined, simple lines of his early career were never far from his later compositions.

Indeed, Binning came from a line of architects and even devoted a portion of his career to architecture.

Binning strove to capture what he referred to as “the lyric idea,” becoming increasingly more focused on symbolism rather than realism. In describing his work, Binning once said that art “plays between the two sides of me… a certain joy and fun— perhaps even wit—but this seems to vacillate between another extreme of plain coolness, which I call a classic sense.”

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68 BERTRAM CHARLES BINNING, R.C.A. DEVICE FOR INTERPRETIVE CONTEMPLATION oil on board signed; titled to label on the reverse 9 ins x 22.7 ins; 22.9 cms x 57.7 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$15,000–25,000

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t DORIS JEAN MCCARTHY “Grise Fiord in Winter” was painted in the later part of McCarthy’s career following her 40-year teaching tenure from 1932-1972. McCarthy found excitement in her retirement, knowing that it was her last chance to travel and be a full-time artist. On July 5, 1972, during the summer of her retirement, McCarthy embarked on a trip to the Arctic and briefly visited Canada’s most northern settlement, Grise Fiord. She was invited back to Grise Fiord in the winter of 1976, following the death of her two beloved friends Marjorie Wood and Pearl McGinnis (Ginty). McCarthy found comfort in the Arctic icebergs during this time, describing her second flight to Grise Fiord as passing “over half a dozen captive icebergs scattered out in the bay in front of the village. To me as a painter, these were riches…”

Grise Fiord seemed to be a sacred place for McCarthy, as her two visits occurred during transitional periods of her life: a rebirth in the Spring of 1972 and a time of loss and healing in the deep winter trip of 1976. Artist Stuart Reid writes about McCarthy’s icebergs as her acknowledgement of “our ongoing battle to freeze time and to have power over the constantly shifting world.”

This painting was purchased at an exhibition the year it was painted and has been housed in a singlefamily collection ever since.

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69 DORIS JEAN MCCARTHY, O.S.A., R.C.A. GRISE FIORD IN WINTER, 1989 oil on canvas signed; titled to the overflap; titled and dated to gallery label on the reverse 36 ins x 48 ins; 91.4 cms x 121.9 cms provenance: Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON literature: Doris McCarthy, The Good Wine: An Artist Comes of Age (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1991), 188.

William Moore and Stuart Reid, Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy (The McMichael Canadian Art Collection: Kleinburg, Ontario, 1999), 223.

$25,000–35,000

McCarthy, Doris, The Good Wine: An Artist Comes of Age. Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1991

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tDAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD The first Methodist Church was built in Blackwood’s hometown of Wesleyville in 1874. The town itself was only named in 1884 after the church was built, taking inspiration from John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement. The church also served as a school for the small town and neighbouring villages.

Blackwood remembers that “the Methodists were practical and encouraged education and community service.” Wesleyville had no fire department, and the conflagration was a local tragedy. In this etching, Blackwood adds the wrenching detail of several villagers attempting to salvage what they can, with men wrestling pews from the flaming building, removing them just as the bell crashes down, shattering the wooden belfry.

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70 DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD, O.S.A., R.C.A. WESLEYVILLE: BURNING OF THE METHODIST CHURCH, 1976 etching and aquatint on paper signed, titled, dated and numbered “artist’s proof” sight 24.75 ins x 32 ins; 62.9 cms x 81.3 cms provenance: Gallery Pascal, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Ontario literature: William Gough, The Art of David Blackwood, 1988, reproduced Home in Wesleyville - plate 8, unpaginated William Gough, David Blackwood: Master Printmaker, 2001, reproduced p. 13 Katharine Lochnan et al., Black Ice: David Blackwood Prints of Newfoundland, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011, reproduced plate 27, unpaginated

$6,000–8,000

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71 DAVID LLOYD BLACKWOOD, O.S.A., R.C.A. THE BURNING OF THE S.S. DIANA (TRIPTYCH), 1968 colour etching and aquatint signed, titled, editioned Artist’s Proof and dated in pencil to margin. Aside from the edition of 10. sight overall 22.25 ins x 67.25 ins; 56.5 cms x 170.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$5,000–7,000

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On March 16, 1922, the S.S. Diana, a sealing ship based in St. John’s, became stuck in ice about 100 miles southeast of Cape Bonavista. Having lost her tailshaft, many of the men threatened mutiny.

They demanded that the seal pelts onboard be unloaded and a distress call sent to passing vessels that would help carry both men and cargo back to port. The ship’s officers refused. By March 24, a rebellious group of about 40 men had taken charge, burning and sinking the Diana along with the pelts still on board. Blackwood depicts the crew standing on the ice quarrelling amongst themselves while Diana burns, having just realized that in their spite, they have forfeited a year’s wages. The crew was rescued on March 27.

One of the etchings from this edition is held in the Royal Collection, a gift to Her Majesty Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, by the people of Newfoundland.

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tSTANLEY MOREL COSGROVE Jules Bazin recounts that while talking to a critic, Cosgrove­­said that he “does not paint trees but verticals and horizontals on a forest background.

A way to inform that trees are only a pretext to express his feelings, that they are uniquely coloured harmonies.” Form seems almost to disappear in the artist’s work. Bazin suggests that Cosgrove was a painter of tonal values rather than a colourist: “the whole can at first appear gray and dull, but the viewer is soon won over by the delicacy of colouring, displayed by unobtrusive but cleverly placed accents.”

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72 STANLEY MOREL COSGROVE, R.C.A. UNTITLED oil on canvas signed 25.25 ins x 32.25 ins; 64.1 cms x 81.9 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario literature: Jules Bazin, Cosgrove (Marcel Broquet: Saint-Philippe, Quebec, 1980), 14-16.

$4,000–6,000

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KAZUO NAKAMURA t

Kazuo Nakamura produced landscape watercolours throughout the 1950s, a parallel activity to his abstract paintings and sculptural work. His watercolours, however, were never studies for paintings.

In contrast to his paintings, meticulously worked with various techniques, Nakamura’s watercolours were immediate, although meant to achieve “essential” compositions and working towards a common aim in examining patterns in nature.

The earliest watercolours such as “Autumn Landscape”, 1949 (Art Gallery of Ontario) were pictorial— trees, cultivated fields and barn buildings. By the early 1950s, the work became more generalized and stylized. “Untitled”, 1953 is as much a study in form and flow as it is landscape. The brushstrokes do not differentiate between the composition elements, they are an elegant solution. This is also evident in the unnaturalistic, controlled palette of blues and greens (with some yellow). The tree foliage and trunks are more blue than green, and some cloud passages are likewise green; these were the dominant colours for most of Nakamura’s abstract paintings. By the late 1950s, the watercolours became horizon-

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oriented, and anecdotal elements subsumed in bold flowing passages, as seen in this 1953 work.

Nakamura’s watercolours received as much critical attention as his paintings in the 1950s; a 1956 solo exhibition at Douglas Duncan’s Picture Loan Society gallery, Toronto, and a touring exhibition through the Western Canada Art Circuit in 1955-56.1 Nakamura would continue painting watercolours into the 1960s, such as “Landscape ’67” (AGO). In a later conversation he noted, “every once in a while, I do landscapes, to do what’s on top.”2 But what is “on top” for Nakamura was never the self-evident.

Ihor Holubizky is a cultural essayist and art historian, as well as the co-curator of the 2001 Nakamura retrospective at the The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Queensland. We thank him for contributing this essay.

There are no existing records for this exhibition but there are period reviews from Regina and Saskatoon.

1

Kazuo Nakamura, The Method of Nature (The Robert McLaughlin Gallery: Oshawa, 2001) p.14 2

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73 KAZUO NAKAMURA, R.C.A. UNTITLED, 1953 watercolour signed and dated ‘53 sight 14.5 ins x 20.25 ins; 36.8 cms x 51.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Ontario

$3,000–5,000

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tMICHAEL AWAD Cities are Michael Awad’s primary subject – not surprising given his parallel career as a teacher of architecture and urban planning. In this epic image, Awad captures the extravagant architecture and bright lights of Las Vegas’s main thoroughfare. Like Ed Ruscha in his artist book Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Awad documents a cityscape steeped in dreams and legends in a seemingly impartial manner.

Conceptually, however, the work raises now-urgent questions around urban policy and environmental sustainability. By capturing the city from dusk until evening, Awad also draws attention to photography’s time-based nature, while simultaneously conveying a desire to usurp the medium’s inherent “stillness” by presenting the setting in its entirety, in a state of flux, and in a format suggesting filmstrips. Awad’s work has been collected and exhibited nationally and internationally.

Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based collector of contemporary art (and many other things) and a writer who has written for ArtReview, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Canadian Art and Border Crossings. Associate director of Angell Gallery from 2017 to 2019, Clarke has returned to his previous career in healthcare policy and communications.

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74 MICHAEL AWAD LAS VEGAS AT SUNSET, 2006 digital chromogenic print signed and dated to gallery label on the reverse 48 ins x 96 ins; 121.9 cms x 243.8 cms provenance: Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$6,000–8,000

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tEDWARD BURTYNSKY For more than 40 years, photographer Edward Burtynsky has keenly observed humanity’s impact on the planet. His images of industrialized landscapes are often uncomfortably beautiful, documenting how human activity is contributing to the Earth’s demise (and, by extension, its own). In the case of the “Dryland Farming” works, they also capture aerial views of topographies that suggest the biomorphic forms, colours and textures of mid-twentieth century abstract paintings. This photograph comes from a larger series called “Water”, in which Burtynsky examines the effects of too much or too little water on an environment. The region of Spain depicted is arid and subject to droughts; water must be imported to maintain the crops and, even though water isn’t shown in the picture, it is, to use Burtynsky’s words, “a partner, a protagonist.” Human ingenuity has turned this barren landscape into a “productive” one but, Burtynsky seems to ask, at what eventual cost?

Bill Clarke is a Toronto-based collector of contemporary art (and many other things) and a writer who has written for ArtReview, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Canadian Art and Border Crossings. Associate director of Angell Gallery from 2017 to 2019, Clarke has returned to his previous career in healthcare policy and communications.

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75 EDWARD BURTYNSKY DRYLAND FARMING #28, CASTILE-LA MANCHA, SPAIN, 2010 digital chromogenic colour print on Kodak Ultra Endura paper signed, titled, dated and numbered 3/6 to gallery label on the reverse 48 ins x 64 ins; 121.9 cms x 162.6 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, Ontario

$15,000–20,000

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t WANDA KOOP “The creative force of being human, which is found in art, is also found in technology” – Wanda Koop Known for her Surrealist landscapes that strike a balance between real and dream-like spaces, Wanda Koop creates a new Canadian landscape in her “Barcode Face” series. Koop revisited the series this past year, as it was included in the group exhibition, A Thought Sublime at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City (June 17 – August 6, 2021).

The title of the group exhibition references the poem “I Am” (1848) by English poet John Clare that explores the author’s desire to find an escape through nature and heaven: a thought sublime. Koop’s “Barcode Face” paintings present quiet landscapes that have been stamped with a bright barcode. The barcode takes the form of a pair of eyes and nose, as the viewer finds themselves watching the painting watch them.

There is an ambivalence to Koop’s work, as themes of environmental toxicity can be noted, along with ideas of our ever-growing dependency on technology.

Koop has been the recipient of numerous awards, honorary doctorates, and Canadian medals of honour, including the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Canada, in 2006.

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76 WANDA KOOP BARCODE FACE - TAUPE, 2009 acrylic on canvas signed, titled and dated to the flap 36 ins x 24 ins; 91.4 cms x 61 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, Ontario

$12,000–15,000

286 Canadian Fine Art Auction

77 WANDA KOOP NOTE FOR “IN YOUR EYES”, 1998 acrylic on artist board signed, titled and dated on the reverse sight 5 ins x 7 ins; 12.7 cms x 17.8 cms provenance: Private Collection, British Columbia Literature: Mary Reid, Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience (Winnipeg Art Gallery in collaboration with National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2010), 129.

$3,000–5,000

Laurence, Robin, Wanda Koop: In Your Eyes Book Two, St. Norbert Arts Centre, Winnipeg, 2001.

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This small painting is an important study from Koop’s seminal multimedia installation In your Eyes, 2001. The installation was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and it tells the story of Koop’s family’s immigration into Canada during the Russian Revolution and her Mennonite upbringing. The works explore themes of social alienation and displacement, with recurring visuals of circular images on canvases that can be understood as Koop’s reference to these repetitive historical patterns. Perception is also a recurring concern in Koop’s work, as she uses the camera “to navigate through our society of spectacle, surveillance, and excess.”

Koop’s painting process involves making “tiny shorthand notes, often black and white, and then moving to small paintings and finally to larger ones.” This painting is a note for one of the large-scale canvases included in the exhibition (see image below).

Following the In your Eyes exhibition, Koop was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2006.

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t

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tJOYCE WIELAND A favourite subject of 17th and 18th century painters, The Flight into Egypt was drawn from the Gospel of Saint Matthew (2:13-15), in which God tells Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and the newborn Jesus, as Herod would seek to kill the child. Tiepolo used the subject as the basis for several works, including one of his earliest paintings in 1720, six pen-and-ink drawings, and a 1745 altarpiece in the church of Santi Massimo e Osvaldo in Padua, as well as four other interpretations during the final years of his life.

Wieland’s biographer Iris Nowell notes that “though not a copier, Joyce found several artists irresistible, chief among them Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Pierre Purvis de Chavannes, François Boucher, Picasso, and de Kooning.” Of Tiepolo’s work, Wieland admired its sumptuousness, remarking on “the light, the movement, the power of expression, the glorification of the city [Venice] itself.”

This painting was included in the Joyce Wieland Retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, April 16–June 28, 1987. The exhibition subsequently travelled to Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina. literature:

Iris Nowell, Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art (ECW Press: Toronto, 2001), 170-171.

additional resources: Metropolitan Museum of Art Royal Academy of Arts

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78 JOYCE WIELAND, R.C.A. FLIGHT INTO EGYPT (AFTER TIEPOLO), 1981 oil on canvas signed; titled to the overflap; titled and dated to gallery labels on the reverse 22 ins x 24 ins; 55.9 cms x 61 cms provenance: Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, Toronto, ON exhibited: Joyce Wieland - Artists with their work, Forest City Gallery, London, ON, 12 Feb - 10 Mar 1982; Joyce Wieland Retrospective, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON, 16 Apr - 28 Jun 1987.

Subsequently travelled to Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, PE; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB; MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK. cat. no. 107. literature: Joyce Wieland, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1987, plate 64, illus. in colour; Canadian Art Magazine, Mar 15 - Jun 14 1987, illustrated in colour

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t JOHN MEREDITH A superb colourist, it is easy to overlook what is perhaps considered Meredith’s great, even greatest, talent: his expressive rendering of line. Using a technique that would stimulate his compositions and become a kind of signature of his best work, Meredith smudged the wet ink of his drawings (and later the wet painted lines of his canvases), electrifying the lines and dramatically energizing his composition.

The result was the successful transfer of energy from the drawing onto the canvas, thereby creating a kind of painted drawing. By the mid-1960s, Meredith was using his ink drawings to produce finished work.

Av Isaacs, who represented Meredith for over thirty years, noted that, “Meredith produced brilliant paintings that just popped with vitality. His colour sense was quite unique. His works on paper, both colour and black and white, were just as important.

Meredith created lines that had an electric quality to them.” The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto represented John Meredith from 1960 until it closed in 1991.

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79 JOHN MEREDITH, R.C.A. UNTITLED, 1965 coloured ink and crayon on paper signed and dated ‘65 sight 16.25 ins x 13.25 ins; 41.3 cms x 33.7 cms provenance: The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, ON; Private Collection, ON

$4,000–6,000

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tGERALD GLADSTONE A Gladstone sculpture, says Eric Newton in The Guardian, is like “a beautifully constructed machine made in a Rolls-Royce factory of the future for the performance of some function that has not yet been envisaged,” while the Herald Tribune described the work as “infernal machines of beauty and power.”

Gladstone took Honoré Daumier’s edict—il faut être de son temps—to heart, finding his inspiration in modern technology, including spacecrafts, jet engines and metal shapes including bars, rods and cones. Gladstone explained that “these modern shapes are what we live with now, these are our surroundings, and I want to take them and drag out of them whatever human meaning there is there.” additional resources:

MacLean’s Magazine

80 GERALD GLADSTONE, R.C.A. UNTITLED steel and Lucite sculpture with original lightbox including base 40 ins x 15 ins x 10 ins; 101.6 cms x 38.1 cms x 25.4 cms provenance: Private Collection, Toronto, ON

$2,000–3,000

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