30 JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 41

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 41 30 30 JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA 1909 ~ 1998 Storm Warning acrylic on paper board triptych, s...
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JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA

1909 ~ 1998

Storm Warning acrylic on paper board triptych, signed and dated 1984 and on verso signed, titled and dated 60 x 120 in, 152.4 x 304.8 cm P ROVENANCE : Bau~Xi Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver

L ITERATURE : Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 193 The core of Jack Shadbolt’s painting springs from the rich imagery of West Coast nature, based on abstracted biomorphic forms. Storm Warning is a strong example of his painting of the early 1980s, with its dense patches

of colour which create depth through contrasts of receding dark and advancing light hues. Organic shapes rise, twist, undulate and float across the surface of the work, as if rushing in reaction to an impeding event. Also emerging are emblematic forms ~ Shadbolt was fascinated with heraldry, banners and flags ~ and their more geometric and linear elements provide a dynamic contrast with organic forms. Colour shapes were seen as “tugging free of the pictorial matrix toward a psychological freedom of their own identities ~ a pure primordial urge.” The struggle for freedom of these elements was most likely a reflection of Shadbolt’s own striving for liberation and identity, and of his modernist, intellectual concerns vying with emotional and unconscious urges. Because of this, Shadbolt’s work was never static, but always evolving. Storm Warning exudes vitality and a sense of urgency ~ a painting in the midst of a spontaneous, living process.

E STIMATE : $25,000 ~ 35,000

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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE OC QMG RCA SCA

1923 ~ 2002

Jouet oil on canvas, signed and dated 1953 and on verso titled on the stretcher 44 7/8 x 57 1/2 in, 114 x 146 cm P ROVENANCE : Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris Galerie Anne Abels, Cologne, 1959 Private Collection, Geneva

L ITERATURE : Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painting”, Art News, Volume 51, no. 8, December 1952, pages 22 ~ 23 and 48 ~ 50 Robert Goldwater, “These Promising Younger Europeans”, Art News, col. LII, no. 8, December 1953, pages 14 ~ 16 and 53 ~ 54 James Fitzsimmons, “Art”, Art and Architecture, Volume LXX, no. 12, December 1953, pages 32 ~ 33 Robert M. Coates, “Young Europeans at Guggenheim Museum”, The New Yorker, no. 29, December 19, 1953, page 89 James Thrall Soby, “Younger European Painters”, Saturday Review, Volume XXXVII, January 1954, pages 61 ~ 62 Karel Appel, Georges Mathieu, Mattia Moreni and Jean~Paul Riopelle, Kunsthalle Basel, 1959 Eduard Trier, Jean~Paul Riopelle, Galerie Anne Abels, 1959, reproduced catalogue #2

E XHIBITED : Kunsthalle Basel, Karel Appel, Georges Mathieu, Mattia Moreni and Jean~Paul Riopelle, January 24 ~ March 1, 1959, traveling to Musée des beaux~arts, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1959, catalogue #38, labels on verso Galerie Anne Abels, Cologne, Jean~Paul Riopelle, November ~ December 1959, catalogue #2, label on verso

43 Once again, a major Riopelle from the early 1950s has surfaced. Dated 1953, Jouet (Toy) belongs to the crucial period when Jean~Paul Riopelle confronted the New York scene head on. He was part of James Johnson Sweeney’s show entitled Younger European Painters at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (which was not yet in the Frank Lloyd Wright building) at the end of 1953 and the beginning of 1954, exhibiting the rather dark Blue Night, 1952, now in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum. At this time, Riopelle was already in contact with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Moreover, the art critics, who were quick to compare him to Pollock, noticed his contribution to the Guggenheim’s show, singling him out as one of the most promising among the 33 “younger European [!] painters” exhibited. It was a grand debut. Meanwhile his teacher, Paul~Émile Borduas, was having his first one~man show in New York at Georgette Passedoit Gallery, at 121 East 57th Street, not far from the Pierre Matisse Gallery (situated in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street) where Riopelle was showing. The issue, of course, was the competition between New York and Paris, not Canadian painting. Had Sweeney’s show demonstrated the existence of a new avant~garde in Paris, strong enough to leave behind what was then happening in New York? It is in this context that the critics who mentioned Riopelle’s contribution to Younger European Painters should be considered. For instance, the art historian Robert Goldwater suggested that “Pollock and Riopelle, Soulages and Kline, Bazaine and Brooks, etc.” should be compared to each other. The comparison between Wols and Pollock, attempted by Georges Mathieu in Paris, is dismissed in favour of Riopelle. For James Fitzsimmons, three major painters were exhibited in Younger European Painters: Riopelle, Soulages and Mathieu! For Robert Coates, who is habitually credited as the creator of the appellation Abstract Expressionism, Soulages, Poliakoff, Tal~Coat and Riopelle were the best in the exhibition. We find the same type of selection from James Thrall Soby. For him, Soulages and Mathieu came first, but Burri, Mendelson, Riopelle, Ubac and Vieira de Silva were also worthy of attention. The only one to directly attempt a comparison between Pollock and Riopelle was James Fitzsimmons, in the Art and Architecture article already quoted.

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Fitzsimmons wrote, “Riopelle’s painting is large and horizontal, and resembles some of Pollock’s later compositions. But Riopelle did less with line and more with colour, and the reference to the external world, to nature, was more overt. He laid on his colour ~ deep reds, greens, blues and blacks ~ very thickly, layer on layer, with short choppy strokes that were sometimes parallel, sometimes diagonal to each other. Over and among these colours he threw a tracery, a torn web of sparkling white lines. The final result is quite magnificent: a sort of tapestried richness of substance.” There is much to say about this description. Speaking of “tapestry”, Fitzsimmons was quite close to the metaphor that would be used later about Riopelle’s pictorial effect, when the word mosaic was used instead. The difference between Pollock and Riopelle was aptly put: Pollock worked with line, Riopelle with colour. In fact, Pollock came from Picasso and Riopelle from Monet. Even when Pollock broadened his lines, like in the magnificent Greyed Rainbow, 1953, at the Art Institute of Chicago, they remained what they were: lines. We should not forget that 1953 is the date of Pollock’s Portrait and a Dream, in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, where figuration influenced by Picasso clearly surfaced. In his article, Fitzsimmons insisted on the figurative effect of Riopelle’s Blue Night, stating, “For me the painting has the feeling of a dense forest at night with the blue night sky showing through the thick leaves and branches.” In fact, Blue Night was much more abstract than his contemporary Pollock’s painting of 1952 ~ 1953. And Fitzsimmons did not advance his case by stressing that since Riopelle was a Canadian, who “worked for a time as a trapper”, he must have known the forest! Why not say that Pollock, who came from Wyoming, worked as a cowboy and took the idea of his use of line from the movement of lashes? By the way, this story of Riopelle having been a trapper was the pure invention of André Breton, who used to call him “le trappeur supérieur”. They liked trappers in Paris! In Paris, Riopelle and his American friends, Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, had quite deliberately detached themselves from the vogue for Picasso after the war and became interested in Monet, who, when almost blind, transformed his beloved garden in Giverny into abstract fields of colour. This was understood early on by Francis and Riopelle: painting could be a colour field, more or less homogenous, that invaded the scope of vision. A French critic invented the word “nuagisme” (from nuage ~ cloud) to described the effect produced by their paintings.

Riopelle in his Studio on rue Durantin, Paris, 1952 Photograph: John Craven Courtesy of Yseult Riopelle

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45 In fact, the real affinity between Pollock and Riopelle lies at a deeper level. Both had been looking for a way to remain extremely conscious during the act of painting. Pollock put his canvas flat on the floor in order to dominate the whole surface. He created line with paint thrown from above, staying in constant control of what he was doing. Otherwise, he could not have achieved the all~over effect he was searching for. The canvas became, as Harry Rosenberg suggested, an “arena in which to act ~ rather than a space in which to reproduce, re~design, analyze, or express an object, actual or imagined”, an arena where “energy was made visible”, to quote the title of B.H. Friedman’s book on Pollock. The same was true of Riopelle. One has to realize how the use of the palette knife was as determinant for Riopelle as the drip technique was for Pollock. When the palette knife charged with colour was applied, the result was unknown, or rather it would only be known after Riopelle lifted it from the canvas. Then he would have to decide what to do after. Each stroke of the palette knife was a succession of hiding and emergence that made the painter extremely aware of what was happening on his canvas. Each stroke of paint became a conscious decision, always risky.

Riopelle in his Studio on rue Durantin, Paris, 1952 Photograph: John Craven Courtesy of Yseult Riopelle

In both cases, the consciousness of the process of painting was at the maximum. The very awareness of each painter made them feel in control of what was at stake on the canvas. Neither Pollock nor Riopelle wanted to get involved in copying nature, because they would have lost themselves in the object being painted. They wanted to “work from within”, as Pollock famously said. One last word about the title of the work ~ why Jouet (Toy)? I don’t think Riopelle wanted to suggest that painting was for him just a playful activity. It was done with too much inner struggle to be considered as such. In fact, Riopelle had been often reluctant to give titles to his pictures, preferring to simply leave them untitled and to let others do the job. In 1953, he had two small children in the house ~ Yseult was five and Sylvie four years old. I imagine that there were some toys around! We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay. This work is accompanied by a photograph certificate of authenticity (#255~CA~GA) and will be included as an addendum to Volume I, #1953.056H in Yseult Riopelle’s catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.

E STIMATE : $1,000,000 ~ 1,500,000

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WILLIAM RONALD P11 RCA

1926 ~ 1998

Jazz Town oil, duco and casein on board, signed and dated 1953 and on verso signed on the stretcher and titled on the board and the stretcher 36 x 48 in, 91.4 x 121.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist Private Collection, Ontario

E XHIBITED : Eglinton Gallery, Toronto, Paintings: Karl May, William Ronald, March 1954 Hart House, University of Toronto, William Ronald, Paintings and Poems, February 28 ~ March 13, 1955 In 1952, William Ronald was awarded a Canadian Amateur Hockey Association scholarship, which allowed him to study with Hans Hofmann

in New York for six months. His exposure to the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, generally accepted as the first American avant~garde movement of international significance, provided Ronald with the impetus for his own artistic development. American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning were turning the personal inside out and producing a new paradigm in art ~ raw, emotional, irascible and unwilling to pander to the concept of accessibility. As such, Jazz Town is an exciting and important painting, embodying Ronald’s initial experimentation with New York abstraction. Self~assured yet delicate, Jazz Town is an exploration of spontaneity and musical rhythm against a backdrop of a richly textured surface. The black bursts of paint almost dance along the canvas like notes on a musical staff against a sea of colourful harmony. The work pulses with Ronald’s energy, and, as an uncompromising abstraction will do, demands our sustained reflection. Jazz Town was exhibited at Hart House and was subsequently stored in Ronald’s studio for a number of years before being acquired directly from the artist by the current owner.

E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 15,000

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RITA LETENDRE ARCA QMG

1929 ~

Réseaux d’intrigue oil on canvas, signed and dated 1958 and on verso signed, titled and dated on the stretcher 26 x 32 1/4 in, 66 x 81.9 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto

L ITERATURE : Linda Jansma, Rita Letendre: Beginnings in Abstraction, 2005, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, reproduced page 15

E XHIBITED : The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Rita Letendre: Beginnings in Abstraction, September 23, 2005 ~ September 24, 2006 When she painted Réseaux d’intrigue in 1958, Rita Letendre’s work had achieved a level of maturity that was being rewarded with significant

public recognition. She was exhibiting regularly in post~Automatist group shows, and a solo show at Montreal’s Galerie Artek in October of that year had earned her considerable favour with local critics. Although Letendre was a devoted pupil of Paul~Émile Borduas, this striking canvas implies contemplation of not only the instinctive approach of the Automatists, but also the coherent structure of the Plasticiens. While the use of a palette knife and tache~style marking is reminiscent of the paintings of Jean~Paul Riopelle, there is nonetheless a deliberate order to this composition that is premeditated and supremely conscious. Réseaux d’intrigue is an exceptional example of Letendre’s skill and identity as a modern painter; she participates in the dialogue of abstraction with currency and force, while contributing her own distinctive and influential attitudes. The exhibition of this work at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in 2005 attests to Letendre’s enduring importance. This is a brilliant example of the artist in her most inspired and prolific years. Please note: this work is in the original frame made by the artist and is accompanied by The Robert McLaughlin Gallery exhibition catalogue.

E STIMATE : $35,000 ~ 45,000

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JEAN~PAUL RIOPELLE OC QMG RCA SCA

1923 ~ 2002

Côte sauvage (D) oil on canvas, signed and dated 1960 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed pas a vendre 31 1/2 x 39 in, 80 x 99 cm P ROVENANCE : Laing Galleries, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto Private Collection, Ontario

L ITERATURE : G. Blair Laing, Memoirs of an Art Dealer, 1979, page 211 This stunning painting was originally acquired from Jean~Paul Riopelle by one of Canada’s most famous dealers, G. Blair Laing of Toronto. Riopelle’s energetic paintings are intertwined with his dynamic life. As Laing writes in his memoirs, “Riopelle’s energy spilled over into just about everything he did. He owned a boat and cruised her on the

49 Mediterranean, liked fast cars, went on hunting expeditions for wild boar, and loved salmon fishing. At a moment’s notice he would go off to the airport to catch the first plane to New York, without as much as a hand bag. He said he could buy anything he needed in New York…his dealer there, Pierre Matisse (Henri’s son), gave him unlimited credit. Riopelle knew many of the artists and sculptors of the day, like Zao Wou~Ki and Alberto Giacometti, but in general he was a lone wolf. Yet at the same time he was always the generous host, ready to take you to dinner at one of the many good small restaurants he knew. He and Joan [Mitchell] frequented the Dome and Coupole, and at both places his stocky frame and tousled black hair were well~known. I never missed a chance of seeing him on my trips to Paris, even if it meant an evening of wandering through Montparnasse bistros to find him.” Côte sauvage (D) displays Riopelle’s classic palette knife technique, and expresses the passion for life that is the artist at his best. This work will be included in Volume III of Yseult Riopelle’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist’s work.

E STIMATE : $150,000 ~ 200,000

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MARCELLE FERRON AANFM CAPQ CAS QMG RCA SAPQ

1924 ~ 2001

Sans titre oil on canvas, signed and dated 1962 57 1/2 x 44 3/4 in, 146 x 113.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto In 1962, Marcelle Ferron was in France, having left the oppressive societal atmosphere of Quebec in 1953. Borduas had died in Paris in 1960, but Jean~Paul Riopelle and Fernand Leduc were still living there. Of all the Automatists, Ferron was perceived as the one closest to Borduas in her method of painting ~ she used a spatula and heavy impastos. But this is a rather superficial approach to her style. In Ferron’s paintings of the 1960s, three elements stand out as specifically her own: the gestural quality of her handling of the paint medium, the transparency of her colour and a definitively Canadian sense of space. However, in 1961 and in 1963, when she showed her recent paintings at Agnès Lefort Gallery in Montreal, some local critics spoke of the danger of decorativism in her painting, as if her use of subtle colouring, as in this work ~ mauve and orange ~ could be the means of being decorative. And, to tell the truth, why not? Henri Matisse is decorative and Alfred Pellan also. Is it an irremediable defect or something to be ashamed of? I think that this is not the real issue here. In fact, the real feeling that this specific Ferron painting conveys, with its tumbling of masses from above, with its sliding of colours and blacks into a snowy landscape at the bottom and its mysterious recesses in the middle, is the feeling of the sublime rather than the decoratively beautiful. It is the feeling one has facing an avalanche, not in reaction to pretty colours.

51 You have to respond to the movement conveyed by each stroke of the spatula to understand the kind of vehemence which is expressed here, a vehemence I would qualify, knowing how Ferron felt about life and painting, as almost political. What is important about the colour is not the easy association one can make with the colour of flowers or lingerie; it is the transparency of that colour, creating the effect of deep recesses or of hanging planes wrapped above the void. One range of effects that painters who used the palette knife, like Ferron or Riopelle, could not achieve was the effect of a smooth surface with gradual changes of tone and colour, such as Dali accomplished with his academic technique à la Meissonnier. The work of the painters that used the spatula suggested on the contrary a range of more geologic associations, and in the case of Ferron, of ice, waves or gems. It is not surprising that she would later be interested in glass and would create huge stained glass murals for a metro station in Montreal (Champ~de~Mars) and for the Court of Justice in Granby, Quebec. Finally, there is a sense of the fragmented landscape, of something violent and almost chaotic in this painting. This is her Canadian dimension, although I know she would have preferred that I say Québécois. However, the historian gets the better of me in this. In 1962, when she painted this work, she was in France, building up her international reputation. She was perceived by Herda Wescher and others as a Canadian painter, not yet as a Québécois. The Quiet Revolution had just begun in Quebec and Ferron would not go back there until 1966. Her commitment to the Quebec milieu, with her grand stained glass projects and her return to painting, would be of another era. We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, for contributing the above essay.

E STIMATE : $70,000 ~ 90,000

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RODOLPHE (JAURAN) DE REPENTIGNY

E XHIBITED :

1926 ~ 1959

L’Échourie, Montreal, Plasticiens, February 11 ~ March 2, 1955 Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Jauran et les premiers Plasticiens, 1977 Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal, Hommage aux premiers Plasticiens, April 13 ~ May 14, 2005 Musée des beaux~arts de Sherbrooke, Les Plasticiens, June 11 ~ October 2, 2005

Sans titre oil on board, on verso dated 1955 on a label 23 x 26 1/4 in, 58.4 x 66.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Estate of the Artist

L ITERATURE : Yves Lacasse and John R. Porter, editors, The Collection of the Musée des beaux~arts du Québec: A History of Art in Quebec, 2004, essay by Pierre Landry, page 152

Before becoming a founding member of the Plasticien group and an influential painter, Rodolphe de Repentigny was already a respected art critic for La Presse. In 1955, under the pseudonym Jauran, alongside Louis Belzile, Jean~Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin, de Repentigny wrote and launched the Plasticien manifesto which led to a new

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JEAN~PHILIPPE DALLAIRE QMG

1916 ~ 1965

Nu décoratif gouache on paper, signed, titled and inscribed Ottawa 25 3/4 x 19 1/2 in, 65.4 x 49.5 cm P ROVENANCE : Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Ontario Jean~Philippe Dallaire was born in Hull, Quebec in 1916. He traveled and painted extensively in France, where he studied works by Picasso and the Cubists, as well as by Surrealist painters. It was also while abroad that he discovered the art of fellow Québécois artist Alfred Pellan, whose work encouraged Dallaire to continue his exploration of figurative painting. Although the time spent in France has obviously impacted the figure in Nu décoratif, the combination of bold and pastel tones together with sharp lines and dignified composition affords this work a characteristic intensity unique to Dallaire. Throughout his life, he ignored almost entirely the Abstract Expressionism being explored by his Canadian contemporaries and his inimitable style influenced a resurgence of figuration beginning in the 1960s. With the use of tiny brush~strokes and detailed application of paint, Dallaire creates in this work a remarkable sensation of movement while paradoxically rendering a tranquil figure in a still life setting. His sitter is sombre yet enchanting ~ her soft flesh inviting, but her two~toned stare is sharp and resistant ~ and by this, Dallaire affirms himself as a master manipulator of contrast and mood.

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avant~garde movement in response to Automatism. With Piet Mondrian as their inspiration, what the Plasticiens cared about most were the plastic elements which unified their painting in a controlled way ~ colour, shade, texture, line and form ~ therefore ridding their painting of the expressive and intuitive characteristics that were central to Automatism. De Repentigny died at the age of 33 in a mountain climbing accident in 1959. Even though he produced few works, the impact of his œuvre was great, and the reverberations of his influence long~standing. This important and rare geometric abstract work was exhibited during the first Plasticien show at L’Échourie in 1955 and is perhaps the largest painting he ever produced. Pierre Landry wrote, “Jauran’s painted œuvre, based on Plasticien theory, served as a catalyst to the development of an abstract geometric style in Quebec that remained current into the 1970s and beyond.”

E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 25,000

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FERNAND LEDUC AANFM CAS QMG

1916 ~

Chromatisme binaire: violet cobalt oil on canvas, signed and dated 1964 and on verso signed, titled and dated 19 3/4 x 24 in, 50,2 x 61 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Montreal

L ITERATURE : Denise LeClerc, The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: The 1950s, 1992, page 48 Fernand Leduc was one of the linking members that facilitated a transition between the Automatist and Plasticien movements in Quebec. An important artist for numerous reasons, Leduc was able to approach

and unify critical themes in art abstraction that had yet to be tackled by the Automatists. The geometric style of Leduc’s painting was a break from the automatic painting style that his contemporaries such as Paul~Émile Borduas were fashioning. Chromatisme binaire: violet cobalt is a product of Leduc’s second period in Paris, where the influence of painter Jean Bazaine, for whom Automatist painting techniques developed from automatic writing had reached an impasse, can be seen. A key approach Bazaine espoused was the reconciliation of the experiments of modern art and Cubism with Thomist philosophy based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. As Denise LeClerc writes, “Leduc, a former seminarian with a philosophical bent, found himself on familiar ground here.” In this richly hued painting, Leduc has progressed to a more hard~edge style of abstraction, as seen in the linear shape of the lighter purple crescent contrasted against the dark, expansive background.

E STIMATE : $12,000 ~ 15,000

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WALTER HAWLEY YARWOOD ARCA CGP OSA P11

1917 ~ 1996

Island oil on canvas laid down on board, signed and on verso signed and titled, 1958 20 x 30 in, 50.8 x 76.2 cm P ROVENANCE : Isaacs Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Ontario

L ITERATURE : Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting In Canada, 2008, page 97 Painters Eleven was a thought~provoking and progressive artistic group whose first meeting was in 1953 in Toronto. Their mentality drove Walter

Yarwood to experiment with new elements in tightly organized abstract works such as Island. Barrie Hale, a critic of the period, saw this new painting form take shape and coined it “The Toronto Look”. He further stated that “the jeopardy of gesture, the path of the artist’s hand…over the surface of the painting, the orchestration of the artist’s entire means toward the final work itself ~ these stamp the Toronto artist of the time as clearly as the compulsion to shake the ‘respectability’ of the establishment painters that preceded them stamped their lives.” Fellow Painters Eleven artist Oscar Cahén influenced Yarwood heavily throughout his career. Cahén had a European German Expressionist aesthetic derived from his training in Europe, which Yarwood adapted in his abstracts. The use of indistinct images, central blocks of isolated colour and broad gestural brush~strokes are all present in this beautifully arranged composition.

E STIMATE : $15,000 ~ 20,000

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ALEXANDER COLVILLE

is less than menacing but not easily forgotten.

OC

While the landscape here may seem natural, its detail is radically suppressed. The scooped out shoreline at the top left of the picture ~ a line that repeats the curves of the woman’s back and thus weaves her into nature’s fabric ~ is the simplest of forms. Her line of sight is continuous with the horizon, melding the two. The beach and the woman are almost the same colour and both are rendered with Colville’s signature small, multicoloured brush~strokes. But what is the form in the water in the right middle of the picture? It seems attached to the bather’s right knee yet appears behind it in space. We know rationally that it must be an island in the middle distance, but so akin to the woman’s form and texture is this shape that we are given pause to think about the connections between nature, ourselves, and the artistry that makes these links apparent.

1920 ~

Coastal Figure glazed tempera on board, signed and dated 1951 and on verso signed, titled and dated 25 1/4 x 55 in, 64.1 x 139.7 cm P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Toronto Private Collection, Ottawa Private Collection, Ontario

L ITERATURE : Helen Dow, The Art of Alex Colville, 1972, listed page 219 David Burnett, Colville, 1983, page 64, reproduced page 72, catalogue raisonné #28 Alex Colville has fascinated Canadian and international audiences since his work came to prominence in the 1950s. A public figure whose proudly conservative values cut against the perceived image of what an artist is and does, Colville the man ~ very like his quietly enigmatic and sometimes unsettling work ~ has staying power. Coastal Figure embodies many of the qualities that give Colville’s unique images their potency. Painted in 1951 when he was teaching studio art and art history at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, it is part of a group of early pictures with which he was, for the first time, satisfied. The sophistication of the work is manifest. The divisionist application of pigment is confident, as is the sense of place on Canada’s East Coast and the presentation of the female nude, a recurrent theme for Colville. He had his first solo exhibition in Canada in the year this canvas appeared, 1951. By 1953, he was exhibiting successfully in New York. Colville has said that there are “two qualities which are essential to an artist ~ the sense of humility and the sense of mystery.” Here we see both, even though Colville presents us with an everyday scene, one which we can easily understand, at least initially. A woman on a beach gazes towards the horizon. Colville values the quotidian, the rhythms of our everyday lives, those details and habits that he believes define us as individuals. He reveres nature as something much larger than the human. He is humble. Coastal Figure magically conveys a sense of mystery, too, an oddness that

Colville is the consummate observer. He is methodical in his working methods, constantly measuring and balancing elements within the image. The paradox of his work ~ evident in Coastal Figure ~ is that his compulsive precision allows us to see what he cannot present visually. The foreground nude commands the picture space but she is ultimately dwarfed by nature. Colville thus manipulates and brings into close relationship two of the dominant themes of Western art, landscape and the female nude. The locale seems identifiable, yet the generality of the landscape points towards the universal. Colville thus has us ponder the connection between the local and the global. The work appears direct, even innocent, but it echoes not only the sculptural and more abstract nudes of Henry Moore but also the stillness of early Italian Renaissance painting. Colville’s seeing ~ like ours ~ is individual but also predetermined by the norms of art history. Coastal Figure was created only a few years after Colville returned from World War II. He stated, “The question in my mind at the end of the war was, ‘What does it mean?’ There were questions of not only what to think, but of what to do.” It is within this large frame, one drawn for Colville by his readings in the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus and others, that Coastal Figure emerges as a profoundly contemplative work. The woman gazes thoughtfully at nature. As a category ~ female, nude, the natural ~ rather than an individual, her gaze is that of art as a way of seeing. Colville asks what art can and should do. We thank Mark A. Cheetham, Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto and author of Alex Colville: The Observer Observed, for contributing the above essay.

E STIMATE : $250,000 ~ 300,000

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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP RCA

1913 ~ 2007

Trees on a Point, Mill Bay, BC oil on canvas, signed and dated 1969 and on verso signed, titled and dated 24 x 36 in, 61 x 91.4 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, BC Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 25, 2006, lot 119 Private Collection, Vancouver

L ITERATURE : Jane Young, E.J. Hughes 1931 ~ 1982, Surrey Art Gallery, 1983, page 71 Young wrote that E.J. Hughes “painted the world as a civilized and cultivated garden through which man wanders, at home and at peace.” Certainly this work, a peaceful beach scene with a group of people

enjoying the stunning view of Saltspring Island with its cottages, and the standing figure contemplating the sunset, is all of that. Yet the intense colour and high contrasts of Hughes’s 1960s palette gives a heightened, almost supernatural atmosphere to this painting. He mixes dark clouds with brilliant white highlighted ones, and the effect is moody and exhilarating. This painting is full of patterns, from the scattering and piling of rocks on the shore to the layers of clouds in the sky. Everything is finely detailed, sharply defined and carefully placed. In the 1960s, a much sought~after period of his work, Hughes produced sublime landscapes by heightening colour and crystallizing each individual form. Trees on a Point, Mill Bay, BC, with its intense sunset light that electrifies the scene and its striking seashore setting, is an outstanding painting from this period. Hughes has brilliantly captured the dramatic light of a day’s end, with a sky of rich cobalt and teal slashed with brilliant burnt orange.

E STIMATE : $150,000 ~ 200,000

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE

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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP RCA

1913 ~ 2007

Above Maple Bay oil on canvas, signed and dated 1987 and on verso signed, titled and dated 25 x 32 in, 63.5 x 81.3 cm P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary Private Collection, Vancouver Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 25, 2006, lot 151 Private Collection, Vancouver

L ITERATURE : Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 187

Ian Thom observes, “By 1980, E.J. Hughes was the most important landscape painter working in British Columbia.” He was living in Duncan on Vancouver Island and was deeply devoted to his work. Hughes was receiving increasing recognition and in 1983, a retrospective exhibition organized by the Surrey Art Gallery traveled across the country to venues that included the National Gallery of Canada. This show, originating in Vancouver, was particularly significant as Hughes’s work had rarely been seen in depth in British Columbia up to this point. In this stunning view from Maple Bay, near Duncan, looking out toward Saltspring Island, the pale blue tones of sky and water glow transcendently with light. The scene utilizes a classic compositional device for Hughes ~ a bird’s~eye panoramic view over a sea dotted with pleasure craft, man a tiny but harmonious presence in the immensity of nature. This bird’s~eye view can be seen throughout Hughes’s career, such as in the 1957 canvas South Thompson Valley near Chase, BC, the 1959 canvas View of Shawnigan Lake, in the collection of the Mendel Art Gallery, and the 1983 canvas Above Finlayson Arm.

E STIMATE : $75,000 ~ 100,000

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE

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P ROVENANCE : Private Collection, Ontario

E XHIBITED : Art Gallery of Toronto, Women’s Committee, Sixth Annual Sale of Paintings and Sculpture, November 7 ~ 16, 1952 B.C. Binning, a pioneer modernist artist and educator, was a pivotal figure in the West Coast scene ~ at the University of British Columbia he was a professor at the School of Architecture, founding head of the Fine Arts Department and developer of the Fine Arts Gallery. Binning’s impulse toward abstraction developed from a 1948 series of works based on maritime themes, in which appear the abstracted shapes of hulls of ships, rigging, buoys and portholes. Works such as this playful yet formal painting are taken to an even greater degree of abstraction in which shapes float or are anchored in a loose grid of lines. The work shows the influence of the surrealist atmospheres of Joan Miró and Paul Klee, and Binning experiments with form, space, colour and texture, sparking an aesthetic response in the viewer. Binning’s title, Device for Receiving Aesthetic Response, implies that the painting is capable of drawing the viewer’s response into it. This delightful painting embodies Binning’s dichotomy in his work, his wit and joy versus his cool classicism, the intellect versus the arising unconscious.

E STIMATE : $20,000 ~ 25,000

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EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES BCSFA CGP RCA

1913 ~ 2007

Museum Ship at Penticton, BC watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1994 and on verso signed, titled on the paper and on the Dominion Gallery label as Museum Ship, Penticton and dated 20 x 24 in, 50.8 x 61 cm 43

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BERTRAM CHARLES (B.C.) BINNING BCSFA CGP CSGA OC RAIC RCA

1909 ~ 1976

Device for Receiving Aesthetic Response oil on burlap on board, signed and on verso titled on the Art Gallery of Toronto label, circa 1952 16 3/4 x 11 1/8 in, 42.5 x 28.3 cm

P ROVENANCE : Dominion Gallery, Montreal Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver

L ITERATURE : E.J. Hughes, Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours, Heffel Gallery Limited, 1990, the 1959 pencil drawing of the same scene entitled Museum Ship, Penticton, BC reproduced, unpaginated