2019 Spring Auction – Canadian Fine Art

May is an exciting month for Canadian Art! At the end of the month is spring auction week in Toronto! Several of the top Canadian auction houses will be hosting live auctions of Canadian fine art. Live auction sales happening the week of May 27 in Toronto include: Waddington’s Live Auction, Consignor Live Auction and Heffel Live Auction.

As an art advisor, I look forward to going through the auction catalogues from the different auction houses to see what great art will be up for sale. 

About a week before, they open their doors to the public showcasing the work that will go up for auction. Going around to the different previews feels a bit like a spring Art Toronto. I love going to these previews because you get to see a lot of amazing Canadian art that isn’t on display in the museums. It’s a great way to get to know artists outside the regular cannon. 

A Review of Available Art at Auction

As an art consultant my main area of research is early Canadian Art. As I walk around the auction preview, I’m always looking for good examples of 19th and early 20th century painting. But there is always something from the Post-War section that catches my eye!

In these preliminary visits I’m not thinking about price or provenance, I’m engaging with the work on an aesthetic level and deciding what is worth more consideration.  

Great brushwork by Laura Muntz

One piece I’m particularly excited to see this year is a lovely portrait, Lady in White, by Laura Muntz, up for sale at Waddinton’s Auction House. Muntz is considered part of the Canadian Impressionist movement. I would nuance that and describe her as a Tonalist and place her with artists like Andres Zorn, John Singer Sarger or Cecilia Beaux. Like these artists Muntz is showy with her brushwork.

laura muntz waddintons
Laura Muntz. Lady in White

The portrait on view is a great example of this. There is an intriguing debate in the catalogue about the name of the sitter. Apparently the work was sold to the last owners as an official portrait of a Mrs. Reid. But the auction house argues that there is evidence in a book by the renowned scholar Joan Murray that the portrait was actually a former roommate of the artist.

In my own research I came across a secound painting of a woman in the same dress, called ‘Woman Reading’. This would suggest the later story is true as it would be odd that the painter would supply the dress for a formal portrait.

More importantly the repetition of the dress tells us something about the artists focus. This isn’t a portrait this is a fabric study. The dress of the sitter is a playground for the artist to make subtle temperature shifts and bold brush strokes! She’s showing off her technique! I couldn’t help but recall the beautiful fabric studies of Leonardo di Vinci.

Group of Seven and Helen Galloway McNicoll

Another top pick is Girl in the Field by Helen Galloway McNicoll on view at Heffel Fine Art Auction House. McNicoll is a turn of the century artist who is classified as part of the Canadian impressionist group. Like the other artist she studied in Europe and her work explores colour and brushwork.

helen mcnicoll heffel
Helen Galloway McNicoll , Girl in the Field

She paints women and children outdoors and it would be easy to group her with other ‘women artists’ like Berthe Morisot who painted a similar subject. I believe McNicoll would have wanted us to look beyond subject. I think she painted women and kids because that’s what was respectable for a woman of her time to paint. But I’m going to be bold and argue that she wasn’t really thinking about the kids.

Seeing her work I couldn’t help but think about her in terms of the Group of Seven. Their subject is Northern Ontario but that’s not what the work is about. It’s all about style and self expression.

McNicoll is a bold painter. She plays a lot with strong contrasts of light and dark and cool and warm. In this painting she has her main subject in a cool shadow. Our eye is drawn to the girls face which matches the tree in tone but is set apart with it’s orange hue (she’s playing with the blue-orange complementary). The larger shadow shape sits on the bright sunlit background. Her master stroke is the girls white headscarf. Although it sits within the large shadow it is about half a step lighter than anything else. It breaks the girl from the tree so that we can read her silhouette more clearly.

A New Discovery, Frederick Nicholas Loveroff

Visiting the auction preview at Consignor Canadian Fine Arts, I was introduced to the work of Frederick Nicholas Loveroff. I was quite taken by this lovely landscape called Farm Scene.

Frederick Nicholas Loveroff
Frederick Nicholas Loverroff, Farm Scene

A contemporary of the Group of Seven, Loveroff was a Western Canadian artist with family roots in Russia. His paint handling and colour is similar to the Group of Seven artists but his composition is completely different.

Look how high the horizon line is! Two-thirds of the canvas is white snow! It’s bold and radically different to the Group of Seven approach that favoured a silhouette composition. Artists like Tom Thomson are best known for works like the iconic Jack Pine where the design of the work centers on a dark foreground set on a light background.

What’s so interesting about comparing these two works is that we can see how the landscape has guided the artists design choices. The prairies are defined by a sense that you can see the flat landscape for miles. By keeping the horizon high Loveroff gives his painting that expansive feel of the prairies. A region like Algonquin (where the Group of Seven famously painted) is a thick forest set against a large bright body of water. The comparison reminds us how much our environment influences our ideas. A great new discovery for me!

Early Jack Bush

Jumping ahead to post-war abstract art, Heffel has an intriguing Jack Bush titled Red Vision from 1958 on view. I love this piece because it shows us the artists thinking process.

jack bush heffel
Jack Bush, Red Vision

This work represents the period right before he found his groove. In a work like this he is trying to think abstract. Bush was trained as an illustrator and had his own illustration studio. When he first started painting abstract works he would pencil in his shapes before painting them in.

When the American art critic Clement Greenberg saw his work he told him to lose the pencil. This first generation of Abstract Expressionism was all about the automatic process. No planning just make a mark and then respond with another (and another). It seems easy. But it’s really hard to get yourself into a headspace where you are not planning!

I love the red blob because we can see how he massed it in. He probably started with a mark and then scrubbed his brush outwards to build this organic shape. Look at how the outline of the shape is frayed. These imperfect lines carry over into his later work. It gives his minimalist style a sense of energy and a human touch. This work is all about experimentation!

It is so easy to stick to what you already know. I have such admiration for artists like Jack Bush who spent their whole career pushing beyond their comfort zone and redefining their art.

Key Dates

This year’s live auction sessions will be held in Toronto on the following days:

Waddington’s Live Auction: Monday, May 27, 7PM, 275 King Street East, 2nd Floor

Consignor Live Auction: Tuesday, May 28, 7PM, 111 Queens Park

Heffel Live Auction: Wednesday, May 29, 4 PM Post-War & Contemporary Art, 7 PM Canadian Impressionist & Modern Art , Design Exchange, Toronto

How to Price Art

The New York Times recently published a great article on art investing. While the art market acts differently to more traditional capital markets that doesn’t mean it’s totally irrational.

There is an old adage that says you should buy art based on what you love. In the New York Times article the art advisor B.J. Topol adds to that idea, saying, “If you combine your passion with an informed decision, you’ll have something you love every day and maybe it goes up one day.”

So when you are considering the purchase of a painting what information should you seek out?

Evaluating the price of Fine Art

The greatest challenge when purchasing art is determining fair market value. Sale price of works sold through galleries or private dealers are not made public. The best way to gauge a works value is to look at the public auction record for an artist.

There are several websites that aggregate auction results into a database. I personally use Art Price.

Looking at the long term performance of an artist’s work will give you a sense of how their market is performing. Generally artists in the secondary market will enjoy a period of accelerated growth (usually due to promotion by an important collector or curator). Nothing lasts forever and you can expect a market correction when tastes change. After which artists of historic importance will resume growth but at a slower rate.

Cornelius Krieghoff is a good example of an artist who enjoyed strong growth in the 80s when the prominent collector Ken Thomson was actively collecting his work. In the 2000s he lost his position as the most sought after artist to more modern artists like Lawren Harris. Although he doesn’t make the same kind of headlines now, we still see growth in his market. And he is still considered one of the top 10 Canadian Artists at Auction. Spring 2018, Crossing the Ice with the Royal Mail, by Krieghoff broke his previous auction record with a realised price of $456,000.

Public auction records give a ballpark measure of an artist’s current price. Generally galleries will charge a higher price than auction houses. It’s not unusual to see a 15-20% difference in price between galleries and auction houses.

Period of Production and Price

Different periods of an artists career will be valued differently. For most of the Group of Seven painters the early period when they were working as a group is considered their most important. So works done before 1932 (when the group disbanded) are generally higher in price. 

In determining an artist’s best period the market will generally look to academic scholarship. As an art advisor I have a whole library of academic books on Canadian art. A great place to find book recommendations are auction catalogues (which are also available online). Generally in the blurb on an available works they will site important books that make reference to the work on offer.

Another great resource are the writings of art dealers. For anyone interested in Canadian art, I highly recommend the two autobiographies by G. Blair Laing. Laing is a seminal figure in historic Canadian art. In his books he goes through all of the artist he represented (which includes most of the Group of Seven) and names their most important period of production. More than some of the academic texts Laing understands how the date on a painting is used to price art. 

Condition of the Work a Hidden Cost

It’s important to understand that when dealing with historic works there will always be some imperfection. Given that some of these works can be over a hundred years old, I would be suspicious of any work that have no signs of aging.

For a new collector the easiest way to insure quality is to work with reputable galleries that have been in the market for an extended period. Galleries stake their reputation on selling quality and if they have been around for over 10 years you can generally buy with confidence.

Having said that, as an art advisor, there are a couple questions I will always ask before considering a work for a client.  One issue I do see come up with oil paintings on offer is excessive inpainting. Inpainting is the introduction of new paint into areas of paint loss on a canvas. Again with historic works it is typical to see some amount of inpainting. If it’s just a small amount near the frame (where typically paint loss occurs), I don’t see an issue. Sometimes, unfortunately, a previous owner had big sections of the painting worked over. Generally (unless it’s the Salvator Mundi) the market will penalize excessive inpainting.

A Good Provenance adds value 

Provenance is the history of ownership attached to a painting. In the Canadian art market a lot of fine art doesn’t have a long provenance. Again if we are purchasing from a reputable gallery, a limited provenance is no deterrent.

If a work does come with a good provenance you can expect the work to have a higher market value (taking the other factors into consideration).

 A good example of this is the Tom Thomson painting discovered in an Edmonton basement and sold at Heffel last spring. Thomson gifted the sketch to the son of the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. MacDonald in 1915 and the painting was later acquired by a reverend at Toronto’s Emmanuel College, who in 1937 gave it to a fellow minister, who was the father of the most recent owner. Having records that trace a work back to the artist studio acts as a kind of proof of authenticity. This can ad a great deal of value to the painting. 

Buying Art

Collecting should be fun. That means buying art that speaks to you. Most collectors build collections as an expression of creativity or an interest in history. Working with the facts is simply a way to bring a level of clarity and security to the process. Understanding the actual and potential value of an artwork allows a collector to build a bolder more diverse collection.

Press: Canadian Art Magazine

I was recently featured in Canadian Art magazine to give my take on the fall auction week!

Interview on Canada’s Fall Auctions

Montreal artist and art consultant Courtney Clinton, for one, believes that some works by Lawren Harris, A.J. Casson and Arthur Lismer—particularly those that veered away from classic forested landscapes—performed worse than expected at Canada’s fall auctions. She points out that Lismer’s Tugs and Troop Carrier, Halifax Harbour (1921), which was on the cover of the Heffel Canadian Impressionist and Modern Art catalogue, was hammered down slightly below its low estimate. A.J. Casson’s The Village Mill (1937) was also hammered down for just above its low estimate. And while a few of Harris’s popular mountain scenes did well, his Water Tower (1919) went on the low end of estimate at Waddington’s.

“I’m not saying these artists aren’t doing well,” says Clinton, “but I think there was a hope [their markets] could branch out beyond landscapes and it just didn’t perform that way.”

To read the full article click here:

Reflecting on Canada’s Fall Auctions, Beyond the Big Sales

2018 Fall Auction – Canadian Fine Art

The week of November 19th, 2018 Canada’s two major auction houses, Heffel Fine Art Auction House and Waddington’s Auction House, hosted major live auctions of Canadian Fine Art.

Watching the live auction is a great way to gauge the temperature of the Canadian art market. 

Highlights from the Auction Sale

Two artists who made a big splash were Frederick Banting and Peter Clapham Sheppard, both contemporaries of the Canadian Art icons the Group of Seven. In many ways their success at these Canadian fine art auction sales was foreseeable.

Frederick Banting, The Lab, 1925

Frederick Banting enjoyed much of the media coverage leading up to the Heffel sale thanks to his 1925 painting, “The Lab”, which shows his actual lab where he did his nobel prize winning research. The work sold for 10 times over the asking price, selling for an impressive $313,250. Another Banting work, Cottage in a Wooded Landscape, sold at the Waddington’s auction for $27,600 – almost three times its high estimate. 

Peter Clapham Sheppard, Elizabeth St, Toronto

The Peter Clapham Sheppard success owes much to the recent publication of a Canadian art scholarly book on his work by Tom Smart, Director and CEO of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Waddington’s publicized the book in their own auction catalogue and had the book on sale at the live auction. A total of four of his paintings were on offer across the two houses and they all did very well. “Elizabeth St, Toronto”, a larger urban scene, went four times over its estimate and sold for $204,000. The remaining three all met or surpassed the initial estimates, suggesting strong interest in the artist’s art.

Great Sales for Quebec Art

Three Quebec Artists had highlight sales at auction, including Marc-Aurele Fortin, Clarence Gagnon and Robert Pilot.

Marc-Aurele Fortin, Vue de Longueuil, c. 1930

Like Sheppard, Fortin has an authentic claim to the subject of working class life. Starting in 1925, Fortin moved to Hochelaga, a working class neighbourhood in eastern Montreal. His painting of the same subject, “Vue de Longueuil”, on sale at Heffel went well over it’s initial asking of $40,000 – $60,000, selling for $109,250. Over at Waddington’s, the only other lot by the artist, “Storm Effect, St. Eustache” – a small landscape – also did well and sold at auction for above its estimate at $13,200.

Clarence Gagnon, Late Afternoon, c. 1908-1913

Another highlight was an iconic Gagnon on offer at Heffel. “Late Afternoon Sun” roughly dated between 1908 and 1913. The work showcases why Gagnon is a famous Canadian artist. Gagnon is best known for this subject of snow and sunlight at dusk in a Quebec village. Selling at $253,250 it squeaked past the high estimate of $250,000. Two other paintings of European subjects sold within their estimate. One work went unsold, an early academic style painting of a weaver. This unsold painting reminds us how different periods of an artist are judged differently by the market. 

Robert Pilot, Wolfe’s Cove

Finally, I’ve always been a fan of Robert Pilot and his, “Wolfe’s Cove” was probably my favorite painting of the night. I wasn’t alone, the work sold at Heffel for three times the high estimate at $91,250. This deceptively tranquil painting is of a historic location. In 1759, in this very spot, the British general James Wolfe and his forces attacked a French post. The battle is considered a pivotal moment in the Seven Years’ War that ultimately saw the city transfer from French to British rule. Looking at the quiet village that now sits there the viewer is invited to consider landscape and memory. The success of the sale shows how many collectors build collections to engage with Canadian history. 

Another six paintings by the artist were on offer across the two houses. They all met their estimates and a second Quebec city subject, “Evening, St. John Gate, Quebec City”, surpassed expectations and sold for $61,250.