Marc Chagall, "The Eiffel Tower," (l) and Jacques-Louis David, "Saint Jerome," (r)
Canada's biggest art news in 2018 was about an old French painting in the national collection being put up for sale in order to buy an even older French painting. The story leaked out gradually in dribs and drabs, unfolding amid secrecy and speculation. And in the end, nothing was sold and nothing was bought. Sheesh!
Marc Chagall’s 1929 painting, La Tour Eiffel, made it safely back to the National Gallery of Canada from Christy's in New York. And the 1779 painting that might have come to Ottawa, Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of the Last Judgment, by Jacques-Louis David, stayed in Quebec. There had been fears it was at risk of being spirited out of Canada, but the Quebec government quickly designated it as a heritage object.
David Milne, “Reflected Forms,” 1917, watercolour on paper (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Women’s Committee Cultural Fund; photo by Stephen Topfer, AGGV)
Other historical artworks also had their moment in the sun.
David Milne: Modern Painting, got its start in London at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where the artist was billed as “Canada’s best kept secret.” After a British critic ignited controversy by dismissing the work as “a yawn,” some in Canada, including Galleries West's consulting editor Jeffrey Spalding, took umbrage. Canadian viewers had a chance to judge for themselves when the show came to Vancouver last summer, before heading to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., where it's on view until Jan. 13.
Meanwhile, a large private collection donated to the National Gallery – stunning paintings and sketches by James Wilson Morrice, a Canadian who made his reputation in Paris – made its way West to the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. The collection, reportedly valued at about $20 million, was described by A. K. Prakash as a “magnificent obsession that I have pursued with reckless abandon.”
James Wilson Morrice, "The Regatta," circa 1902-1907, oil on panel, 9" x 13" (gift of A.K. Prakash, J.W. Morrice Collection, 2015, National Gallery of Canada; photo by NGC/MBAC)
Of course, there were many other historical shows, often curated from permanent collections and supplemented, at times, with works from other sources.
Ones we wrote about at Galleries West included Living, Building, Thinking: art and expressionism, a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery organized by Ihor Holubizky, a curator at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ont. It expanded the conventional boundaries of German Expressionism, an avant-garde movement that celebrated strong emotions and subjective experience.
Talk of the Town, an exhibition by Molly Lamb Bobak, who spent time on both coasts of Canada, was shown at the Burnaby Art Gallery in Greater Vancouver. Bobak, who died in 2014, was the first Canadian woman sent overseas as an official war artist.
Another historical show featured not a Canadian but a Mexican – the iconic Frida Kahlo. The touring show that stopped at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary was culled from a box of 6,500 photographs, forgotten for half a century in a storage room at Kahlo's home in Mexico City.
Meanwhile, the major auctions in Toronto did well, although buyers became more cautious as the year progressed.
Thomas John (Tom) Thomson, "Sketch for Lake in Algonquin Park," 1912 or 1913
oil on canvas on board, 7" x 10" ($481,250 - Heffel)
At the spring auction season, a Paul-Emile Borduas painting, Figures schématiques, set a record at Heffel when it sold for $3.6 million. Various other artists, including Cornelius Krieghoff, also hit new high marks, though more modest ones than Quebec’s most famous automatiste.
Then there was the long-lost Tom Thomson. Sketch for Lake in Algonquin Park, was the basis for a major painting at the National Gallery of Canada. After languishing in the basement of a retired Edmonton nurse who got it from her father after his death in 2000, it sold for $481,250 at Heffel.
Kenojuak Ashevak, "The Enchanted Owl," (red tail) 23/50, 1960
stonecut, 22" x 25" ($216,000 - Waddington's)
At the fall auctions, a positive note for Inuit art came when Kenojuak Ashevak’s The Enchanted Owl sold at Waddington's for $216,000, the highest-ever Canadian auction value for a handmade print.
Another noteworthy moment was Heffel’s sale of a 1925 painting by Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin, for more than $313,000, well over the estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. Banting did some good landscape paintings over the years, but The Lab, a 1925 view of his workplace, is a piece of history. ■
