Our specialists present highlights from our current online auction, featuring prominent twentieth-century artists working across a range of mediums. From standout works by Abstract Expressionists and Color Field artists to a selection of watercolours and drawings by Otto Dix, our Day Auction charts the innovation of artists at the top of their craft.
Afterglow is a magnificent example of Friedel Dzubas’s return to the square format in the 1970s, which felt more normal and organic to him. With the square, he felt he could enter the picture more easily: “I also was comfortable standing into [the surface] and painting around it, which I did in the beginning, and by lying down. I built all kinds of construction to not let it touch the surface, but in the beginning I walked into my square and I painted in a certain logistical, with a certain strategy, painted whatever imagery I wanted to paint.”
This work truly exemplifies Dzubas’s commitment to exploiting pigment, image, and brushstroke to activate the surface of his paintings.
This unique lithograph pays tribute to Kenneth Noland’s mature works, which follow in the footsteps of Piet Mondrian, “in their classic purity, chromatic breakdown of space and the optical effects of forms which seem to advance and retreat while simultaneously occupying a single plane.”
Following his break in the 1950s with Abstract Expressionism, Noland began producing paintings with geometric shapes and bold colour combinations. Elements from his Flares series can be gleaned from this work, with the sinuous bands evoking the complex interplay of colour and form also present in the translucent plexiglass strips.
Otto Dix, Steckborn, Switzerland from Hemmenhofen, 1949. Estimate: $7,000 – 9,000
When Julian Dix, the artist’s grandson, sent images of his collection, I was struck by how different these works were, presenting idyllic pastoral scenes and a remarkable study for the 1920 painting Cats.
It was a joy working with him and learning about this other side of the German artist. As his grandson describes: “These works of my grandfather have been in our family since his passing in 1969, and there is an intimacy about them that reveals the artist’s hand, and offers a rare glimpse into Otto Dix the man. These are what I categorize as the quiet works of my grandfather—no provocation, and away from the spotlight of political scrutiny.”
Robert Mapplethorpe, Apples and Urn, 1987. Estimate: $15,000 – 20,000
I was instantly drawn to this photograph for its balance of elegance and restraint. Robert Mapplethorpe elevates everyday objects into something timeless and sculptural. The velvety blacks and perfectly controlled composition create a sense of stillness and quiet drama. It is a work that feels both classical and contemporary. I like how it is an unexpected subject matter for the artist. Mapplethorpe’s still lifes reveal his obsession with form, balance, chiaroscuro, and classical beauty, without the charged emotional or cultural context of his figurative work.
Francis Bacon, After Study for Bullfight #1, 1969 (Sabatier 10). Estimate: $20,000 – 30,000
This striking work was inspired by Francis Bacon’s triptych of bullfight paintings from 1969, which celebrates this ancient ritual that remains popular in Spain. This colour lithograph was initially issued as the main image on the poster advertising Bacon’s retrospective of paintings in October 1971 at the Grand Palais in Paris.
His series of bullfight scenes pay homage to Bacon’s enduring interest in exploring the intersection of human and animal, of the wild brutality that animates all of us. By capturing the beauty within the liminal state between life and death, the Irish-born artist offers a poignant meditation on the true nature of mankind.
Cowley Abbott est ravi de présenter, pour la saison des enchères d’automne 2025, une sélection distinguée d’œuvres d’art québécois couvrant plus d’un siècle d’innovation artistique et d’expression culturelle. Des premiers portraits à l’abstraction d’après-guerre, ces œuvres retracent l’évolution de la vision artistique dans la province.
Les scènes intimes d’enfants et les croquis de la France réalisés par J.W. Morrice illustrent comment l’artiste a fait le pont entre les traditions académiques du XIXᵉ siècle et l’émergence d’une vision moderne dans la peinture canadienne.
Une remarquable huile de 1950 par Jean Paul Riopelle marque le début de sa série de mosaïques la plus célébrée. L’artiste venait alors de s’établir à Paris, où il se sentit libéré du poids oppressant du contrôle de l’Église catholique sur la société québécoise. Riopelle chercha à inventer son propre langage visuel et à créer librement, loin de tout dogme et de toute contrainte.
Alfred Pellan fut l’un des premiers artistes québécois à introduire le modernisme européen au Canada. Après avoir étudié et travaillé à Paris dans les années 1920 et 1930, il retourna à Montréal avec un style audacieux et imaginatif influencé par le surréalisme, le cubisme et le fauvisme. L’œuvre de Pellan est rare sur le marché des enchères, et nous sommes ravis de présenter cette saison deux œuvres dynamiques, Chasse sous-marine et Au soleil noir, toutes deux datées de 1958.
Cowley Abbott a également l’honneur d’offrir deux œuvres rares de Paul-Émile Borduas, figure centrale de l’art abstrait canadien et chef de file des Automatistes. Défenseur de la liberté artistique, Borduas contribua à ouvrir une nouvelle ère de modernité au Canada et inspira les transformations sociales et culturelles qui ont suivi lors de la Révolution tranquille. Les Trois baigneuses, une huile sur toile de 1941, témoigne de son intérêt pour l’approche formelle de Paul Cézanne, cette œuvre s’inspirant particulièrement des Grandes baigneuses du Philadelphia Museum of Art.
La gouache Abstractionno. 10 ou Figure athénienne fait partie d’un ensemble de quarante-cinq œuvres exposées au printemps 1942 à Montréal lors de l’exposition Œuvres surréalistes de Borduas. Cette présentation est largement reconnue comme le point de départ du mouvement automatiste montréalais.
Peinte en 1964, au cœur de sa « période classique » la plus connue, Jeune fille en jaune illustre l’exploration par Jean Paul Lemieux de la figure humaine placée dans un vaste paysage ambigu, évoquant immobilité, introspection et humanisme.
Ces œuvres célèbrent la contribution exceptionnelle de la province à l’histoire de l’art canadien, dans sa recherche de beauté, son esprit d’expérimentation et la force durable de son identité. Le Québec a constamment été une force motrice, particulièrement dans les moments de changement et d’innovation artistique. Cowley Abbott est honoré de présenter cette sélection d’œuvres et a hâte d’accueillir les collectionneurs pour découvrir et enchérir sur ces chefs-d’œuvre lors de la vente aux enchères de maîtres canadiens du 26 novembre. Cliquez ici pour consulter le catalogue de la vente.
Now on view at our gallery until September 30th, Ideas Of Far North was curated by Mark A. Cheetham, exploring how visions of this region have changed over a century.
From early maps to lavishly illustrated travel narratives to oral histories, paintings, and prints, images of the far north from both southern and Indigenous standpoints have been increasingly integral to its understanding. Beginning in the 1920s, some of Ontario’s best-known artists, notably Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, and later, Doris McCarthy, travelled to, pictured, and defined for many southerners the look and nature of the far north, including the Arctic. Their views encapsulate a still-potent identity for many Canadians, but for others, paradigms to revise.
Challenged by Indigenous and settler artists, and shaped by global environmental concerns, familiar paradigms have evolved. Once seen as an existential threat, the region is now recognized as itself vulnerable to climate change. The exhibition invites us to examine the constant interaction between different versions of the far north from our southern perspective in Canada and from other parts of the circumpolar north.
Doris Jean McCarthy, Pangnirtung, 1973. Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 30 ins
Doris McCarthy is perhaps best known for her images of icebergs. Her first excursion this far north was in 1972 after she retired from a forty-year teaching career. She returned in 1973 and then frequently to different locations in the far north. In Pangnirtung, she presents one of the most physically dramatic locales in Nunavut.
Paul Walde, Glen Alps Score from “Alaska Variations”, 2016. Archival digital print on matte paper. 15 x 33 ins
Glen Alps is an aural and visual mapping of the flora on Little O’Malley Mountain at Glen Alps in Anchorage, Alaska. Walde composed the score by “assigning instruments to each major grouping of vegetation on the mountain face; [he] translates the location and size of the trees and shrubs into standard notation, with each species being represented by a group of instruments.” He explores the considerable extent to which plants at higher altitudes and latitudes are especially vulnerable to climate disruption. His sonically emotive Glen Alps is an explicitly environmental artwork and an example of ecoacoustics. If he were to redo the work now, after almost ten years, change in the vegetation would produce a different score.
Laura Millard, Crossing 1, 2017. Digital print on Hahnemuehle paper with graphite, gouache and chalk. 44 x 65.5 ins
This remarkable image was made at Three Mile Lake in the Muskoka Lakes region north of Toronto. That it is a drawing over a drone photograph begins to suggest its innovativeness, as does the fact that the interlacing circles on the frozen lake were inscribed by Millard with a snowmobile. The inevitable racket of producing this ephemeral pattern contrasts profoundly with its stillness as an image, an evocative silence claimed by the deer—captured serendipitously by the drone camera—as they purposefully cross the lake in a straight line. Crossing I makes an environmental point. In Millard’s words, “I am interested in the contrast between the orderly movement of the deer against the chaotic path of the Skidoo and how it reverses our assumptions of the rational human and the wild animal.”
Maureen Gruben, Untitled (Sled), 2023. Salvaged sled, clay and acrylic on paint. 33 x 14.5 x 6 ins. Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole, Toronto
Maureen Gruben grew up and now works in Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories. Her parents were traditional Inuvialuit knowledge keepers, a culture she maintains through works such as Untitled (Sled). She has arranged and photographed modern, working versions of the qamutiiks (sleds) not unlike those we see in A.Y. Jackson’s painting. But this sculptural example is different because it has been built up from a toy sled, an armature that Gruben salvaged—as she often does—from her local landfill site. The work is literally recycled, an environmental priority she embraces and also a metaphor for the reappearance of this Inuit invention in miniature. Without picturing a landscape, this work is very much about land, its uses and preservation. Gruben maintains the original’s playfulness in an art world setting by placing the toy on a plinth and reconstituting its surface to give it the appearance of a ‘serious’ bronze sculpture.
Analogue photography is inevitably a recreation, a ‘fixing’ of momentary light conditions. Tristan Duke takes the self-referentiality of this material fact further by fabricating his photographic lenses from the same glacial ice that he photographed while on the Arctic Circle Residency Program in Svalbard in the summer of 2022. In a material and an elusive, haunting sense, he is photographing ice with ice. The ice is creating a pictorial autobiography. The wet surfaces of his ice lenses betoken melting glaciers, yet ironically, without the clarity of this liquid surface, his photographs would not be successful.
Tristan Duke, Life Boat at Dahlbreen Glacier, Svalbard 02, 2022. Ice lens photograph, pigment print. 42 × 60 ins
Life Boat at Dahlbreen Glacier, Svalbard 02 is an image of everyday transport to and from the expedition ship Antigua. Yet the global climate emergency might make us think of climate refugees or of an immediate maritime crisis. Duke asks, “is this the rescue party or the ones in need of rescue?” And where is the pilot heading? This question could be extrapolated to the Arctic and the planet.
Tristan Duke, Palisades Fire, California 03, 2025. Ice lens photograph, pigment print. 42 x 60 ins
Not content to show us the climate crisis in the far north alone, Duke has also photographed fires with ice lenses. Here he materializes two bold ideas: the first lenses used for starting fires were made of ice by Zhang Hua in third-century China. Today, the climate disruption experienced at the poles is also responsible for the increased frequency of fires worldwide.
Laura Millard, Motion Lamp 3, Svalbard, 2024. Refurbished vintage motion lamp, photograph and collage on backlit film, 12 x 6 ins (diameter)
Laura Millard was part of an invited group of artists and scientists on the Arctic Circle Alumni Residency in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard in the summer of 2024. These islands at 82 degrees north are heating more quickly than anywhere else on the planet, with a dramatically negative effect. Among Millard’s reckonings with this reality is a suite of motion lamps that combine her photographs of disappearing glaciers with lamps that rotate thanks to heat convection from their bulbs. Popular in the mid-twentieth century as mementos of tourist sites such as Niagara Falls, Millard reconstitutes the lamps themselves and what they show to underline the increase in global temperatures in the increasingly touristic far north. People watch this happening in her images, but as in Crossing 1, we humans are turning to climate issues too slowly, even pointlessly ‘going in circles.’ The lamps seem as poignantly fragile as the ecologies they present.
To inquire about the availability of these works, please contact us at info@cowleyabbott.ca
Ideas Of Far North Life & Environment 1920s – 2020s
Join Art Specialist Katherine Meredith as she speaks with Simone Ludlow and Erika Veh, designers of handmade one-of-a-kind cushions using vintage fabrics. Their company Ludlow & Veh also offers interior design and art advisory consultations. With backgrounds in art history, auctions, design and marketing, they share Katherine’s passion for collecting art with patience and intention.
How would you describe your design style?
Slow design. Not all the same style, not all the same era. Balance, texture, layers, not matching, eclectic. We love including vintage pieces and antiques, something with a patina and a story to it. If you do it intentionally and lovingly, it will work. Never feel like something is done. There is an expression that goes something like- “a room is only finished when you run out of money!”
Where do you find inspiration?
Art, nature, travel, film. Pedro Pascal’s apartment in the recent film Materialists, and movies like Home Alone, The Shining, I am Love, and The Birdcage. We are inspired by place and time. Matisse interior paintings. Unusual colour combinations we spot on the street or in nature.
Why do you think original fine art is an important part of interior design?
It’s a layer that finishes everything. Art adds a depth and a tone of your own personality to your home. There is something lively to a home filled with original art. It takes emotion. You don’t want your house to look like a staged showroom, or the same as the house down the block. A mass-produced print from a box store doesn’t elicit pleasure, it just fills a wall. Art adds personality, meaning, joy.
What advice would you give to someone who is new to art collecting?
Buy what you love, and then your house will be a reflection of your personality. It doesn’t matter if the artist is new, local, unknown or from the past. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It should be something that speaks to you. Don’t set out to buy art that matches your decor. If you love it, it will work and you will find a place for it. Have a bit of patience. People want things so quickly and so effortlessly, but it means so much more when you take your time and put effort into it, and it shows. You feel better about it because it’s a reflection of you.
How do you approach auctions specifically, in comparison to other ways of acquiring art? Do you find any advantages or challenges?
Advantages: you see such a broader scope of art, and artists you wouldn’t normally see or necessarily seek out. Better value. There’s no inflated art gallery commission – the price is what the market will stand.
Challenges: the high volume of artwork – you have to have the patience to look through the entire listing. Everything at auctions is framed “as-is” and it can be difficult to imagine a work in a new frame that is better suited to your space. But framing is everything and can really transform the art and the room!
If you could choose any artworks from Canadian art history to put in your own living room, what would you choose and why?
Erika: There are many Canadian artists I admire and support. If I have to select just one piece – I would have to say Horse and Train (1954) by Alex Colville. Its haunting simplicity captures the tension between nature and machine, which feels very relevant at this time in the world. It also evokes a sense of Romanticism in the solitary, noble horse confronting the unstoppable force of modernity. A reminder that life is constantly moving, changing, and that inevitably time escapes us all.
Simone: This is almost impossible to answer, so I’m simply going with immediate impulses. I love Alex Colville, and I especially love his works featuring dogs, so perhaps Stove. It’s such an intimate and tender piece, and it captures so well the simple (and magical) joy of sharing your life with a dog.
The original Stove painting resides in a private collection. A serigraph was sold by Cowley Abbott in 2018.
I also love Jessie Oonark, so almost anything by her. I love her use of colour, and the bold, graphic nature of her work.
Untitled by Jessie Oonark. Sold by Cowley Abbott in 2014.
Margaux Williamson’s more recent works of interiors are also favourites. As I mentioned before, I gravitate to pieces featuring interiors, and Margaux’s are so interesting and I find them entirely captivating.
And I mean, who wouldn’t want a Lawren Harris iceberg?
If you could choose any artworks from ALL of art history to put in your own living room, what would you choose and why?
Simone: This is truly an impossible question! Based entirely on immediate instincts – The Little Street by Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum. I also have always loved David Hockney; he’s so joyful and loves life, and that is so apparent through his work. I saw his recent retrospective in Paris, and I am particularly drawn to the paintings of his home in LA and his British landscapes. Paul Nash’s 1930’s painting Harbour and Room at Tate Modern has also been a constant fascination. I also absolutely love the art and design from the turn-of-the-century Vienna Secession movement led by Gustav Klimt.
Erika: If I could select a piece of art for my home, it would be Sonia Delaunay’s Electric Prisms (1914). I had the pleasure of viewing it in New York, Guggenheim’s exhibition “Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris 1910-1930”. Both the scale and bold rhythmic motions of colour have stayed with me ever since. I have also always carried the same admiration for the Nike of Samothrace at the Louvre, a timeless emblem of victory, hope and forward momentum.
Which artworks from our September online auction do you have your eye on? And how would you style them in a room?
Simone: What a wealth of beauty to choose from! One selection would be Lawren Harris’ Study of a Verandah. I love witnessing the traces of an artist’s process, and in this piece the sketches of the trees and the script on the paper’s reverse delight me. The verandah itself is also so inviting – the architecture draws the viewer in. I would love to sit there and have a glass of wine.
Lot 199. Lawren Harris, Study of a Verandah. Graphite. Estimate: $3,000 – $4,000
I also gravitate to Fortin’s Montréal. I love his use of colour and the somewhat chaotic, dense scene he has created. I went to school in Montréal, and this piece evokes the feeling of the city for me – layered, busy, a bit gritty, beautiful, full of life.
Lot 125. Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Montréal. Watercolour. Estimate: $10,000-15,000
I also must include some more graphic pieces – I always love them for balance. The colours in Fly me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra (who knew?) are beautiful, and I appreciate the feeling of motion that it suggests. Philomène by Jacques Hurtubise echoes the Sinatra piece in an interesting way, and I would love them displayed together. The blue and red are arresting, and I love their juxtaposition with the off-white ground.
Lot 17. Frank Sinatra, Fly Me To The Moon. Colour lithograph. Estimate: $900-1,200
Erika: I am in love with Jim Ritchie’s female figure sculpture from the Quebec lot! It inspires me because it reminds me of the beauty, resilience and softness I recognize in the women I cherish in my life.
I also have a black and white striped marble plinth where this sculpture would look so stunning!
Lot 152. Jim Ritchie, Female Figure; Cubist Nude. Bronze sculpture; pastel on paper. Estimate: $900-1,200
What I love about Winter Sleighing Scene by A.Y. Jackson is that, while the artist captures a distinctly Canadian winter scene, he departs from the expected palette of icy blues and greys, choosing instead a feminine blush for the sleigh and lively touches of pink in the trees. A choice that brings unexpected warmth and a smile to the winter scene.
I was also drawn to Fly Me To The Moon by Sinatra for its bold shapes and vibrant interplay of colour, which is a style reminiscent of one of my favourite short lived art movements; Orphism – with its rhythmic energy and sense of movement. And perhaps also because the artist was also the infamous crooner!
For more information on Ludlow & Veh, check out their website and Instagram. And for further conversation on collecting art with intention, join Simone, Erika and the Cowley Abbott team for our 5 à 7 on Thursday, September 11th. RSVP at collect@cowleyabbott.ca.
For new collectors, prints can offer an accessible entry point to begin growing your art collection, offering works at more affordable prices.
Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger (F&S II.141). Colour screenprint on Arches aquarelle (rough) paper. Signed by the artist, numbered 13/250 and signed by Mick Jagger in the lower margin. Printed by Alexander Heinrici, New York. Published by Seabird Editions, London, England. Sold for $276,000
1. What is a print?
Prints are original artworks produced in limited numbers. They are often created under the artist’s supervision and in an edition. Prints and printmaking are broad terms used to describe:
Aquatint: An intaglio printmaking technique that creates tonal areas.
Drypoint: An intaglio printmaking technique that creates sharp lines with fuzzy edges.
Engraving: Incisions are made into a metal plate which retain the ink and form the printed image.
Etching: A printmaking technique using chemical action to produce incised lines in a metal printing plate, which holds the applied ink and forms the image.
Lithography: On a flat stone or metal plate, an image is created using a greasy substance that allows the ink to stick, while the non-image areas are treated to repel ink.
Mezzotint: An intaglio printmaking technique that creates soft gradations of tone.
Monoprint: A form of printmaking where the image can only be made once, making the technique closer to a drawing or painting. The term monoprint and monotype are used interchangeably.
Screenprint: A variety of stencil printing, using a screen made from fabric (silk or synthetic) stretched tightly over a frame. Also known as silkscreen and serigraphy.
Woodcut: A method of relief printing using a block of wood cut along the grain. The raised areas of the image are inked and printed, while the areas that have been cut away remain blank.
Pablo Picasso, Sculpteur et deux têtes sculptées from the Vollard Suite (Bloch 157; Geiser 310 Bd). Etching signed lower margin. Sold for $9,600
2. What are edition sizes and proofs?
A print is a unique work produced in a limited edition, meaning only a specific number of impressions are made, and are usually signed by the artist. Each print is assigned an edition number, typically written as a fraction in the lower margin (for example: 25/50). The number on the left represents the individual print’s number, while the number on the right indicates the total size of the edition.
The number of prints in an edition is key and limited edition prints are generally considered to be more valuable. The following abbreviations usually appear on works outside the numbered edition, such as:
A.P.: Artist’s Proof (or E.A. for épreuve d’artiste). Identical to the numbered edition and usually kept by the artist as a record of the print’s evolution.
P.P.: Printer’s Proof. Identical to the numbered edition and is an example for the printer or publisher the artist was collaborating with.
T.P.: Trial Proof. Used by artists and printers to see how the work is progressing before the official print run.
E.P.: Experimental Proof. An experimental proof used by an artist as part of the creation process to be made into an edition.
C.P.: Color Proof. Used to test which colours best represent the artist’s intention.
H.C.: Hors Commerce, which translates to “not for sale”. These proofs were often intended for promotional use for galleries and dealers and are identical to the final edition.
B.A.T.: Bon à tirer, a French phrase meaning “good to pull”. It is the final proof reviewed by the artist before the edition is printed. There is generally only one B.A.T. and the printer relies on it so that the final edition is as the artist intended.
Marc Chagall, L’Opéra (M. 715). Colour lithograph. Signed and inscribed “Épreuve d’artiste” in the lower margin. Sold for $31,200
3. What are the different types of paper used in prints?
In our catalogue description, specialists will indicate what type of paper a print is on and will mention if any watermarks are visible. Here are some examples:
Arches
BFK Rives
Hahnemühle
Japan nacre
Wove
Roy Lichtenstein, This Must Be the Place (Corlett III.20), 1965. Colour offset lithograph on wove paper printed signature, dated 1965 (as issued) and signed in the lower margin; titled and dated on a gallery label on the backing on the reverse. From an unknown edition size. Published by Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Sold for $22,800
The selection of paper is an important part of the printmaking process, which can influence the appearance of the printed image. For example, Roy Lichtenstein was known for using readily available paper, such as thin poster paper, and Andy Warhol similarly liked using inexpensive paper for his Soup Cans during the 1960s to emphasize that they were meant for everyone.
4. Why are catalogue raisonnés important?
A catalogue raisonné is a published collection of an artist’s complete works, listing each work with its title, date, and a description of its physical properties, such as medium, size and signature. The various editions are listed, along with the names of the printer and publisher.
Consulting the catalogue raisonné of an artist is, therefore, a necessary step for any serious collector to confirm if a print is a genuine work or not.
Andy Warhol, Turtle (F&S II.360A), 1985 colour screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Signed and numbered 248/250 lower right; titled and numbered on a label on the reverse. Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York; published by CBS, Inc., Los Angeles, California. Sold for $114,000
5. What are common condition issues to look out for?
Beyond the authenticity of a print, a collector should always consider its condition before making a purchase as it will impact its value. The most common imperfections can include the following:
Creasing: An unintentional and permanent ridge or fold in the sheet of paper.
Fading: Loss of brightness or brilliance of colour in the image.
Foxing: Reddish-brown spots that appear on the paper due to water exposure or high levels of humidity.
Tearing: Damage to the paper where it has pulled apart, leaving ragged or irregular edges.
Trimming: An alteration of the size of a sheet, whether that be due to a condition issue or for framing.
Yellowing: Alteration of a print that takes on a yellowish tint.
