Tonight! It is finally time for our two-session Live Auction of Important Canadian and International Art!
The Cowley Abbott team could not be more excited to present these artworks for sale this evening @globeandmailcentre. It has been a privilege to handle these works of art and share them with collectors, clients and art lovers.
Join us tonight in-person at Torontoâs Globe & Mail Centre or livestream the two auction sessions from home.
Live Auction of Important Canadian and International Art (Session 1) at 4:00 pm EST
Live Auction of An Important Private Collection of Canadian Art – Part II (Session 2) at 7:00 pm EST.
Beginning as an Automatiste painter in the 1950s, Rita Letendre was influenced by Paul-Ămile Borduasâ revolutionary gestural abstract paintings of the period. Although the Automatistes were instrumental in the evolution of her style, Letendre developed a singular vision in her body of work that resulted in a unique style that pushed boundaries of colour, light and space. After being exposed to the major figures of the Plasticiens movement in the mid-1950s, Letendre began experimenting with more structured and geometric compositions. However, by the end of the decade, she returned to a gestural approach, inspired by the Abstract Expressionists in New Yorkâparticularly the black and white paintings of Franz Kline. Her production began to increase, winning first prize in the Concours de la Jeune Peinture in 1959 and the Prix Rodolphe-de-Repentigny in 1960. This prize and the additional sales that followed would allow Letendre to dedicate herself to painting full-time. Always experimenting, she worked in all media while regarding representation in art as âa crutchâ.
As the Automatiste group and its affiliates began to abandon their commitment to spontaneity in favour of a more controlled and deliberate structure, Letendre chose to maintain the impulsive and expressive brushstrokes in her work. Letendre kept a fairly consistent palette of dramatic colours, often with large masses of black, until the mid-1960s when she took a decisive shift into geometric compositions once again.
Rob Cowley chats with CP24 Breakfast’s Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung ahead of the June 8th Cowley Abbott Spring Live Auction. They discuss masterpiece work by Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, Andy Warhol, Tom Thomson and David Bowie, each on offer during the upcoming sale.
Cornelius Krieghoff moved to Quebec City in 1853, encountering a vibrant and growing city. As Dennis Reid remarked: “Almost as large as Montreal at a population of some 58,000, close to 40 per cent anglophone (as opposed to the then slightly more than 50 percent anglophone component of the Montreal population) it was the military headquarters for British North America, the centre of the all-important timber trade with Britain, the location of the burgeoning new ship building industry and since October 1851, had been the seat of the government for the province of Canada.â
Cornelius Krieghoff The Royal Mail Crossing the St. Lawrence
Few would embark upon this journey across the St. Lawrence River in a Royal Mail canoe unless necessary. Passengers had to lay down or seat themselves in the canoe, which was manned by ten or twelve people. The canoe would be paddled through the open water amidst floating islands of ice. This crossing would take hours and was dangerous, with the passengers often reaching a shoreline that was miles beyond the point at which they had started. According to J. Russell Harper, “The boatmen or canotiers who operated these were a hardy breed who jumped out on the ice floes which impeded their progress and hauled the wooden canoes over the obstacles. Some passengers who gave them a hand received a reduction in their passage money. It was an adventurous trip for the uninitiated, and one of the experiences remembered by visitors to Quebec in the winter months.â
Krieghoff has chosen to depict a heightened scene of drama in this composition of a Royal Mail canoe making its crossing at winter. This canoe bears the responsibility of safe passage for eleven people, which includes a woman seated on a bearskin rug holding her dog, secured in the back half of the vessel. The citadel and ramparts of Quebec City are silhouetted in the distance, anchoring the scene. The energy and hard work involved in this venture, as well as the frenzy and cold nature of the excursion vibrates from the canvas. The boatmen are hustling to pull and push the boat over the ice floes before the vessel freezes in place, while one worker blows a horn signalling their position in the river. No one aboard the Royal Mail canoe seems particularly alarmed by what appears to be an experience that could have an uncertain outcome.
Krieghoff specialized in genre paintings, and this work is a remarkable anecdotal image of the human struggle against ice floes and the ferocity of the upper St. Lawrence River in the depths of winter. Barbeau lists six known versions of this subject, painted between 1859 and 1862. “Under his vivid brush they are alive with fun and movement,â stated Barbeau. A similar variant to this 1860 canvas is âCrossing the St. Lawrence with the Royal Mail at Quebec,â an 1859 canvas in the collection of the Sobey Art Foundation. Krieghoff is known to have painted more than one of the same image in various canvas sizes and also recognized the commercial benefit of lithography, a popular endeavour in this period. A lithograph of a Royal Mail canoe making the arduous St. Lawrence River crossing was produced from one of Krieghoffâs versions of the painting, but the citadel of Quebec City was eliminated.
Krieghoff visited Montreal around the time of the erection of the Victoria Bridge between 1854-59 and sold one of his canvases of the Royal Mail canoe crossing to an engineer working on the project. When a book was issued on the development of this ground-breaking new bridge, Construction of the Great Victoria Bridge in Canada, illustrations demonstrating the inadequacy of the boats used to cross the river in Montreal were included, highlighting the convenience of the new bridge. Krieghoffâs painting of the Royal Mail canoe crossing was included. However, this reproduced image removed the Quebec citadel from the horizon line, declaring the depiction to be in Montreal, thus strengthening the case for the triumph of the Victoria Bridge.
Krieghoff was an artist attuned to the interests of his audience and was beloved by collectors during his lifetime. The legacy of âThe Royal Mail Crossing the St. Lawrenceâ as a treasure within his artistic oeuvre is further solidified by the rarity of a canvas with such an abundance of figures, exquisitely rendered detail and narrative strength. Krieghoff produced dignified paintings that were romantic in nature, evoking the deep roots of the people he encountered and imparting his own vision of historical Canada. Reid argues for âthe complex genesis of Krieghoffâs images of Canadaâ, in which this canvas holds a prominent place.
American artist Andy Warhol once declared âI want to be as famous as the Queen of Englandâ. A leading figure of the Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 60s, Warhol was famous for appropriating familiar images from consumer culture and mass media, including many silkscreen prints of public figures. Determined to become a celebrity himself, he made art out of what people desired most: money, power and fame. Some of his early subjects in the 1960s were photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor. By the following decade, he had garnered sufficient success and recognition that he began to receive portrait commissions from living celebrities including the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as well as his wife and sister, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot. People were eager to be immortalized in Warholâs signature silkscreen techniques and fluorescent colour schemes.
Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, from Reigning Queens, 1985
However, there were some public figures who remained out of reach for Warhol. One was Queen Elizabeth II, who was widely considered the most recognizable person in the world. Warhol was eager to make a portrait of her, and in 1982 his European dealer George Mulder wrote a letter to the monarchâs private secretary, Sir William Heseltine. Mulder requested permission for Warhol to create a set of four silkscreen prints using the Queenâs official portrait from the Silver Jubilee in 1977, a photograph taken by Peter Grugeon at Windsor Castle on April 2, 1975. Heseltine replied with an ambiguous, but ultimately favourable response, writing, âWhile The Queen would certainly not wish to put any obstacles in Mr. Warholâs way, she would not dream of offering any comment on this idea.â
Delighted, Warhol set to work on his largest and most ambitious portfolio of silkscreens. The result was the Reigning Queens series featuring four prints each of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. These four female monarchs were all ruling in the world at the time of the portfolioâs publication in 1985, and each of them had assumed the throne by birthright, rather than through marriage. Warhol, who was fascinated by universal images, based these silkscreens on the queensâ official state portraits, as these photographs were often mass-produced on currency and stamps. Warhol presents Queen Elizabeth II as an iconic and glamorous figure. âTime Magazineâ wrote that Warhol’s portraits of Queen Elizabeth II “treat her like any other celebrity, frozen in time and bright colours”. The repetition of the four prints is reminiscent of postage stamps, referencing the extent of the mass production of the Queenâs image. Warhol has treated the Queen not as a monarch, but as one of the many celebrities he depicted. His approach reinvigorated the traditional presentation of royalty.
The same image of Queen Elizabeth II appears in all four prints but they vary in colour. Each features graphic colour blocks applied separately over the photographs. Warhol began working in this style in the mid-1970s, fragmenting the image with various overlaid shapes and areas of colour. He also added his own outlines, suggesting the stylized make-up of a Hollywood star, and associating the portrait with the cult of celebrity that was prevalent in the 1980s and in Warholâs Ćuvre. By comparison to his earlier prints which had a deliberately impersonal, automated appearance, these decorations to the image gave the work a more âartisticâ look. With his typical ambivalent attitude, Warhol explained these modifications to his prints as extraneous: “I really would still rather do just a silkscreen of the face without all the rest, but people expect just a little bit more. Thatâs why I put in all the drawing.”
âQueen Elizabeth IIâ was well-received by the Royal Collection of the British Royal Family, who wrote that “Warhol has simplified Grugeon’s portrait so that all that remains is a mask-like face. All character has been removed and we are confronted by a symbol of royal power”. George Mulder sent photographs of the prints to the Palace, possibly hoping the Queen might consider purchasing one. Heseltine replied to Mulder: âI am commanded by the Queen to acknowledge your letter of 11th March and to thank you for sending the photographs of the silkscreen prints by Andy Warhol which Her Majesty was most pleased and interested to seeâ. Later, in 2012, four prints from the Royal edition of âQueen Elizabeth IIâ were acquired by the British Royal Collection. These prints are the only portraits in the Royal Collection that Queen Elizabeth did not sit for or commission.
The Reigning Queens series combines many of Warholâs central themes â celebrity, portraiture, consumerism, decoration and social hierarchy.
The four works comprising âQueen Elizabeth IIâ are printed in an edition of forty with ten artist proofs, five printer proofs and three hors commerce. The work is also published as a Royal Edition with diamond dust on the drawing lines, published in an edition of thirty with five artist proofs, two printer proofs and two hors commerce. These four silkscreen prints are highly coveted, particularly as a complete set, as they had a rejuvenating influence on the nature of portraiture and are some of Andy Warholâs most celebrated work.
This collection of four works is being sold to benefit the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG)-Qaumajuq in establishing an endowment fund to support more diverse representation in the permanent collection, beginning with contemporary Indigenous art. Cowley Abbott is proud to donate our selling commission to the fund as part of the sale.
Typical of Mitchellâs art in general, Untitled is both delicate and powerful. She frequently worked on paper, expressing gestures that seem larger in scale than they actually are, in part because the forms animate a fundamentally open space. Areas in the upper left and right of this surface are particularly intense thanks to the accumulation of dark green, red, and blue pigment. If these zones might seem to implode from their own weight, for balance, Mitchell simultaneously thins some of her colours and streaks them across the surface. The light blue and delicate green skeins of pooled colour under the two denser forms to the left and right respectively seem to soak into the surface. Yet Mitchellâs brushstroke is always evident, moving the colour around no matter how ephemeral it becomes. This effect is especially evident in the centre of the work and holds the more heavily worked dancing forms apart.
The comparison of one artist with others in their immediate context or from a longer history is a hallmark of writing about art in museums, auction catalogues, and Art History. Mitchell is often discussed with reference to other women members of the AbEx circleâHelen Frankenthaler or Lee Krasner, for exampleâand especially with respect to her long-time life partner, the Canadian abstract painter Jean Paul Riopelle. Such comparisons can be enlightening, as many witnessed in the 2017-18 exhibition âMitchell/Riopelle: Nothing in Moderationâ, which systematically and extensively placed works by both abstractionists into visual conversation. Nonetheless, comparison invites the establishment of a hierarchy or of a false dichotomy, whether covertly or overtly displayed. Itâs worth asking whether we should, in the face of Mitchellâs Untitled, default to comparisons at all.
Is the alternative to perceive this painting on its own terms? Do we see it as highly dynamic, an intimation of a life force and testimony to abstract paintingâs abilities, or is it perhaps received as agitated, an embodiment of a delicate rage? The painting does not tell us what to see, think, or feel. It is a testament to what the eminent art historian Linda Nochlin (1931â2017) âMitchellâs contemporary and friendâ memorably called the painterâs âpoignant visual searching.â
We extend our thanks to Mark A. Cheetham, a freelance writer and curator and a professor of art history at the University of Toronto for contributing the preceding essay. He is author of Abstract Art Against Autonomy: Infection, Resistance, and Cure since the â60s (Cambridge University Press).
We extend our thanks to Mark A. Cheetham, a freelance writer and curator and a professor of art history at the University of Toronto for contributing the preceding essay. He is author of âAbstract Art Against Autonomy: Infection, Resistance, and Cure since the â60sâ (Cambridge University Press).
According to the David Bowie expert Andy Peters: âThis artwork is another âDHeadâ of Trent Reznor and includes part of the lyrics written in Davidâs hand at the foot to NINs big hit ‘Hurt’ which is a unique selling point. This painting never existed in his original inventory of 66 official DHead paintings most of which were made commercially available and was instead part of the rumoured extra 40+ ‘nonpublished’ DHeads he had also created in the period between 1994 and 1997.â
In 1995 Nine Inch Nails opened for David Bowie on his Outside Tour, where he sang ‘Hurt’ with Trent Reznor. During their time spent on tour together in the 1990s, a close friendship was born that lasted until Bowieâs death in 2016. Most famously, they collaborated on ‘Iâm Afraid of Americans’, a single from Bowieâs album Earthling.
We would like to thank Andy Peters at davidbowieautograph.com for his assistance with researching this artwork.
Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson first painted on Lake Superior in October 1921. They took the Algoma Central Railway from Sand Lake, Algoma north to Franz, where they caught the Canadian Pacific train travelling west to Rossport and Schreiber. Harris would return to paint and draw on the north shore of Lake Superior almost every October until 1928. His Lake Superior canvases range from depictions of the rocks, hills and bays and interior lakes to dramatic visions of the light over the vast body of water.
Lawren Harris Quiet Lake (Northern Painting 12), circa 1926-1928
To better express his expanding vision of the landscape, in 1925 Harris began to paint on beaverboard panels that were approximately 12 x 15 inches (30.5 x 37.6 cm) rather than his earlier supports that measured approximately 10 1â2 x 13 1â2 inches (26.3 x 34.4 cm). Harris frequently reinterpreted similar subjects, exploring in each work variant compositions in new pictorial languages. In May 1926 he presented a painting titled âNorthern Lakeâ in the Group of Seven exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto. âNorthern Lakeâ was worked up from a 12 x 15 inch oil sketch of 1925 now in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (accession 1969.17.1). âNorthern Lakeâ was one of the five Harris paintings included in the Canadian section of the Sesqui-Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia in the summer of 1926 (no. 1564, reproduced in the Philadelphia catalogue) where it was awarded a gold medal.
Jeremy Adamson, organizer of the major Harris retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1978, has argued that the medal was awarded to Harrisâ canvas âOntario Hill Townâ (University College, Toronto), not âNorthern Lakeâ, though two reviews of the Annual Exhibition of Canadian Art at the National Gallery in Ottawa in January 1927, where âNorthern Lakeâ was subsequently exhibited hors catalogue, confirm that âNorthern Lakeâ was indeed the gold prize winner.
âQuiet Lakeâ is a similar composition to âNorthern Lakeâ though clearly an evolution from the earlier canvas. The title âQuiet Lakeâ, a very aâ characteristic title, was given to this painting when it was catalogued by Doris Mills, a friend of Harrisâ wife Bess, in 1936. Mills listed it among a group of canvases she identified as Northern Paintings, of which this was number 12, not among Harrisâ Lake Superior paintings.
However, the site is identified in a related sketch titled by the artist âAbove Coldwell Bay, North Shore, Lake Superiorâ (sold Sotheby Parke Bernet (Canada), Toronto, 5 November 1979, lot 156). The lake depicted here was first painted by Harris prior to 1925, as there is an oil sketch of this same lake on a smaller panel (sold Sothebyâs Canada, Toronto, 3 December 1997, lot 155). However âQuiet Lakeâ was worked up from a panel of 1925 measuring 12 x 15 inches and titled by the artist âNorthern Lake, Ontario, Octoberâ.
In both âQuiet Lakeâ and âNorthern Lakeâ the point of view is determined by the foreground âledgeâ. The lake opens up in the middle distance and is framed by the curves of the surrounding hills. In âNorthern Lakeâ the hills rise left and right with the cold blue light of the sky glowing in the centre distance, reflecting on the water and casting shadows on the still lake. As Bertram Brooker wrote, the painting is âsombre, but none the less restful. In that sketch the distant rise upper left is painted in contrasting striations as on the hill upper right, whereas in the canvas âQuiet Lakeâ the yellow covers the entire slope.
There are similarities and differences between âNorthern Lakeâ and âQuiet Lakeâ. In âQuiet Lakeâ Harris heightened the tonal contrasts, painting the autumn grasses and foliage in a bright, mustard palette. The silhouettes of the reflections in the quiet lake create an abstract pattern, as solid as the foreground rock, and are surrounded by the pale green trees lower right and dark green trees centre left. In contrast to âNorthern Lakeâ, the hills are less symmetrical and the interplay of the dominant forms creates a less restful and more dynamic image. The eye follows the dominant yellow from lower right to upper left while the left shore juts into the open centre linking to the dark hill upper right.
To date it has been impossible to identify âQuiet Lakeâ with any canvas Harris exhibited in the 1920s. It clearly developed out of and postdates âNorthern Lakeâ of 1926.
We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada and author of âThe Group of SevenâArt for a Nationâ, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
Included in exhibitions for over a century and once part of the collection of the artistâs family for over fifty years, Tom Thomsonâs Ragged Oaks makes its auction debut with Cowley Abbott this spring season. Canadian art historian and Tom Thomson scholar, Joan Murray, notes that 1916âs Ragged Oaks is a magical and vigorous quintessential Thomson painting in which balance is the key to beauty, from the oaks off-centre to the foliage and bush, to the colours used throughout.
In the Cowley Abbott spring catalogue, Murray describes the power of the composition where the two oak tree trunks are depicted in a location of spectacular beauty. The leaves tumbled on the ground and the brilliant orange foliage and bush to one side balanced by bright leaves on the other reveal a scene of sparkling vitality, with all the liveliness Thomson wished to record and which appear in his best works. From the background tapestry of distant trees to the scattered logs of the foreground, the painting practically hums with energy, but the energy is matched with the harmony of Thomsonâs excited palette.
Tom Thomson Ragged Oaks, 1916
Murray describes Ragged Oaks as one of Thomsonâs best sketches of 1916, the artistâs âgolden yearâ, where he recorded varied configurations of the trees he countered; from Ragged Oaks through to those we see in the sketches for two of Thomsonâs most well-known works, The Jack Pine and The West Wind.
The year is inscribed on the reverse of the panel, as well as, âNot For Saleâ. Not surprising, given the quality and vivaciousness of Ragged Oaks. The painting was once owned by Fraser Thomson, Tomâs youngest brother. Fraser described the composition to a biographer in 1930: âA Cobalt blue sky with two ragged oak trees a little off centre with two patches of foliage in glowing color with foreground in green Brown purple manner with Blue + yellow, a real paintingâ.
The private collectors acquired the artwork from the Fraser Thomsonâs family in 1971 and it was a treasured gem within their museum-quality collection. Ragged Oaks is featured in Cowley Abbottâs Auction of Artwork from an Important Private Collection on June 8th.
If you are interested in offering artwork by one of the artists listed in our directory (or other possible artists), please submit details of your artwork or Contact Us for further assistance.