Cowley Abbott’s live auction on June 8th marked the second of three landmark live auctions dedicated to a prestigious private collection of Canadian art. A selection of exceptional historical artworks offered in the evening auction saw a bidding frenzy, with most artworks in the sale exceeding – and often doubling, tripling or more – presale estimates. Three masterworks achieved over and above the million-dollar mark, including works by celebrated artists Tom Thomson, Emily Carr and Lawren Harris.

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 Toronto’s 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-Émile Borduas’ 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 York‒particularly 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 “a crutch”.

“Rencontre enflammée”, dating to 1962, was completed during this pivotal period of growth in Letendre’s career. As she became better equipped with painting materials and more time to work, she began creating larger canvases with explosions of colour. Letendre had recently won second prize in the painting category in the 1961 Concours artistiques du Québec. Her compositions grew to be very personal and carefully planned, and she began anchoring masses with carefully visualized gestures, amid fields of thick impasto. Dramatic and evocative, Rencontre enflammée is composed of three vertically stacked black organic forms with small, loose strokes of blue and white painted over them. Behind these black masses is a striking ground of yellow and red thrashes that are reminiscent of flames, recalling Letendre’s title which translates to “fiery encounter”. On her use of colour and light, the artist claimed: “Light and colour, and sometimes the absence of colour, have always been the key elements in my painting. With its different values, colour reflects the shades of life. But light, from the first shock of birth to the last breath of life‒light is life.” In this canvas, Letendre plays with this relationship between light, colour and the absence of colour: the three black forms create haunting voids that are encompassed by the mesmerizing light of flames.

Although the title Letendre chose for “Rencontre enflammée” makes reference to a representational subject, her paintings of this time were very much still based in Automatism rather than on a particular subject. She stated, “My thoughts, my attitudes are automatist, which means that I have no set formula. My paintings are completely emotional, full of hair-trigger intensity. Through them, I challenge space and time. I paint freedom, escape from the here and now, from the mundane…The world isn’t only what we see or what we experience.”

The 1960s was a decade of well-deserved recognition for Letendre’s work, beginning with a solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1961. In 1962, when “Rencontre enflammée” was completed, Letendre received a Canada Council Grant, and travelled with Ulysse Comtois to Europe, visiting Paris, Rome and then Israel.

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.”

While pioneer life was rugged and precarious, it was also a productive and fruitful time for Krieghoff as he recorded the industry and ingenuity of the people of Quebec City. At this time, there was no bridge over the St. Lawrence River, and so to cross this mighty body of water to access Lévis on the opposite shore, one had to embark upon a perilous journey in a Royal Mail canoe. Marius Barbeau, Krieghoff’s early biographer, points out that, “The cutting of lumber in the woods and the driving of rafts down the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence gave rise to a great Canadian industry in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and Krieghoff, like his predecessor Bartlett, interprets some of its aspects upon canvas.”

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.”

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,” stated Barbeau. A similar variant to this 1860 canvas is “Crossing the St. Lawrence with the Royal Mail at Quebec,” 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 Krieghoff’s 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. Krieghoff’s 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 “The Royal Mail Crossing the St. Lawrence” 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 “the complex genesis of Krieghoff’s images of Canada”, in which this canvas holds a prominent place.