Heffel Fine Art Auction House held its marquee autumn sales in Toronto’s swank Yorkville district on Wednesday (19 November) in a marathon series of four auctions that saw more than a dozen new records set and paintings from the collection of North America’s oldest company sold off.
In all 16 artists’ secondary market records were broken over the four-session sale, which began mid-afternoon and went until the late evening. Heffel vice-president Robert Heffel, who shared auctioneering duties with his brother and the auction house’s president David Heffel, allowed himself mere minutes between the latter sessions. It was time well spent, with Heffel taking in over C$31m ($22.1m).
The series of sales kicked off with an auction of art from the collection of the Hudson’s Bay Company—which declared bankruptcy earlier this year after being in business for 355 years, around 200 years longer than Canada has existed—followed by a single-owner sale devoted to the holdings of the late collector Lillian Mayland McKimm. These were followed by two multi-owner sales: of Canadian, Impressionist and modern art, and of post-war and contemporary art.
E.J. Hughes, Entrance to Howe Sound, 1949 From the Lillian Mayland McKimm Collection, Image courtesy Heffel
All 27 works from the Hudson’s Bay Company collection were snapped up, many at prices much higher than their estimates, breaking nine artists’ auction records along the way. Robert Heffel called it “a defining moment in Canadian history”. The artists who emerged with new top auction prices were mainly lesser-known historical figures including W. J. Phillips, Adam Sherriff Scott, Franklin Arbuckle, John Innes, Frederic Bell-Smith, William Berczy, Charles Comfort, Francis Holman and Charles Pachter.
Another artist whose auction record was smashed was E.J. Hughes, who all but stole the show during the McKimm collection sale. Bidding on Hughes’ s Entrance to Howe Sound, a landscape painting from 1949, opened at C$950,000 ($678,000) and eventually more than doubled the artist’s previous high mark at auction, realising C$4.8m ($3.4m, all prices include auction house fees).
Other big-ticket items came as less of a surprise, notably Winston Churchill’s painting Marrakech (around 1935). Signed simply W.S.C, it was gifted to the Hudson’s Bay Company by Lady Churchill in 1956. It sold for C$1.5m ($1.1m), almost quadrupling its low estimate of C$400,000 ($285,000). The scene, described in the Heffel catalogue as “bathed in Moroccan sunlight beneath a canopy of slender palms”, surely appealed to auction-goers on a chilly November night in Toronto.
Winston Churchill, Marrakech, arouhurchill, Marrakech, around 1935 From the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection, Image courtesy Heffel
A new auction record was notched for the work of James Wilson Morrice, whose painting Le pont (1907)—which appeared in the historic Salon d’Automne and depicts a bridge over the Seine in Paris, where the Montréal-born artist spent much of his career—realised C$1.8m ($1.2m), more than doubling its high estimate of C$800,000 ($570,000).
“That record held for a long time,” Robert Heffel said on hammering down the Morrice painting, which was making its Canadian debut after more than a century in a private collection in Europe.
Frederic Bell-Smith’s 1894 painting Lights of a City Street, which graced the cover of Heffel’s catalogue for the Hudson’s Bay auction (with Churchill on the back cover) and was formerly owned by Simpson’s department store, was much anticipated and sold for C$691,250 ($493,000), more than quadrupling its high estimate of C$150,000 ($107,000). Torontonians could well appreciate it, as it was set at the corner of King and Yonge streets, in the heart of the city’s downtown. Only the gents wearing top hats give away its date of rendering—it even includes several street cars, which still ply Toronto’s streets, though somewhat updated.
Cornelius Krieghoff’s seasonally apt painting Canadian Autumn, View on the Road to Lake St John (1862), with a high estimate of C$150,000 ($107,000), soared to C$631,250 ($450,000). And David Blackwood’s whaling scene In the Labrador Sea (1995) more than tripled its high estimate, taking in C$601,250 ($428,000).
Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, Lights of a City Street, 1894 From the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection, Image courtesy Heffel
Some of the day’s lots blew past seemingly cautious estimates, a prime example being Charles Comfort’s 1941 painting Barnston and Ballantyne at Tadoussac, 1846, which had a high estimate of just C$15,000 ($10,700). It ultimately realised a whopping C$571,250 ($407,000), no doubt aided by David Heffel donning of a trademark Hudson’s Bay coat—the same variety worn by the surveyor George Barnston in the forefront of the painting.
Another surprise was Adam Sherriff Scott’s Chief Trader Archibald McDonald Descending the Fraser, 1828 (around 1942), which pictures a birchbark trading canoe blasting through the rapids of the Fraser River. It blasted past its high estimate of C$9,000 ($6,400) and ultimately brought in C$361,250 ($257,000).
“The estimates were reflective of the artists’ markets when we set them originally, but once we started showcasing the Hudson’s Bay Company collection it became clear how passionate people were about these paintings,” says Rebecca Rykiss, Heffel’s director of communication. “We’re thrilled with [the] results—it was a historic night for Canadian art.”