Heffel Auction Fine Art Takes $11.5 Million
Published May 23rd, 2008
On Thursday, Heffel Fine Art Auction House held one of the top Canadian fine art auctions in history.
The auction was the first of Canada’s major spring auctions, featuring 164 lots, one which sold for just over a million dollars.
Works by Group of Seven artists Frederick Horsman Varley and A.Y. Jackson sold for more than half-a-million dollars each.
“Norma,” one of the largest works on sale at 101 by 83 centimetres, sold for $600,000, beating a previous Varley record of $550,000.
“A painting of this quality doesn’t come up very often,” said Robert Heffel, who runs Heffel Fine Art Auction house with his brother, David.
The double-sided oil on canvas, circa 1929, depicts Norma Park, a student of Varley’s during his time spent in Vancouver. Varley, along with Lawren Harris, was one of two members of the Group of Seven to paint portraits.
A.Y. Jackson’s “Winter Afternoon Near Baie Saint Paul, Quebec,” a 1924 oil on canvas showing a horse and sleigh cutting a path through fresh snow, reached $525,000. That bested a previous record by about $50,000.
Tamarack Swamp (Sketch 5)” by the pre-Group of Seven artist Tom Thomson drew the highest bidding for the night and sold for $1 million, just shy of a previous record for the his work.
It’s the sixth Thomson painting to sell for more than $1 million, the auction house said.
The auction house sold $50 million of art in 2007, $43 million of it in Canada, Heffel said. Thursday’s auction totalled about $10 million.
Auction info www.heffel.com
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