Harris painting fetches record

The Globe and Mail, June 2, 1999

By Val Ross

Cornelius Krieghoff
Indian Scouts on Lookout Rock

Tempers flared; bids ricocheted around the room, and records for the price of Canadian art toppled at last night's Joyner auction of Canadian art in Toronto. The audience exploded into applause when the hammer finally fell on a staggering $960,000 for Lawren Harris' Lake Superior III.

After the buyer's 10-per-cent premium is added, the total price for the Harris exceeded $1,056,000 – a record for Harris and a record for art auctioned in Canada, auctioneer Geoffrey Joyner said.

The price commanded by the large, serene oil painting, which measured 100 centimetres by 125, more than doubled the previous $495,000 record for a Harris work, set in 1986.

It broke the record for Canadian art at auction: $572,000, set at Joyner's 1995 spring auction by Bull Ring, Marseilles, a work by James Wilson Morrice. The Morrice was bought by a Toronto collector said to be Ken Thomson, owner of The Globe and Mail. Mr. Thomson and his wife were in the room last night but declined to comment on the Harris sale when they slipped away early.

"This is the best the Canadian market has been since the 1980s," exulted Lonte Ebers, a private Toronto art dealer. Mr. Joyner estimated that last night's total would work out at around $2.25-million. The total showed a surge over Joyner's total last fall of $1.75-million but is still modest compared to the 1987 evening when the auction house sold almost $6-million worth of Canadian art.

Last night's auction brought several signs of renewed market vigour. While Cornelius Krieghoff's Indian Scouts on Lookout Rock only grazed its reserve price of $50,000 (it sold for $48,000 plus buyer's premium) - and about 15 per cent of the other 256 works on offer were withdrawn from sale for failing to meet their minimum reserve prices - several paintings exceeded expectations by significant amounts, driven by spirited bidding from Alberta dealers in the audience.

The evening's first lot, Walter and Son on Sketching Trip, a watercolour by Walter Joseph Phillips, set the pace when it went for a hammer price of $24,000, three times its reserve, and a record for the artist. Another Harris, Icebergs, Smith Sound II, sold for a hammer price of $110,000, almost double the reserve of $60,000. An Emily Carr, Deep Forest, New and Old, sold for $66,000. And Jean-Philippe Dallaire's A Briat Savarin , sold for $30,000, double its reserve.

However, everyone knew the evening's high point would be the Harris painting of Lake Superior, which he produced around 1923. The signs were propitious. An oil sketch for the canvas is in a major public gallery, the McMichael Collection. And the work had had only two owners, Vincent Massey and a prominent Montreal – and Toronto – based family who had owned it since 1966.

Mr. Joyner said later he was not unduly surprised by the evening's record.

"I had a lot of faith in the picture," he said. Tonight, more Harrises go on the block at the other major Canadian art auction of the spring season, Sotheby's, as do several Milnes, Carrs, and a Morrice.