Record price set for Canadian artwork sale

The Toronto Star, May 27, 1995

By Judy Stoffman

James Wilson Morrice
Bull Ring, Marseilles

A large crowd of art collectors at St. Lawrence Hall broke into spontaneous applause after a new record was set for the price of a Canadian painting sold at auction in Canada last night.

At Joyner's spring sale of Canadian art Bull Ring, Marseilles by the leading Canadian Impressionist painter James Wilson Morrice sold after fierce bidding for $572,000, including the 10 per-cent buyer's premium.

Geoffrey Joyner, who resigned as head of Sotheby's in Canada to start his own business a decade ago, stopped the proceedings to breathlessly announce that the price was not only a record high for the artist, but also a record for any Canadian artwork and a record for his auction house.

The large, luminous oil painting in warm yellow and orange tones was painted in 1904-05 and had last been on the market 62 years ago when it was bought by Huntly Drummond of Montreal. It was sold by the estate of the late Mrs. A T. Henderson, Drummond's descendant.

The price outdistanced the previous high of $495,000. A work by Lawren Harris and one by Clarence Gagnon had each sold for that amount in the past decade. Only a Riopelle abstraction has ever sold for more - but that was at an auction in New York.

The buyer of the Morrice, who bid by telephone, is believed to be newspaper tycoon Ken Thomson.

At the end of evening, Joyner said that art worth a total of $1.6 million had been sold. The Morrice sale, he said, "means a lot to the Canadian art market, to dealers, corporate and other collectors. I've been in the business for 27 years and this was the culmination of my career. I didn't think it would go for over half a million."