The Urban Toronto Landscape in Art

Rob Cowley

DONALD BESCO,
THE OLD FLATIRON

There is a vast array of urban Canadian cityscapes, detailing a variety of the towns and cities across the country. I have chosen to focus on artistic depictions of the City of Toronto within this article. This focus allows not only a view of one city through time, but also a look at Toronto through the eyes of the various artists whose paintings are featured in this article.

Works of art depicting the City of Toronto are regularly offered and sold in auctions across Canada. As you will witness in the paintings presented, the works can range in value anywhere from a thousand dollars to well into the league of six figures and beyond, depending on various factors, including the artist, the specific subject and the provenance of the work of art.

George Agnew Reid's 1886 canvas, "Toronto Waterfront," provides a perspective looking north from Lake Ontario, towards the late 19th Century skyline of the city. In the 1891 publication, Toronto, Old and New, G.M. Adam provides a contemporary account of Toronto, stating: "It's (sic) chief adornment is its water-front, as seen from the harbour and island, or the lake beyond. The approach by water, either by the gap or by the western entrance to the harbour, is singularly fine. The spires, towers and cupolas of its churches and public buildings, with the imposing array of substantial warehouses that line the shore-front, afford an agreeable contrast to the confused mass of the city, sloping up in the distance, and mark it as a place of wealth and enterprise." The painting, executed less than 20 years after Canada's confederation, sold for $184,000 in the Joyner Spring 2006 Canadian Fine Art Sale, an auction record for the Ontario-born, internationally-trained Reid.

ARTHUR W. COX,
TORONTO FROM BATHURST STREET HILL

Lawren Harris, a founding member of the Group of Seven, continually evolved throughout his life as an artist, significantly altering his style and representation of subjects through the various stages of his career. Harris's depiction of urban scenes also varied, following the artist's experience with the physical and social factors of the urban settings which he portrayed. "Snowfall," a 1920 canvas by Harris, is believed to depict a home on Church Street, just south of Bloor Street. The painting, which was featured on the cover of the Joyner Fall 2002 Auction catalogue and sold for $650,000, is thought to be the work which was included in the first exhibition of the Group of Seven at the Art Gallery of Toronto in May of 1920.

LAWREN HARRIS,
IN THE WARD

A contemporary of Lawren Harris, Peter Clapham Sheppard, trained, worked and exhibited with some of the most celebrated artists of the early 20th Century, including members of the Group of Seven. Although Sheppard has not received the same level of fame which has been awarded many of his peers, his paintings were featured in international exhibitions where they hung amongst works of art now celebrated as some of the most iconic and recognized images of Canadian Art. P.C. Sheppard's "Old Houses, Elizabeth Street (The Ward), 1933" portrays the artist's vision of the houses and storefronts of the snowy Toronto street, with the historic Canada Life Building towering in the background. The Canada Life Building, located on University Avenue at Queen Street, was completed in 1931, one year before Sheppard completed this canvas, which was exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists in 1933.

It was at the funeral of another contemporary, J.W. Beatty, that P.C. Sheppard met Bernice Fenwick Martin. The artists became close friends, sketching regularly together until Sheppard's death in 1965. Martin's colourful landscapes, many detailing urban and rural Ontario, have started to appear regularly at auction over the past few years, raising the profile of the artist with collectors. Bernice Martin's 10-and-a-half-by-eight-and-half-inch oil sketch, "Building Of Victory Mills, Toronto Harbor," details the erection of the soybean processing and storage plant which E.P. Taylor, then president of Victory Mills Ltd., had built in 1943. The structure, which changed hands several times for the nearly 50 years it was in service, closed in the early 1990s and remains empty at the foot of Parliament Street. Martin noted on an accompanying watercolour that this painting was dated May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day. The painting sold for just over $1,000 in the Joyner Fall 2008 Auction.

One of the most well known painters of urban Toronto, Albert Franck, came to Canada in 1926 from Holland. Franck's paintings of houses, backyards, and alleyways present an unsanitized view of his subjects. In Albert Franck: His Life, Times & Works, Harold Town noted, "Franck painted homes, not houses. They are real and familiar ...through his belief that other homes were like his - warm, social, comfy, with ashes in the grate, a wet towel on the bathroom floor and dog hairs on the couch ...To Albert Franck the grubby street world of Toronto was as impressive as the pyramids at sunset or Durham Castle in the rain. He rigourously excluded quaint details or picaresque touches that might lead to sentimentalization of his subjects. Franck houses were cathedrals of the ordinary, cocoons of the humdrum ..." Franck's "House On Isabella Street" garnered a price of $17,250 in the Joyner Spring 2003 Auction, a value which remains one of the highest ever reached at auction for the artist.

JOHN KASYN,
BEHIND GRANGE AVE. (TORONTO)

Born in Istanbul, of Armenian decent, Arto Yuzbasiyan emigrated to Canada in 1973. The artist's Ontario and Quebec urban winter scenes have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, with the painter's works hanging in prominent private and corporate collections across Canada. The artist's urban scenes are well known for the regular inclusion of Toronto's most recognizable form of mass transit, the streetcar. Yuzbasiyan's "College Street Before Rush Hour" depicts two streetcars, about to pass, through the long shadows of a Toronto winter afternoon. The large canvas sold for just under $4,000 in the December 2005 Joyner Canadian Fine Art Auction.

LUC DESCHAMPS,
REFLECTIONS, TORONTO

One of the most recognized buildings in downtown Toronto, the Gooderham Flatiron building, was built in 1892 to house the offices of the distiller, Gooderham & Worts. The wedge-shaped building was sold by the Gooderham estate in 1957 and was designated a historic site in 1975, it is currently being managed by a private corporation. Donald Besco's "The Old Flatiron" has the five-storey red brick property playing the central figure, surrounded by Front and Wellington Streets' activity, sitting before Toronto's hulking downtown core in the background. The artist juxtaposes the 19th Century building before the 20th Century towers of downtown, including the base of the CN Tower to the left. Besco's paintings hang in private and corporate collections around the world. The artist is represented by galleries across Canada and his works are regularly represented at auction where "The Old Flatiron" sold for just over $2,500 in the Joyner Fall 2002 Sale of Important Canadian Art.

William Kurelek's "Balsam Avenue After Heavy Snowfall" presents the street on which the Ukranian-Canadian painter lived until his death in 1977. The scene is one that is all too familiar to most Canadians – the "digging out" after a substantial snowfall. However, Kurelek presents joy in a setting where many would find the dread of hard work. The artist has included himself and his young children in the 1972 painting. As the artist cleans off his car in the lower left of the painting, his children frolic in the freshly-fallen snow. Kurelek described the details of the work in 1973's "O Toronto" (which featured 21 Toronto scenes by the artist) "My own four little ones are in the foreground. The girls are getting away with eating snow (if their mother only knew!) and I'm brushing off snow off our station wagon. Tommie, the youngest, pedals his tricycle all winter, paying no attention to cold or snow. In a sense my wife also takes part in the scene, for the painting is from her view of Balsam Avenue, looking south. That's Mrs. Powell, our neighbour, waving to her." The painting is displayed on the cover of "O Toronto" as well as the Joyner Canadian Fine Art Fall 2008 Auction Catalogue. The painting sold for $241,500, one of the highest prices ever achieved for a work by William Kurelek at auction.

The Joyner Spring 2009 Auction will also include a Toronto landscape by Kurelek. The Board Walk At Toronto Beaches, 1974 is another busy and playful setting, depicting a summer weekend day on Lake Ontario. Kurelek is featured once again in the lower left of the work, sketching the scene before him which includes an almost dizzying array of activity. Aside from the picnics, swimming, frisbee and wheelbarrow races, we also find several flashes of Kurelek's humour. A dog in the lower right of the painting stealthily attemps to steal a hot dog from an unsuspecting woman on a bench while a man strolls with his wife and child in a baby carriage. The man's t-shirt reads "Balmy Beach Canoe Club" and his face is meant to reveal, according to the artist himself, that he wishes he was participating in the club's activities on such a beautiful day on Lake Ontario (the Club is located just east of the painting's setting).

Although many of Canadian Art's most recognized and iconic landscapes depict the vast secluded wilderness of our land, the representation of urban Toronto through its history provides an incredibly important function. The urban landscape chronicles and celebrates the settlement of Toronto, providing us not only with a report of time and place, but also with the perspective of the individual artist who has chosen to provide us with the framed image. Although the artists featured in this article each painted from their own historical, economic and artistic perspective, the painters share their goal in portraying a scene which has captured them.

GEORGE AGNEW REID, TORONTO WATERFRONT	LAWREN HARRIS, SNOWFALL
PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, ELIZABETH STREET TORONTO, circa 1929 (Image Courtesy of the P.C. Sheppard Collection. Copyright)	BERNICE FENWICK MARTIN, BUILDING OF VICTORY MILLS, TORONTO HARBOUR (Image Courtesy of B.F. Martin Collection. Copyright)
ALBERT JACQUES FRANCK, HOUSE ON ISABELLA STREET	ARTO YUZBASIYAN, COLLEGE STREET BEFORE RUSH HOUR
WILLIAM KURELEK, BALSAM AVENUE AFTER HEAVY SNOWFALL	WILLIAM KURELEK, THE BOARD WALK AT TORONTO BEACHES, 1974