A pair of very different winter scenes by Ukrainian-Canadian artist William Kurelek, were highlights of Joyner Waddington's Fall Auction of Important Canadian Art. Balsam Avenue After Heavy Snowfall, a large oil painting by Kurelek depicting the aftermath of a winter storm generated heated bidding in the standing-room only auction gallery, finally selling for $241,400 (all prices include 15% Buyer's Premium), exceeding its presale auction estimate of $175,000-200,000. The painting, which featured the artist himself and his small children as part of the subject, became only the fourth work by the artist to sell above the $200,000 mark. A second work by Kurelek, Lumberjacks Returning To Camp, sold for $57,500. The painting presents a line of lumberjacks returning to their camp while being watched by a large bear and her cubs in the foreground. Kurelek himself worked as a lumberjack at the age of 19.

WILLIAM KURELEK, R.C.A.
BALSAM AVENUE AFTER HEAVY SNOWFALL, mixed media, signed with initials and dated '72
23 1/2 ins x 23 3/4 ins; 58.8 cms x 59.4 cms
$175,000-200,000
Price Realized: $241,500.00

Provenance:
The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto.
Mr. and Mrs. James Bacque, Toronto.
Private Collection, Toronto.

Exhibited:
O Toronto, The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, 1972.
Various Artists, Retrospective Exhibition, The Art Gallery of Brant, Brantford, May, 1974. Also shown at the Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery, Owen Sound; the London Public Library and Art Gallery, London; the Brampton Public Library and Art Gallery, Brampton and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener.
William Kurelek; painter, illustrator, author, an exhibition organized by the Canadian High Commission, London, England, 11 January to 8 February, 1978.

Literature:
William Kurelek, O Toronto, Paintings and Notes by William Kurelek, Toronto, 1973, plate 9, reproduced in colour. Also reproduced in colour on the dust jacket.
William Kurelek, Kurelek Country, Toronto, 1975, page 73, reproduced.
William Kurelek; painter, illustrator, author, exhibition catalogue, Canada House Gallery, Trafalgar-Square, London, England, 1978, catalogue cover, reproduced.
Patricia Morely, Kurelek, A Biography, Toronto, 1986, pages 174, 207, 247, 250 and 281.

In the spring of 1965, Kurelek's growing family made space a pressing need. The apartment near High Park which had suited the newlyweds was soon too small and the Kureleks moved to The Beaches in Toronto's east end near Lake Ontario. The moderately sized house on Balsam Avenue was described by Kurelek as "modest in comparison with some of the wealthier areas of town." The basement became a scene of brisk activity in the 1970s as it was here that he constructd his tiny artist's studio.

In the Introduction to O Toronto, James Bacque writes that Balsam Avenue After Heavy Snowfall is a "brief masterpiece of anecdote, familiar to anyone who has spent a winter in the city. The fallen snow brings out the children and mothers and fathers with shovels. They help and greet each other and seem to revel together in the change of their comfortable prosaic world. Snow, like a wedding, brings out the best in these neighbours."

Kurelek, in O Toronto, describes this painting as follows: "This is my own street in Toronto's east end where I've been happy to live for seven years. It's a narrow street, but unlike others in the area, still designated for two-way traffic. Courtesy is a practical necessity, for wherever there is a parked car and two others meet beside it, one has to give way so the other can get by. The backyards are small too, so Balsam Avenue children play together on the sidewalk even though their parents may not know their neighbours more than a few doors in either direction. But the big-city distance between neighbours breaks down completely when nature presents a novel challenge - such as a heavy snowfall. Neighbours help each other, greet each other, stop to exchange excitement. Their children see all kinds of new possibilites for playing and building (and fighting, too). 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 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."

O Toronto was published following an exhibition at the Isaacs Gallery in 1972 of twenty-one paintings, one for each of the main districts in the city. In the artist's Foreword to the exhibition, Kurelek observed that he was known as a portrayer of "past farm life" or as a missionary in paint; however, as Morley writes "he had come to love Toronto, and was therefore attempting to portray a new subject, 'the soul of the city'".

A letter from the Isaacs Gallery dated 4 March, 1978 to the owners of the painting provides an interesting footnote to the exhibition at Canada House in London: "The exhibition was a great success. They tell me that about 4,000 people saw the show and that it was reviewed in The Times and in most of the other papers. Your painting, as you can see, was used on the catalogue cover and the poster, so it was obviously a key piece in the show."

TOM THOMSON
ROCKS AND WATER, oil on board
6 1/2 ins x 10 ins; 16.3 cms x 25 cms
$100,000 -150,000
Price Realized: $115,000.00

Provenance:
George Thomson (brother of the artist), Owen Sound.
Dorothy Telford (daughter of George Thomson), Owen Sound.

'In his early years as a painter, Thomson's life was closely caught up with that of his family. He worked in the world of commercial design and often came home on weekends to Owen Sound where his family lived. He particularly would have sought the approval of his elder brother George, the senior among his siblings, whom he admired as one of the founders of the business college he had attended in Seattle in 1901, the Acme Business College, and as a serious artist.

Thomson's artwork up to 1911 was mostly of landscape done in the area of Owen Sound, in scenic areas around Toronto or on excursions into the countryside around Lake Scugog. He also created drawings in ink, watercolour and decorative illustrations of texts he and his family liked. He often gave such works as gifts to members of his family or friends. They are proof of his ambition and of his well-proportioned sense of design.

This sketch would have been painted in the area of Owen Sound on Georgian Bay and Thomson would have given it to his brother George possibly as indicative of his growing ability to record nature, which George had encouraged. Rocks and Water is a unique subject in Thomson's work and Thomson likely gave it to George because it records the area in which they both grew up. The work was kept in the drawer in a piece of furniture in the home of George Thomson in Owen Sound and passed to his daughter by descent: they mark the emergence of Tom Thomson as a serious painter.' - Joan Murray

This painting will be included in Joan Murray's forthcoming catalogue raisonne of the artist's work.

JEAN-PAUL LEMIEUX, R.C.A.
LE CHANDAIL BLANC, oil on canvas; signed
16 ins x 12 ins; 40 cms x 30 cms
$40,000 - 60,000
Price Realized: $80,500.00

Provenance:
Private Collection, Quebec City.

Literature:
Guy Robert, Lemieux, Toronto, 1978, page 170 (chapter entitled Figure and Background).

In describing Lemieux's portraits, Robert writes that each one has a place, independent of its date of execution in a logical progression: from the face viewed in close-up on a more or less non-existent background, to the figure that has become a virtually negligible quantity lost in an immense landscape: "The latter gives the impression of being on the very edge of non-existence - and yet its presence, meagre though it may be, gives meaning to a space otherwise devoid of that seed which makes the creative act of seeing possible."

ALFRED JOSEPH CASSON, O.S.A., P.R.C.A.
GREY OCTOBER MORNING, 1953,oil on board; signed
30 ins x 36 ins; 75 cms x 90 cms
$50,000-70,000
Price Realized: $80,500.00

Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto.

Literature:
Paul Duval, A.J. Casson, His Life & Works / A Tribute, Toronto, 1980, n.p., reproduced in colour.

Duval writes that Casson's major works of the early 1950's are closely related in both subject matter and dramatic atmosphere. "They are basically low-key landcapes which capture nature in her more sober garb. The regions depicted are elemental and forbidding in aspect." The technique used throughout this period perfectly reflects the subject matter portrayed. The paintings, as in Grey October Morning, share a built up, dry, crust-like texture over much of their surface.

WILLIAM KURELEK, R.C.A.
LUMBERJACKS RETURNING TO CAMP, mixed media on board; signed
17 ins x 34 ins; 42.5 cms x 85 cms
$50,000-70,000
Price Realized: $57,500.00

Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner's aunt, Toronto.

Literature:
William Kurelek, Lumberjack, Montreal, 1974, plate 3, illustrated in colour.
Patricia Morley, Kurelek, A Biography, Toronto, 1986, pages 52-54 for an account and photographs of the artist's lumberjack life.

The life of a Canadian lumberjack was unique, a way of living where a man was measured by what he could do and not by who he was.

In the forward to Lumberjack, Kurelek writes that the first time went into the bush was when he was 19 years old: "I did it to prove to my father (and myself) that I could make it on my own. Like many immigrants, my father had worked in the bush when he first came to this country. And like many fathers, he did not believe that a son could take the hardships he had endured."

Morley writes that Kurelek's becoming a lumberjack was his "first exposure to Canada's wilderness, to the variety and vastness of a land he would later record in paint with living fidelity... In later years he realized just how rich had been his exposure to traditional lumberjack life... 'As a painter, I felt very lucky to have experienced traditional lumber camp living before it disappeared forever.' His lumberjack paintings record the old ways, along with the depth of feeling they had evoked in him."

This painting depicts a party of lumberjacks returning to camp while a black bear and her two cubs watch their progress to the cook shack. Kurelek writes that part of the cook's area was the meat shack where whole sides of cured beef and pork were hung up. "The door had to be well fastened against bears who rummaged in the garbage heap a few yards off."

Kurelek's major work, The Lumberjack's Breakfast, which was used as the cover to his book Lumberjack, was sold by Joyner's in the May 2002 auction and was featured on the cover the auction catalogue.