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Ira Dilworth & Emily Carr (Heffel Gallery)
Emily Carr Masterpiece to sell in Heffel's Spring Fine Art Auction
For immediate release: Vancouver - February 18, 2004
Heffel Fine Art Auction House, one of Canada's leading art auctioneers, announces that they have been entrusted to sell a museum-quality painting by Canada's first lady of fine art, Emily Carr. The striking oil on canvas - Quiet, depicting a BC forest scene - will be among approximately 200 Canadian paintings to be auctioned off in Vancouver at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel's ballroom on the evening of May 27, 2004.
"It is rare that a Carr painting of this scale and quality comes available for sale,"; says president David Heffel. "The painting has not been seen since it was displayed at an exhibit in the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1942, when it had a sale price of $250.";
The $250 price is still visible on a faded label attached to the back of the canvas. Fast-forward 62 years - and Quiet has a conservative pre-sale estimate of $300,000 to $400,000 placed on it.
When Emily Carr passed away, Lawren Harris helped divide up the Emily Carr trust. Most of Carr's large 44 x 27 inch canvases from the 1940s were contributed to the permanent collection of Vancouver Art Gallery.
The original owner of Quiet, Ira Dilworth is an important figure in Carr's history. Dilworth brought Emily Carr's first book to the attention of Oxford University Press; he edited all her later manuscripts; and at Carr's death in 1945, Dilworth became one of the trustees of her estate and her literary executor.
It is generally thought that when Ira Dilworth chose a painting for himself from Carr's estate, he had the pick of the crop. Quiet was the painting he selected. Among her last canvases painted and one of only a few dozen large canvases that Emily Carr painted in her mature period in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Quiet shows her in full command of her powers as a painter and her deep familiarity with her subject. There are at least three dated canvases from 1942: The Clearing, National Gallery of Canada; Cedar, Vancouver Art Gallery and Quiet. Almost certainly they are the "three big canvases" Carr refers to in a letter of May 10, 1942 to her friend Nan Lawson Cheney. These works, which are likely her final canvases, are all forest scenes, but two, Cedar and Quiet, examine a deeper forest landscape. As Doris Shadbolt observed, they are characterized by an "enclosing wall of green forest close against the picture surface, stretching edge to edge, no sky above, no anchoring earth below, no deep space leading us in." (Shadbolt, 1990, p. 211). The variety of greens - bright first growth, darker mature forest and intermediate colors are remarkable. Doris Shadbolt suggests that works such as Quiet have a "lyrical tranquility." (Shadbolt, 1979, p. 182)
Carr forest landscape canvases of this mature period have been among the most sought-after and have attracted some of the highest resale prices through recent years. For example: on November 17, 1999, Emily Carr's The Path - 44 x 27 inches, an oil on canvas also from her mature period, sold for an astonishing $294,000. It was one of the highest prices for a Carr painting to that date.
Over the past four years, Carr's work has received international attention, sending her prices skyrocketing. It started on May 10, 2000, at the Heffel's annual spring auction in Vancouver, when Emily Carr's 1912 oil on canvas: War Canoes (Alert Bay) sold for $1,018,750, setting seven Canadian art records. This sale drew international press attention and vaulted Emily Carr into the ranks of Canada's most important artists. In 2002, the exhibition Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo toured Vancouver, BC; Kleinburg, Ontario; Washington, DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico. An accompanying book by Sharyn Udall was distributed and sold internationally. Currently the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery are planning a major retrospective on Emily Carr for 2006.
"We are excited to have a major Emily Carr work months before our spring auction,"; says vice president Robert Heffel. "Major paintings attract major collectors, and if there is a potential seller of an Emily Carr canvas or Group of Seven work, they would want to capitalize on the momentum building towards this auction."; -- Heffel Gallery, Vancouver.
For immediate release: Vancouver - February 18, 2004
Heffel Fine Art Auction House, one of Canada's leading art auctioneers, announces that they have been entrusted to sell a museum-quality painting by Canada's first lady of fine art, Emily Carr. The striking oil on canvas - Quiet, depicting a BC forest scene - will be among approximately 200 Canadian paintings to be auctioned off in Vancouver at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel's ballroom on the evening of May 27, 2004.
"It is rare that a Carr painting of this scale and quality comes available for sale,"; says president David Heffel. "The painting has not been seen since it was displayed at an exhibit in the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1942, when it had a sale price of $250.";
The $250 price is still visible on a faded label attached to the back of the canvas. Fast-forward 62 years - and Quiet has a conservative pre-sale estimate of $300,000 to $400,000 placed on it.
When Emily Carr passed away, Lawren Harris helped divide up the Emily Carr trust. Most of Carr's large 44 x 27 inch canvases from the 1940s were contributed to the permanent collection of Vancouver Art Gallery.
The original owner of Quiet, Ira Dilworth is an important figure in Carr's history. Dilworth brought Emily Carr's first book to the attention of Oxford University Press; he edited all her later manuscripts; and at Carr's death in 1945, Dilworth became one of the trustees of her estate and her literary executor.
It is generally thought that when Ira Dilworth chose a painting for himself from Carr's estate, he had the pick of the crop. Quiet was the painting he selected. Among her last canvases painted and one of only a few dozen large canvases that Emily Carr painted in her mature period in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Quiet shows her in full command of her powers as a painter and her deep familiarity with her subject. There are at least three dated canvases from 1942: The Clearing, National Gallery of Canada; Cedar, Vancouver Art Gallery and Quiet. Almost certainly they are the "three big canvases" Carr refers to in a letter of May 10, 1942 to her friend Nan Lawson Cheney. These works, which are likely her final canvases, are all forest scenes, but two, Cedar and Quiet, examine a deeper forest landscape. As Doris Shadbolt observed, they are characterized by an "enclosing wall of green forest close against the picture surface, stretching edge to edge, no sky above, no anchoring earth below, no deep space leading us in." (Shadbolt, 1990, p. 211). The variety of greens - bright first growth, darker mature forest and intermediate colors are remarkable. Doris Shadbolt suggests that works such as Quiet have a "lyrical tranquility." (Shadbolt, 1979, p. 182)
Carr forest landscape canvases of this mature period have been among the most sought-after and have attracted some of the highest resale prices through recent years. For example: on November 17, 1999, Emily Carr's The Path - 44 x 27 inches, an oil on canvas also from her mature period, sold for an astonishing $294,000. It was one of the highest prices for a Carr painting to that date.
Over the past four years, Carr's work has received international attention, sending her prices skyrocketing. It started on May 10, 2000, at the Heffel's annual spring auction in Vancouver, when Emily Carr's 1912 oil on canvas: War Canoes (Alert Bay) sold for $1,018,750, setting seven Canadian art records. This sale drew international press attention and vaulted Emily Carr into the ranks of Canada's most important artists. In 2002, the exhibition Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo toured Vancouver, BC; Kleinburg, Ontario; Washington, DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico. An accompanying book by Sharyn Udall was distributed and sold internationally. Currently the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery are planning a major retrospective on Emily Carr for 2006.
"We are excited to have a major Emily Carr work months before our spring auction,"; says vice president Robert Heffel. "Major paintings attract major collectors, and if there is a potential seller of an Emily Carr canvas or Group of Seven work, they would want to capitalize on the momentum building towards this auction."; -- Heffel Gallery, Vancouver.
Submitted on May 8, 2004 in By David.
