TORONTO — A couple of major canvases by Emily Carr are among the pieces featured at a Toronto auction house's spring sale.
The Heffel Fine Art Auction House will take bids on the two paintings from Carr's mature period at a virtual live auction on Wednesday.
The B.C. painter's 1939 forest scene, "Tossed by the Wind," is expected to fetch between $1.2 and $1.6 million.
Auctioneers say Carr's 1937 work "Swirl," which she gifted to contemporary Lawren Harris, will hit the auction block for the first time for a pre-sale price tag of between $1 million and $1.5 million.
Also among the highlights are four works by Canadian artist Alex Colville, including the well-known 1952 painting "Girl on Piebald Horse," which is estimated to hammer down for between $700,000 and $900,000, and "Dog and Horse," which has been valued at between $400,000 and $600,000.
Heffel says it will present 92 works during the livestreamed auction, which will be broadcast from three separate salerooms in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
The catalogue is expected to net a total of between $10 million and $14 million. All estimates include auction house fees on top of the hammer price.
Another big-ticket lot is French painter Fernand Léger's "Peinture imaginaire," which was painted over a 13-year period from 1939 to 1952, and is estimated to be worth between $1.5 million and $2 million.
Eight works by Quebec abstractionist Jean Paul Riopelle will be on offer, led by the large-scale "Sans tire," a mixed-media triptych with a pre-sale estimate of between $400,000 and $600,000.
Also slated for sale are two canvases by B.C. landscape artist E.J. Hughes from the early 1960s, "Above Revelstoke" and "The Beach at Kalamalka," which are valued at between $150,000 and $250,000 apiece.
Rounding out the catalogue are offerings from the Group of Seven, including Lawren Harris’s "Coldwell - North Shore, Lake Superior," which is estimated to be worth between $100,000 and $150,000, and A.Y. Jackson's "La Malbaie, Quebec," with a pre-sale value of between $100,000 and $120,000.
Collectors can place their offers through telephone, absentee and online bidding.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2021.
Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press