When a long-forgotten oil on canvas painting by famed Canadian artist Emily Carr goes up for auction next month in Toronto, it’s expected to fetch upwards of $200,000.
But Allan Treibitz, the eagle-eyed New York-based art dealer who paid $50 for the 112-year-old “Masset, Q.C.I.” at a barn sale in the Hamptons over the summer, expects the final amount will “blow past” the estimate.
“It was lost to time and found, it’s 3,000 miles and 90 years removed from how it got there. That in and of itself is amazing,” he told The National Post.
“The fact that nobody knew this painting existed will add to its importance and value.”
The find
Treibitz, who has brought “an eclectic eye” to the art industry for 40 years and operates his own art and antique auction business in New York, instantly recognized its “specialness” when he laid eyes on the image of a carved grizzly bear atop a memorial totem.
He and his partner purchased it in a lot of 25 other items, but it wasn’t until they got their hands on it that they discovered it to be a Carr original, making it a “once in a lifetime” discovery.
Their research quickly led them to Heffel Fine Art Auction House, the Toronto-based fine art auction house that’ll help Treibitz sell the rare find.
“What is really interesting about the painting and notable is it’s bold . . . and it uses the post-Impressionist colour palette she learned in France. Her use of bold and modern colours, which were really groundbreaking in Canada,” Lauren Kratzer, Heffel’s national director of consignments, told The Calgary Herald.
“Given that it was hanging in a heritage barn for many decades, it’s in surprisingly good shape. When it arrived in Vancouver, it only needed a bit of surface cleaning and TLC.”
Kratzer believes it was likely gifted from Carr to her friend Nell Cozier, who lived in Victoria before moving to Long Island. Carr kept detailed journals and she noted a trip to the east in 1930.
As one of only two North American auction houses selling Carr’s work, Treibitz knows “Masset” is in good hands.
To date, more than 300 of her works have been sold by Heffel for a combined sum of more than $73 million.
“I knew that they were the ones I had to go to,” he said “They were gonna treat the painting with dignity, respect, and get it freshened up. It’s the right place to sell.”
Past auctions
In 2021 auctions of three oil on canvas Carr paintings — “Cordova Drift,” “Tossed by the Wind” and “Swirl” — sold for a combined $8.8 million.
Their 2013 auction of “The Crazy Stair” brought in $3,393,000, almost triple its low-end estimate of $1.2 million. According to Heffel, that sale remains a world record for a Carr piece.
(Fun fact: Until conservation work in 2013 revealed the original name, the painting was known for decades as “The Crooked Staircase.”)
That record may have been eclipsed in 2019 when Sotheby’s in the United States attempted to auction off a painting titled “Skedans,” also from 1912. It estimated the price at between US$3 and US$5 million. It didn’t move at the auction but was later scooped up by a private collector for an untold sum.
Not to be outdone, auctioneers Cowley Abbott have sold some of Carr’s creations over the years, the most notable of which was the $3.12 million brought in for 1912’s The Totem of the Bear and the Moon.
If there’s a trend to be found in all the sales of Carr’s work, it’s that the final bid routinely exceeds the estimate, often doubling it or more.
“In the twenty-first century, both the art world and the art market have become interested in artists working within modern practices but from locations on the periphery. The result has been a resurgence of interest in Carr’s work,” Lisa Baldissera wrote for the Art Canada Institute.
Treibitz doesn’t expect “Masset” to be a multi-million dollar painting when the bidding concludes, but he’s OK with that. In his view, coming in under the half-million mark makes it more attainable and attractive.
“A lot of people that want the work can’t afford $2 million or a million dollars, but they can afford hundreds of thousands. That will really drive interest in it.”
Who is Emily Carr?
Born in Victoria, B.C., in 1871 to British immigrant parents, Carr began studying art at 18 and returned home to teach art classes and save enough money to further her training. A move to England followed just before the turn of the century, but she dropped out of school and returned to Canada in 1905 after recovering from a lengthy illness.
But a trip to Paris during her foray across the pond led her to determine it was where she needed to be and she returned there to study briefly before settling back in B.C. in 1912.
The next year, she began to visit Indigenous communities and sites in what is now Haida Gwaii and along the Skeena River, where she set about documenting Indigenous totem poles.
Unfortunately, Carr’s modern work didn’t yield commercial success as she’d hoped and she went into a hiatus for well over a decade.
Her career was reignited in the late 1920s after she was invited to a National Gallery of Canada show where she met Lawren Harris and other members of the Group of Seven, the famed gang of Canadian modern landscape artists. With Harris as a mentor, Carr, then heading into her late 50s, went on to find critical success and the recognition she had long sought.
She first returned to the Indigenous settings and the enigmatic totems and later focused her art on nature.
Later in life, after successive heart attacks made painting more challenging, Carr turned to writing, claiming a 1941 Governor General’s award for her debut book ”Klee Wyck.”
She died in 1945 in Victoria.
Where to see ‘Masset’ and more of Carr’s work
Before Heffel’s live auction on Nov. 20, “Masset,” along with other major works on offer the same day, including one by Harris, will be previewed at Heffel galleries in four Canadian cities.
Following its visit to Calgary wrapping up on Sunday, Oct. 6, it’ll be on display in Vancouver (Oct. 16-21), Montreal (Oct. 31-Nov. 5) and Toronto (Nov. 12-19).
Viewings are open to the general public.
If you can’t get there or are based elsewhere in Canada, Carr’s work is displayed at galleries throughout the country.
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