Banting’s art sells for 10 times estimate

TORONTO • Canadian Nobel Prize-winning scientist Frederick Banting has added yet another accomplishment to his illustrious resumé — this time, posthumously, as an artist.

Banting set a new auction record for his works with the $313,250 sale of his 1925 painting of the University of Toronto laboratory in which he co-discovered insulin. Believed to be the painter-physician’s only known interior scene, The Lab exceeded its roughly $30,000 presale estimate more than 10 times over at the Heffel fall auction in Toronto on Wednesday.

Its inscription indicates Banting painted the oil-onboard piece on a winter’s night at the laboratory where, just years before, he and Charles Best made the 1921 medical breakthrough that revolutionized the treatment of diabetes.

Best known for his scientific prowess, Banting was recognized in artistic circles for his skill as a landscape painter, earning him the friendship of the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson.

The Heffel Fine Arts Auction House has pledged to donate its $53,250 commission from the sale to the University of Toronto’s Banting & Best Diabetes Centre.

British Columbia artist E.J. Hughes and Quebec abstract expressionist Jean Paul Riopelle led Wednesday’s auction with large-scale canvases that both fetched more than $2 million, having more than doubled in value since the pieces were last sold by Heffel in the early 2000s.

Works by all original members of the Group of Seven were represented, including Lawren Harris’s Mountain Sketch XC, which cracked the million-dollar mark; Arthur Lismer’s Tugs and Troop Carrier, Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, which sold for $781,250 and A.Y. Jackson’s November, Georgian Bay, which went for $631,250.