Treasured Carr portrait to be sold for the first time
Emily Carr is known for her landscapes, but she also did some exquisite portraits — and the one closest to her heart is going up for auction.
It’s a painting of her friend Sophie Frank, a Squamish woman from the Mission (Eslha7an) reserve in North Vancouver. They were so close, Carr dedicated her 1941 book Klee Wyck to her, and reproduced her portrait of Sophie in the frontispiece.
“It’s a very tender watercolour,” said Robert Heffel, whose Heffel Fine Art Auction House will auction the painting May 30 in Toronto. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful painting, so thoughtful, so well done.”
“There’s a sombreness to it,” Heffel’s Lauren Kratzer said. “She’s very heavy-lidded — Sophie had a very difficult life.”
She did. A chapter in Klee Wyck is about Frank, and parts are heartbreaking.
“Every year, Sophie had a new baby,” Carr wrote. “Almost every year, she buried one. Her little graves were dotted all over the cemetery (at the Mission reserve). I never knew more than three of her 21 children to be alive at one time. By the time she was in her early 50s, every child was dead and Sophie had cried her eyes dry.”
A deep empathy developed between the women, who met in 1906 when Carr moved to Vancouver to teach art and set up a studio at 570 Granville. Frank knocked at her door, hoping to sell her some baskets. Carr bought some and a lifelong friendship developed.
Heffel said they probably had a natural affinity.
“Sophie Frank was also an artist. As a basket weaver, today we would consider her an artist,” he said.
“You can tell by the way she painted her, (Carr) admired her,” Kratzer said.
“There’s a really nice quote (where Carr said) ‘between prominent rounded cheekbones her nose lay rather flat, broadening and snubby at the tip. She had a soft little body, a back as straight as honesty itself.’”
The portrait of Sophie is quite small (24 centimetres high, 19 centimetres wide) and carries a pre-auction estimate of $50,000 to $70,000, a fraction of what Carr’s top oil paintings bring. But the historic value is immense.
“It’s priceless,” Kratzer said. “This is something that’s in Canadian art history textbooks. It’s (been) included in important shows. To actually have it under our roof is special — we’re eager to share it with the thousands of people that come into our preview.”
It is the first time it has been offered for sale.
Carr kept the painting throughout her lifetime, hanging it in her studio in Victoria.
“Think about all the amazing artworks Emily Carr painted,” Heffel said. “This is one piece that she hung in her home, and kept as part of her private collection.”
On the back of the painting, Carr has written a note saying “at my death (the painting) becomes the property of Ira Dilworth of CBC … from his loving Emily because the life of Sophie meant so much to him. He understood her womanliness and my love for her. To him she was more than just an Indian, she was a symbol.”
Dilworth was Carr’s literary editor and one of her closest friends. It had been passed down in his family until now.
The painting was part of the 2006 National Gallery show Emily Carr, New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon. For the last decade, it has been on loan to the Vancouver Art Gallery.
It will be on display in an auction preview from May 5 to 8 at the Heffel Gallery at 2247 Granville, then travel to previews in Montreal from May 17 to 19 and Toronto from May 26 to 30.
The key painting in the May 30 auction at Toronto’s Design Exchange is a giant Paul-Emile Borduas abstract, Figures Schematiques. Painted in 1956, it has a pre-auction estimate of $3 million to $5 million.