Dad’s Tom Thomson painting nets retired nurse $400,000
Sketch was given to friend as birthday gift when identity of artist was still unknown
It’s been a long time since Glenna Gardiner got really excited about anything. But on Wednesday, she was quite anxious watching the Heffel auction online.
Lot 120 was the Tom Thomson painting “Sketch for Lake in Algonquin Park,” a tiny oil that had been hanging in her family ’s living room for as long as she can remember.
Well, except for the last five years, when she had been storing it in the basement.
Not knowing it was a genuine Tom Thomson, last year she sent it to Vernon via UPS to her friend Marit Mayne as a 70th-birthday present.
Mayne sent a photo to the Heffel Gallery, which discovered it was a sketch for a larger painting now in the National Gallery of Canada. Mayne gave it back to Gardiner, who consigned it.
The pre-auction estimate was $125,000 to $175,000. But when the hammer came down this week, the painting had sold for $400,000. (After commission, the final price was $481,125.)
“There was a couple of pregnant pauses early in the bidding and I thought, ‘Oh, I guess that’s it,’” said Gardiner from her home in Edmonton. “But then it kept going. It was a fun experience. I can’t believe it! It is a lot of money.” She watched the sale by herself. “Marit watched it in Vernon and my son watched it in Kalispell, Montana,” she related.
“He phoned up just before the sale so we experienced the final price together.”
She plans to take a Mediterranean cruise next May with Mayne and her husband, who is being invited “as their porter.” Then they will visit Mayne’s friend Eva, an artist who told Mayne that the painting looked like a real Tom Thomson.
“That’s what really prompted Marit to go into Heffel to get it (appraised),” said Gardiner. “She has invited us to Norway, so after our Mediterranean cruise, we’re going to cool off in Norway for a week before we come home.”
Asked if she’d be taking an immediate trip, like to Las Vegas, she said no. “I don’t go to Vegas,” she said. “I’ve been to Vegas once, and once was enough.”
Her plans for the money are modest.
“I’ll give some (money) to my son, because he’s just recently moved and they need a bathroom in their basement,” she said. “That’s where I’m going to be staying, so I wanted them to have a bathroom there. It’s a long way up the stairs at night.”
Is she going to buy some new clothes?
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she replied. “I’ll wait until I get the money (from Heffel) and then I’ll buy some new clothes. I need some new clothes, especially for a trip. And I’m going to buy an easy chair. I’ve already joined a gym, the Y, for the pool.”
The 71-year-old Gardiner is retired after a life of nursing in Vancouver, Bella Bella, Victoria and Edmonton. She met Mayne in nursing school at Vancouver General Hospital, and as luck would have it, attended a 50thanniversary reunion of her nursing class in Vancouver the same weekend the Thomson painting went on display at the Heffel gallery on Granville Street.
The Thomson painting made her something of a celebrity at the reunion.
“It was a fun reunion,” she said. “Some of the people had heard of Tom Thomson and had heard the story. They said: ‘Glenna, you old dog, hiding that away. You lucky so and so!’”
She inherited the painting from her dad, who always joked it was a Tom Thomson. But she didn’t believe him.
“He’s been vindicated,” she says with a laugh. “I bet he’s just smiling up there with all the fun.”