CARR & PICASSO: A FINE PAIR
Expect works by B.C. and Spanish greats to draw hefty bids at upcoming art auction
You usually don’t think of Emily Carr and Pablo Picasso together. But last week, art dealer Robert Heffel hung Carr’s 1912 painting Street, Alert Bay beside Picasso’s 1941 work Femme au Chapeau for a photo — and the pairing looked awesome.
“The two paintings go well together,” said Heffel, who runs an auction with his brother, David. “And Emily Carr holds her own beside a Picasso.”
Indeed. The two paintings will be the centrepiece of the Heffel Gallery’s Nov. 20 art auction in Toronto, and both are expected to take off into the sales stratosphere.
Street, Alert Bay has a pre-auction estimate of $2 million to $3 million, which normally would be the big-ticket item up for bids.
But Femme au Chapeau is believed to be the first major Picasso canvas put up for auction in Canada, and its estimate reflects it: $8 million to $10 million, the highest Heffel has ever given.
“It comes from a collector in Europe,” said David Heffel. “It was shipped to us from Geneva. We’ve been dealing with him over a good period of time now.
“They embrace the concept of developing Canada into a rising star in the global market.”
Femme au Chapeau is part of Picasso’s Weeping Woman series, cubist paintings that carry on the theme of loss and tragedy Picasso explored in his landmark Spanish Civil War painting Guernica.
The woman in Femme au Chapeau is Dora Maar, a surrealist photographer who was Picasso’s flame and muse during the 1930s and ’40s.
“She apparently is the woman in Guernica who is holding up the candle,” said David.
Maar is credited with introducing a political edge to Picasso’s work, and there’s a political message in Femme au Chapeau, whose date (June 13, 1941) is prominently painted on the front.
“That’s the date when (France’s) Vichy government started deporting Jews from France,” explains David.
“I think just as Guernica addresses a very dark aspect of human history, this painting also touches upon a point in time that’s important to document.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Picasso remained in France during the Second World War, even though he had been dubbed a “degenerate” artist by the Nazis.
He kept the painting in his own collection until it was sold in Paris in 1956. The current owner purchased it at a Christie’s auction in London in 2002.
Heffel has auctioned off several iconic paintings by Carr over the years, including War Canoes, Alert Bay (the first Carr to top the $1-million mark), and The Crazy Stair (The Crooked Staircase), which sold for $3.4 million in 2014.
But Street, Alert Bay may wind up setting a new record for the artist, who is the subject of an acclaimed new exhibition at the Audain Gallery in Whistler.
“This is arguably the best Emily Carr canvas that Heffel has had the honour to offer,” said Robert Heffel. “She based this off a watercolour she did in 1909. But the oil was produced (in 1912) after her studies in France, so it has bright Fauvre colours, and really conveys the emotion she was trying to convey.
“It’s a modern painting; the colour is brilliant.”
The colour is indeed brilliant. Looking at it up close, you find a dazzling blend of colours and unusual touches, such as a subtle red outline on a cloud.
The subject matter is pretty much everything you could want in a 1912 Carr: a First Nations scene with lots of people, a couple of longhouses and a pair of glorious totem poles. One of the totems features a whale with a hunter on his back. You’ve probably never seen anything like it.
The painting has impeccable provenance. It was in the groundbreaking Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art — Native and Modern at the National Gallery of Canada in 1927, and has been in several major Carr exhibitions since.
It’s such a stunning painting, the legendary Montreal art dealer Max Stern selected it as the cover piece for the catalogue at a Carr exhibition at Stern’s Dominion Gallery in 1944. It was Carr’s only exhibition at a major commercial gallery in her lifetime.
Vancouverites will be able to check out the paintings Oct. 2629 in an auction preview at the Heffel Gallery, 2257 Granville St. The auction catalogue can be viewed online at heffel.com.
The two paintings go well together. And Emily Carr holds her own beside a Picasso.