Auction to deprive public of a masterpiece
Too expensive for museums to buy, public might never get to see the painting again
Imperial Oil, the Calgary-based petroleum giant with a market value of nearly $35 billion, owns Mountain Forms, the last great Lawren Harris painting not currently held by a public museum.
When the company sells it off at auction in Toronto on Nov. 23, as it has said it will do, it’s expected to easily break the long-standing Canadian record of $5.1 million earned by a Paul Kane painting in 2002 — and Imperial stands to profit handsomely from the sale.
The question is: Should it? While it’s the company’s right to buy and sell private assets as it sees fit, Mountain Forms isn’t just another asset.
“The red flag around this work is that they just don’t come up anymore,” says Andrew Hunter, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Curator of Canadian Art. “It’s a major work, very accomplished, that speaks to his ambition as a modern painter. You want to see these things available to the public, and the best way to guarantee that is to donate it to a Canadian museum.” Hunter would know. He just wrapped three years of intensely Harris-focused activity with The Idea of North, the Steve Martin-led exhibition aimed at introducing Harris to the United States. Mountain Forms was a standout inclusion in the show, and not only for its esthetic merits: It was the only one among the 20-plus major Harris works shown to not be owned by a public institution.
The painting was barely off the wall at the AGO, the show’s final destination, when Imperial announced this week its intention to sell it.
“It’s hard to think of anything comparable — that moment, that scale, that ambition,” Hunter says. “I’d hate to see a work like that disappear into a private collection, where the public wouldn’t be able to see it.”
That’s nearly the case with Mountain Forms already. Ensconced in the Imperial collection since 1984, compared with other such works, it’s been rarely shown. A big, bold canvas of dark greys and purples, the painting comes from the Group of Seven bandleader’s most inspired period, where Harris achieved what many believe to be the apex of his highmodern style. Its appearance in The Idea of North touched off its status as a lost masterpiece. “Almost nobody has seen the thing,” says David Silcox, a prominent Canadian art historian and the former head of Sotheby’s Canada. “When you have major works going into private hands, that’s unfortunately what can happen.”
So why doesn’t a museum buy it? That solution just isn’t realistic. Among Canadian museums, only the National Gallery of Canada has an acquisition budget that makes such a purchase even remotely possible. But with only $8 million annually, Mountain Forms would all but blow its entire budget for the year, something it won’t do (the Gallery also does not participate in auctions).
That leaves another obvious answer: Imperial Oil could donate the work to the museum of its choice.
Any museum in the country would welcome it gleefully, but how about Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, in Im- perial’s own backyard? It’s one of the country’s few major museums without a major Harris painting in its collection. The fact that it’s a mountain scene, conceived while the artist went hiking in nearby Banff in the 1920s, makes it all the more apt. The donation would also merit a tax writeoff for the company of 100 per cent its assessed value — likely to be $6 million or more.
Imperial indicated that it has no intention of doing any such thing. When asked this week if donation had ever been considered regarding Mountain Forms, a company spokesperson responded with a recent press release noting the company’s intention to donate some 60 works to the National Gallery and the Glenbow, with a cumulative assessed value of $3.5 million. Among them is a Harris earmarked for the Glenbow, of a northern Ontario waterfall.
When asked again if Mountain Forms had ever been considered for donation, the spokesperson responded: “We believe these outcomes (meaning the donations, and the sale) reflect an appropriate balance in terms of our commitments to corporate citizenship and shareholders.” A request to speak with CEO Rich Kruger was rejected.
Brian Meehan, the director of Museum London in London, Ont., knows well the dynamics of corporate collections. He used to be the corporate curator for another oil and gas firm in Calgary, Nova Corp., and he can see Imperial’s point of view.
“Certainly, corporations used to collect out of duty as well as prestige,” he says. “But at the same time, if you collect wisely, it can become a legitimate asset, and companies are always aware of these things.”
In the case of Mountain Forms, the return-on-investment could be significant. Imperial acquired it in 1984 from Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in Montreal for an undisclosed amount, though it had been sold just a few years prior for $350,000. But Meehan believes such things can’t only be measured in profit margins.
“Here’s an opportunity for Imperial to place a great, great painting in public hands, where the public can own it forever,” he says.
The return is more than monetary. “It would be an extraordinary story,” he says. “The public relations benefits alone would be priceless.”
To Silcox, Imperial may be forgetting itself a little in its abrupt move to sell. “Imperial has been a very generous benefactor of various cultural activities over a great many decades,” Silcox says. “There might be at least some consideration of that.”
Ultimately, he says, Imperial is under no obligation beyond a moral one. “Whoever owns it has got the perfect right to sell it.”
“Whatever happens,” he adds, “I do sincerely hope it ends up being donated eventually. It’s the right thing to do.” Mountain Forms is due to be sold Nov. 23 at the Heffel Auction in Toronto at the Design Exchange, 234 Bay Street. www.heffel.com
“Almost nobody has seen the thing. When you have major works going into private hands, that’s unfortunately what can happen.” DAVID SILCOX CANADIAN ART HISTORIAN