BURST
The Hudson’s Bay Company’s art collection was filled with classic Canadian imagery, much of it commissioned for HBC calendars.
Adventurers shoot the Fraser River rapids in a birchbark canoe. Fur traders in white HBC coats and moccasins tramp through the snow with their dog teams. The HBC’s York boats arrive at Norway House, an important 19th century trading depot north of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba.
But the most valuable artwork in its collection, monetarily speaking, is a 1935 painting of Marrakesh, Morocco.
Why? Because it was painted by Sir Winston Churchill, one of the towering political figures of the 20th century.
Churchill’s Marrakech will go up for sale Nov. 19 in Toronto, when the Heffel gallery will sell the HBC’s art collection as part of its fall auction .
Churchill was out of power when he did the painting in 1935, but five years later he would become Britain’s prime minister during the Second World War.
You’d never refer to Winston Churchill as soft and lovely, but that’s the vibe of the painting.
The catalogue describes it as a vision of “warm, sun-drenched buildings, rendered in thick assured brush strokes that blend softly into the distant horizon.” Three people in the bottom left and several towering palm trees beside the buildings give it a sense of scale.
The pre-auction estimate is $400,000 to $600,000, but it could go for more. Another Churchill Morocco painting, The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque , sold for seven million pounds (about $13 million Canadian) in London in 2021.
Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque had great provenance, though.
“Churchill had given it to (U.S. president) Franklin Roosevelt as a gift,” said David Heffel, who runs the auction with his brother Robert. “Further down the line it was bought by Brad Pitt. He gave it as a present to Angelina Jolie and post (their) divorce, Angelina Jolie put it up for auction.”
In this case, in 1954 the Hudson’s Bay Company appointed Churchill to an honorary title, Grand Seigneur of the Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay. His wife owned the painting Marrakech, and donated it to the HBC collection.
The Hudson’s Bay Company had been founded in England in 1670 and the British legacy of the company is reflected in its art.
The collection contains an 1807-1808 William von Moll Berczy portrait of Rear Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, which is the subject of a second Berczy painting in the collection. Both are estimated at $70,000 to $90,000.
The Nelson portrait is featured in the background of a Charles Comfort painting in the collection, The Council of the Northern Department of Rupert’s Land, Meeting at Norway House, June 21, 1836.
Like many of the HBC commissioned works, it has a relatively modest estimate, $6,000 to $8,000.
“These are sort of retail-era works by the Hudson Bay,” said Heffel.
But the Bay did commission some well-known Canadian painters, including W.J. Phillips, whose paintings Tracking on the Athabasca and Hudson’s Bay Company York Boats at Norway House are both estimated at $15,000 to $25,000. It also owned a monumental Toronto street scene by Frederic Martlet Bell-Smith, Lights of a City Street, painted in 1894 (est. $100,000 to $150,000).
There are 27 artworks in the HBC part of the fall sale. But Heffel will be selling many more Hudson’s Bay pieces (such as blankets) in a series of online auctions that begin in November.
The Hudson’s Bay Company charter is not part of either sale, and will be auctioned on its own. How it will be auctioned is still being decided in court.
Heffel will hold a preview of its fall auction Oct. 15 through Oct. 20 at its gallery at 2247 Granville in Vancouver. The Hudson’s Bay collection is in Toronto and will not be on display in Vancouver.
The highlight of Heffel’s fall auction is an exceptional E.J. Hughes painting, Entrance to Howe Sound, that has an estimate of $1.25 million to $1.75 million.
It was painted in 1949, based on a graphite sketch Hughes had done in 1937. The subject is a small island filled with trees, in the midst of the wavey blue waters of Howe Sound. A Union Steamship is sailing by, with dark mountains looming behind.
It has a special appeal for people from Vancouver or West Vancouver.
“That painting literally is in our backyard,” said Heffel, who has been trying to figure out which island Hughes depicts. “It’s pretty stunning.”
The Hughes painting is from the collection of legendary Victoria/Calgary collector Lillian Mayland McKimm, who is now 100 years old. McKimm’s collection included paintings by Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Helen McNicholl and David Milne, among others.
One of her Jackson paintings, Rolling Hills Winter, Near St. Simon, Rimouski, is a double-sided sketch: The reverse side is called Winter Barns, Horse and Sleigh, St. Simon, Rimouski.
Its estimate is $50,000 to $70,000, and it comes with some incredible archival items, such as a cancelled Bank of Montreal cheque for the original $35 purchase in 1944.
The auction also has sessions for Canadian impressionist and modern art, and postwar and contemporary Art. There are 121 lots in the four sessions, and they carry a pre-auction estimate of $12 million to $17 million.
