The sale of a snowy street scene by Maurice Cullen for an unexpected $1.5 million has helped vault a Canadian fine art auction into the record books. The fall sale of Vancouver-based Heffel Fine Art Auction House fetched a whopping $12.2 million (including a 15-per-cent premium) worth of Canadian art in Toronto Thursday evening. This new record smashed the previous one Heffel’s set last fall, when it sold $8.49 million worth of domestic art.

Winnipeg art dealer David Loch – who often procures work for Canada’s most renowned art collector, Kenneth Thomson – made the winning bid for an anonymous buyer.

Another highlight was the sale of Lake O’Hara and Cathedral Mountain, Rockies, a mountain landscape by Group of Seven artist J.E.H. MacDonald. It sold for the second-highest price of the evening: $977,500.

Works by Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris and other Group of Seven artists were also sold. The much touted Bill Reid sculpture The Raven and the First Men sold for $149,500, below its upper pre-sale estimate of $175,000.

Altogether, the auction sold 242 lots of art, with 28 lots exceeding a bid of $100,000 – another Canadian first. Bids came from across Canada, as well as the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Posted: 11|26|05 at 10:24 am. Filed under: US News.