Lawrent Harris painting sells for $1.1M at auction
Published May 30th, 2006
A watershed Lawren Harris work that was long believed to have been destroyed sold for nearly $1.1 million at auction Monday.
Well-known Canadian art agent David Loch purchased Figure with Rays of Light (Arctic Forms III) in Toronto for an undisclosed Canadian collector.
Sotheby’s Canada, which held the Monday auction in conjunction with Ritchies Auctioneers, had estimated it would sell for between $100,000 to $150,000.
The work, which the famed artist completed after his trip to the Arctic with fellow Group of Seven artist A. Y. Jackson in 1930, signaled his shift to abstract art.
Though art scholars knew about the large-scale Harris work, the painting itself was believed lost at some point in the 1930s until it emerged recently in the holdings of a Toronto collector.
“Harris is probably the most important, most prolific and the most accomplished of the Group of Seven. His work is valued the highest above them all,” Sotheby’s Canada president David Silcox said last week.
At an auction held Thursday by Heffel’s in Vancouver, Harris’s works were the top three biggest sellers, with his snowy mountain scene Mount Lefroy going for $1.67 million, including the buyer’s premium. The most expensive Harris painting ever purchased at auction, Baffin Island, sold for $2.5 million in 2001.
