Rediscovered Group of Seven painting will go to highest bidder — for estimated $90K
Oil sketch by A.Y. Jackson is expected to fetch tens of thousands at Toronto auction next week
Rob Cowley knew he'd found a gem the moment it walked through his door.
The president of Consignor Canadian Fine Art was in St. John's over the summer looking for hidden masterpieces stored away in closets or forgotten above mantles.
He spied what he was looking for in A.Y. Jackson's Ungava Coast, a small oil sketch of a remote bay in Nunavut that later inspired Jackson's finished canvas, Labrador Coast.
"I knew immediately that it was Jackson. He has a very distinct style," Cowley said. "I was delighted."
The owner, who wanted to remain anonymous, knew he or she was in possession of a Group of Seven work but had no idea what it was worth, and brought it to Cowley to have it evaluated. The sketch was purchased from a gallery a couple of decades ago, he added.
Cowley says given the popularity of Group of Seven works, plus the painting's condition, subject matter and relation to other works, it could sell for $90,000.
The auction, set for Tuesday at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, is open to private and corporate buyers as well as museums and galleries.
Painted on trip to Labrador
In 1927, Jackson hitched a ride north to Ungava, on the Labrador Peninsula in Quebec, on a government supply ship.
Sir Frederick Banting, the inventor of insulin and a painter himself, tagged along for the trip, both of them drawing quick plein air sketches in pencil and then copying the images in oil onto small wood panels.
"There's an immediacy to their sketches," Cowley said. "It's when they are there, seeing the land, often working at a certain pace."
That sketch would have informed the four- by six-foot canvas now kept in the University of Toronto's Hart House collection.
The two paintings aren't exactly the same scene, Cowley notes, with parts of the landscape altered and exaggerated in Labrador Coast. "He would correct certain parts of the land for balance or to treat the composition," Cowley explained.
The final canvas would have taken hundreds of hours to complete, he adds.
"It's always amazing, because it really does give us a glimpse into the process of our best-known painters."
Jackson remains one of the most popular painters at auction, according to the company.
Other Group of Seven works, including a portrait by Tom Thomson, have surpassed the $90,000 estimate at auction in recent years.
In 2016, a sketch by Lawren Harris fetched $977,500.
With files from CBC Radio's On the Go