Yukon painting by A.Y. Jackson going up for auction
Canvas depicts the First Nations village of Moosehide, outside Dawson City
A Yukon-inspired canvas by one of Canada's most famous artists is expected to fetch up to $30,000 at an auction next month in B.C.
A.Y. Jackson's Moosehide, Yukon will be sold by Victoria-based auctioneer Lunds on Feb. 27. According to the auction house's website, the oil painting — measuring about 41 centimetres by 51 centimetres — will likely go for something between $15,000 and $30,000.
Jackson, an original member of the famed Group of Seven, sold the painting in 1965 to a nurse who was based in Mayo, Yukon.
"I suspect that she paid somewhere between $100 and $500 for it," said Arthur Underhill of Lunds. "Nothing in terms of what today's market is."
The painting comes with a handwritten letter from Jackson, addressed to a Diane M. Thomson at the "Mayo General Hospital," and dated Mar. 15, 1965, in Ottawa.
"I hope you received the canvas of the 'Indian Village of Moosehide.' A lot of people down here have wanted to buy it so I trust you like it. I am enclosing the invoice," the letter reads.
Jackson had visited Yukon a year earlier, making sketches around Dawson and Mayo. Moosehide was a First Nations settlement a few kilometres down the Yukon River from the Dawson City.
"He might have whipped off an oil-on-board and then finished off a canvas in his studio, but this to me looks like he painted it on site right up there," Underhill said.
"He would have a little easel and a portable set-up, and he would have tipped it up and painted a picture."
Jackson painted a number of canvases inspired by his visits to Yukon. In 1943, he was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada to depict the construction of the Alaska Highway. He spent several weeks with the construction crews, making sketches and paintings of the historic project, and the Yukon landscape.
In 2016, the Yukon government added Jackson's Ogilvie Mountains to the territory's permanent art collection.
With files from Dave White