2017 November | Hodgins Art Auctions

Notes:

signed on stretcher verso

“My feelings and themes are largely derived from nature, the sea, rocks, trees; the things I live with…Painting should be a re-creation of an experience rather than an illustration of an experience” – Gordon Smith

Gordon Appelbe Smith represented Canada at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1960 – his first international exposure. Smith also received a Canada Council scholarship in 1960, allowing him to travel to New York, Europe and England. His first commercial show was held in Vancouver in 1961 at the New Design Gallery.

In the mid-1960s Gordon Smith was painting works influenced by Abstract Expressionism when, around 1965, looking for a new direction, he began to explore hard-edge abstraction. The painting offered here, although untitled, is an excellent example of this period. In the mid-1960s interest in the geometric was circulating both internationally and in the Vancouver modernist community, and can be further seen in the paintings of his contemporary associates: Roy Kiyooka, Michael Morris and Gary Lee-Nova.

One of Canada’s most important painters, Smith continues to live and paint in Vancouver, producing abstracted landscapes. Smith’s contribution to the Canadian modernist movement in art is reflected by his Arthur Erickson designed home. Arthur Erickson and Smith participated actively in postwar Vancouver’s modernist art scene, alongside celebrated artists such as Jack Shadbolt and B.C. Binning. Like Vancouver itself, Smith’s art has been an evolving search for balance – between the constructed modern and of the embrace of the nature – giving us insight into both the act of painting, and the essence of the West Coast.

He has been honoured with the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia and the Governor General’s Award for Visual Art.

Notes:

signed & dated lower right; signed, titled & dated verso

Featuring a moment of sheer energy and movement, this expressionist work with the title of TAPENDAMOUR was created during a period when the artist was engaged with a number of important solo exhibitions in Canada and the USA. The title is likely a cypher that in French phonetically refers to “your heartbreak”. This sentiment is perhaps poetically evoked by the composition’s jagged black forms stretching diagonally upwards like birds taking flight. A later member of the great school of Montreal abstract modernism, Hurtubise was once described in “The Ottawa Citizen” as the “Enfant Terrible of the Quebec Art Scene”. He was celebrated for his exuberant, large-scale, visually dynamic paintings. As a mixed media on canvas, TAPENDAMOUR is a mixture of oil, acrylic and likely oil pastel. Its colours such as orange, pink and turquoise work together to enhance the vivid character of the work.

Notes:

signed & dated

Marcelle Ferron was a dedicated follower of Paul-Emile Borduas and the Automatiste movement. She studied at the Ecole du Meuble in Montreal and the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Quebec City before moving to Paris. Throughout her prolific and decorated career, Marcelle Ferron exhibited broadly, both at home and internationally. During the Paris years (1953-1966) Ferron’s work achieved prominence, and she flourished as an independent artist. Her paintings became progressively more bold and vibrant, with dynamic strokes thickly applied to her canvases, often with a palette knife or spatula.

Marcelle Ferron’s work has been featured in more than thirty shows in Canada and numerous international exhibitions. In 1970, The Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal staged a retrospective of her work, subsequently shown in Paris at the Canadian Cultural Centre in 1972.

Notes:

signed “H. von Siebenstein” recto; signed “H. Siebner”, titled & dated on the stretcher verso

Notes:

signed

Notes:

signed recto; signed, titled & dated on the artist’s label verso
Provenance: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC (label verso)

Notes:

signed; titled on gallery labels verso
Provenance: Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal, QC; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, QC

Notes:

signed & dated; titled on gallery label verso
Provenance: Canadian Art Galleries, Calgary, AB

Walter Phillips first painted in the Rocky Mountains in 1926. He returned periodically, with a notable trip in 1936, made for the specific purpose of developing the illustrations for Frederick Niven’s book “Colour in the Canadian Rockies”, published the following year. His time in the Rockies became more regular after 1940, when he was asked to be an instructor at the Banff Summer School – this was the first of twenty summers that Phillips would spend teaching in Banff. In 1946, Phillips decided to build a home in Banff; he and his wife Gladys moved in two years later. With mountain subject matter now close by, and a penchant for hiking and sketching, these would be productive years for his watercolours, which he exhibited whenever possible. Phillips’ watercolours from the Banff years include scenes of famous peaks, mountain roads, lakes and creeks, glaciers, and of course, waterfalls. Waterfalls were a favourite subject of Phillips, with a number of examples illustrated in “The Tranquility and the Turbulence, The Life and Work of W. J. Phillips” (Boulet; M. B. Loates Publishing Ltd.; 1981): p. 121 “The Falls on the Way to Lake Oesa” (1936); p. 146 “Rainbow Falls” (1938); p. 210 “Waterfall, Johnson’s Canyon” (1946); p. 212 “Wapta Falls” (1949). On the subject, Phillips says:

I like waterfalls. I can’t help it. Everytime I stand before a presentable waterfall I echo the words old Richard Wilson addressed to the falls of Temi: ‘Well done, water, by God!’ I am willing to admit that when I set out on a sketching ramble with my pack on my back, and hope in my heart – that hope is best satisfied when I find a good waterfall. Such a find is worth a long journey.

Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence…The artist who paints moving water successfully arranges his lines and masses rhythmically so that ripples and waves seem wet, limpid and lively. What he paints is not a replica of the scene before him – not a series of portraits of individual ripples, but a pattern representing an epitome of the whole movement. (p. 201)

Notes:

signed, titled & editioned
Provenance: This work comes from a private Ontario collection. It was purchased in 1969, along with several other pieces, directly from Gladys Phillips by the father of the consignor, and acquired by descent. A copy of the correspondence from Mrs. Phillips (dated September and October of that year) accompanies the piece.
Note: Phillips produced a watercolour of this same subject in 1944. The print was produced in 1952, and exhibited that year at the 73rd Annual RCA Exhibition, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Reference: MBL247

Notes:

signed & titled
Provenance: This work comes from a private Ontario collection. It was purchased in 1969, along with several other pieces, directly from Gladys Phillips by the father of the consignor, and acquired by descent. A copy of the correspondence from Mrs. Phillips (dated September and October of that year) accompanies the piece.
Note: Phillips likely completed the first edition (of 100) by December 1950, and recorded completing the second “state” of this print (to 23/100) on September 23rd, 1951.
Reference: MBL246A / MBL246B