Artist: Robert Genn
Title: GULF PATTERN
Date: 1980
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm)
Notes:
signed lower right; signed, titled & dated verso
Provenance: Gainsborough Galleries, Calgary AB; West End Gallery, Edmonton AB (labels verso)
LOT: 1
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: William (Bill) Duma
Title: SUNLIGHT & SHADOW
Medium: acrylic on board
Dimensions: 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm)
Notes:
signed lower left; signed & titled verso
LOT: 2
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Allen Sapp
Title: THEY'VE ALL COME TO VISIT
Date: 1986
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm)
Notes:
signed lower right; titled & dated on the artist’s label verso (BC-4110)
LOT: 17
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Nicholas de Grandmaison
Title: UNTITLED PORTRAIT
Medium: pastel on paper
Dimensions: 25 x 17.5 in. (63.5 x 44.5 cm)
Notes:
signed lower left
Literature: History in Their Blood: The Indian Portraits of Nicholas de Grandmaison (Hugh A. Dempsey; Douglas & McIntryre Ltd.; 1982); “Drawn from the Past: Nicholas de Grandmaison” (Gordon Snyder; Snyder Fine Arts; 2007)
Note: Nicholas de Grandmaison’s artistic legacy lies in the creation of an impressive visual record of Canada’s Western First Nations people. This is a task he began in 1930, during a trip to The Pas, Northern Manitoba, and which he continued for decades. On p. 34 of “History in their Blood: The Indian Portraits of Nicholas de Grandmaison” Hugh Dempsey writes:
“When NIcholas de Grandmaison made his first painting tour of the prairies in 1930, the Plains Indians were generally a depressed and indigent people who had suffered neglect and privation for half a century. With a sense of urgency the artist dedicated himself to recording the faces of the Indians. ‘All the sorrow, oppression and history of their race is indelibly written on their faces,’ (de Grandmaison) said. ‘I must work quickly if I am to capture this on canvas before the race dies out or it commingles with that of the white man.'”
De Grandmaison held a romantic vision of the Plains people as the nobility of North America; he felt a strong affinity with them, perhaps as a result of having experienced his own cultural destruction during the Russian Civil War. De Grandmaison was particularly drawn to the expressive, mature faces of the older members of the community, faces with character that reflected a lifetime of experiences, love, and suffering. Additionally, he selected subjects who bore the features that, for him, best embodied a “once-proud race”.
LOT: 23
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Frederick Arthur Verner
Title: OJIBWA WIGWAMS NEAR FORT FRANCIS, RAINEE RIVER
Date: 1882
Medium: watercolour on paper laid on board
Dimensions: 6.75 x 13 in. (17.1 x 33 cm)
Notes:
signed & dated lower right
Provenance: Estate of Helen & Arnold “Arnie” Birns, Calgary AB
Literature: “The Last Buffalo: The Story of Frederick Arthur Verner, Painter of the Canadian West” (Joan Murray; Pagurian Corporation; 1984)
As a young man of 16, demonstrating early artistic talent, Verner first exhibited at the Upper Canada Provincial Art Exhibition. It was here that he met renowned artist Paul Kane, whose paintings of Canada’s indigenous peoples he greatly admired. After leaving for England, where he studied and served with the British Army, Verner returned to Canada to commence an artistic career as a photographer and colourist. He continued to sketch and draw inspiration from native subject matter, but realized that he needed to study his subjects from real life.
In 1867 Verner sketched teepees at the Provincial Exhibition in Toronto (Sioux Tepees, pg. 43) and would use these in many later works. According to some accounts Verner likely travelled west, over the old trade route, as early as 1862 “travelling by Red River cart, horseback, canoe, and by foot” (p. 53). Though his first recorded sketching trip was in 1873, at which time he produced and dated five sketches critical to his later work (pp. 58-60). Verner used these and other early sketches for the composition of his later paintings – combining scenes and details from various studies in his finished works – thus creating the romanticized and iconic scenes for which he has come to be known, and transporting the viewer to a lost era.
LOT: 22
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Berthe Des Clayes
Title: OCTOBER NOON
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm)
Notes:
signed lower right; titled on the artist’s label verso
LOT: 21
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Alan Caswell Collier
Title: NEAR PAPINEAU LAKE IN OCTOBER (MADAWASKA VALLEY, ONT.)
Medium: oil on board
Dimensions: 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm)
Notes:
signed lower right; titled verso
LOT: 20
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Henry George Glyde
Title: ROAD BY A FARM WITH DISTANT MOUNTAINS
Date: 1941
Medium: watercolour on paper
Dimensions: 10 x 14.5 in. (25.4 x 36.8 cm)
Notes:
signed & dated lower right
LOT: 19
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Henry George Glyde
Title: BARN JUST EAST OF EDMONTON
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm)
Notes:
signed lower left; signed & titled on the stretcher verso
Note: Glyde moved to Edmonton in 1946 to teach and help develop a fine art department at the University of Alberta. It was very important to Glyde that the province have a university level art program. The school also provided him with an office/studio which allowed him more flexibility to work on his own art. During this period, Glyde developed a greater focus and interest in Alberta’s heritage; he incorporated the theme into his teaching and undertook a couple of large murals. Glyde’s depictions of rural Alberta, painted on travels throughout the province, are an important body of work, preserving in and of themselves a part of our Alberta heritage. Glyde “depicts an idyllic semi-agrarian life with frolicking maidens and lads. He celebrates the countryside and lifestyle of rural Alberta”. (“A Lifelong Journey: The Art and Teaching of H. G. Glyde”; Patricia Ainslie; Glenbow Museum; 1987). These paintings of casual, everyday scenes, are characterized by their rhythm, serenity, and a considered interplay between figure and landscape.
LOT: 18
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions
Artist: Allen Sapp
Title: MAKING RABBIT SOUP
Date: 1978
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Notes:
signed lower right; titled & dated on the artist’s label verso (AM-830)
LOT: 16
Auction: 2018 November | Hodgins Art Auctions