Historical art heavyweights help the WAG

It’s a question Monty Hall might have asked on Let’s Make a Deal when the Winnipegger was at the top of the game-show world.

“Would you rather have these three paintings on this desk or this stack of hundred-dollar bills?” one can imagine Hall saying while opening a briefcase full of dough for everyone to ogle.

The contestant would be a winner with either choice, but choosing the art could make that person an instant millionaire. That is, if the estimates are correct for the June 8 sale by Toronto-based Cowley Abbott auction house, which includes a series of Andy Warhol silkscreens the Winnipeg Art Gallery is putting on the block.

The three paintings that were on display at Mayberry Fine Art last week — Nail-head of Trent Reznor by rock legend David Bowie, Tom Thomson’s Ragged Oaks, a 1916 landscape, and Lawren Harris’s Red House — are three priceless objects that will nonetheless be given a value at the auction of paintings and prints in Toronto, which will be livestreamed so buyers around the world can bid.

Rob Cowley, a partner at Cowley Abbott, remembers an auction of a sketch by Canadian painter J.W. Beatty that began at $13,000 — two bidders shot the price up to $140,000.

“You could feel it in the audience, it was like watching a tennis match,” he says. “It was back and forth and relentless. It was a record for a sketch for J.W. Beatty.”

The artists’ names will do much of the heavy lifting when the auctioneer opens the bidding, but so does the painting’s subject, the number of times it’s been presented in exhibitions, and the work’s provenance — its history that confirms its authenticity.

Bowie, the singer and writer of hits including Space Oddity, Starman and Let’s Dance, who died in 2016, was also a painter, sculptor and art collector. He painted the portrait of Reznor, the Nine Inch Nails frontman, in 1995 after they became friends while touring together.

As important for buyers is the fine print within the Cowley Abbott catalogue for the June 8 sale: “Titled and annotated with lyrics; signed, titled and dated 1995 on the reverse.” Its suggested price range is between $35,000 and $55,000.

“Collectors want to know (who owned the artwork), and it’s something we really research and talk to the owner who’s consigning the work to us,” says Lydia Abbott, also a Cowley Abbott partner.

The other paintings are by two of the most notable names in Canadian art: Tom Thomson and his friend Lawren Harris. Harris co-founded the Group of Seven, the renowned art collective that created some of the greatest Canadian landscape paintings of the early 20th century.

The most valuable painting of the three is Thomson’s Ragged Oaks, which he completed one year before his death in 1917; it was in his family’s possession until 1971, when it was bought by an unnamed private collector, who kept it in pristine condition despite it being 106 years old. The estimated price range for the sale is $1 million to $1.5 million.

“Sometimes an artist hits it out of the park in terms of what we celebrate them for, and sometimes it’s just a quick sketch.” Cowley says. “Right now, Thomson’s market is strong and he’s very much in fashion among collectors, especially rare work.”

Harris’s paintings were already highly valued in 2016, but they gained even more notoriety when actor and comedian Steve Martin — a lifelong art collector and fan of the painter’s work — co-curated an exhibition of Harris paintings in Toronto.

While Red House is slightly larger than a dollar bill, the sale catalogue lists its price at $18,000 to $22,000; a much larger canvas of the same subject recently sold for $5 million, Abbott says.

A set of works that checks all of Cowley Abbott’s boxes is four 1985 silkscreens of Queen Elizabeth II by Warhol, the American pop artist.

The WAG is using money from the series’ sales to purchase contemporary Indigenous art that will diversify its permanent collection; Cowley Abbott is donating its commission from the Warhol sale to the gallery’s fund.

The four silkscreens of the queen adorn the cover of the auction house’s catalogue for its June 8 sale, its first to include non-Canadian art. Cowley Abbott has suggested a price range between $700,000 and $900,000 for the set.

“Oftentimes you’ll see one of the Warhols, but what’s great here is the collector who donated them (to the WAG) did assemble them in two separate purchases,” Abbott says.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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