1711 10 Avenue SW #128
Calgary AB T3C 0K1 CAN
Telephone 403.541.9099
Fax 403.541.9097
mail@levisauctions.com
www.levisauctions.com
MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate release -- Calgary, Alberta -- April 6, 2004
A rare painting by a member of Canada’s famed Group of Seven, Arthur Lismer, will be offered for sale at the next Levis Fine Art auction on Sunday, April 18, 2004. Old Mill, Baie St. Paul is a vibrant oil on canvas that probably dates from the late 1920s. It is one of over 370 works by Canadian and European artists that will be auctioned off at the Nickle Arts Museum, located on the University of Calgary campus, starting at 1 p.m.
“This painting is exceptional because of its quality, date and size,” says auctioneer Doug Levis. If sold, Old Mill, Baie St. Paul will be the largest Lismer canvas --- 26 x 32 inches --- to be purchased at a Canadian art auction in the last 10 years. “Arthur Lismer was both a leading artist and a brilliant teacher, and his demanding career as an educator limited the time he could devote to painting. As a result, he produced relatively few large canvases, and of those, most are now in museum collections.”
Old Mill, Baie St. Paul is also rare because it was likely painted during the height of the Group of Seven’s artistic creativity in the 1920s. This came as a surprise to the painting’s owner who thought the painting dated from the 1950s. “It was presented to a German businessman as a corporate gift in 1957, and eventually returned to Canada, by descent, to a family member in Alberta,” Levis explains. “As soon as I saw the painting, I realized that its style and palette are more consistent with Lismer’s work from the 1920s.”
Levis and his colleague, Anna Gardner, set out to research the painting, consulting with various curators, collectors and dealers. Lismer did visit Baie St. Paul, Quebec in the summer of 1925 and the Art Gallery of Ontario has a 1926 work by Lismer called Old Mill, Baie St. Paul that is the sketch to this painting. As well, a large 1925 Lismer canvas in the National Gallery of Canada, titled The Mill, Quebec, shows the same mill from a different angle.
There is strong interest among Group of Seven collectors in this light-filled canvas of a Quebec mill that still stands today. Levis notes that visits to his web site have jumped from a monthly average of 140,000 hits to well over half a million since his catalogue announcing the sale of this outstanding painting was mailed out in March.
Sunday, April 18, 2004, 1 PM
The Nickle Arts Museum
434 Collegiate Boulevard
University of Calgary, Calgary
Friday, April 16, 5 PM to 8 PM
Saturday, April 17, 10 AM to 5 PM
Sunday, April 18, 10 AM to noon
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Media contacts:
Anna Gardner or Doug Levis
LEVIS FINE ART AUCTIONS
Tel: (403) 541-9099 Fax: (403) 541-9097
BACKGROUNDER
Canadian, 1885-1969
CSPWC, OSA, RCA
Artist and teacher, Arthur Lismer was a member of the Group of Seven, a renowned group of painters who were the first to recognize that traditional European painting techniques could not capture Canada’s distinctive natural beauty. The Group’s ground-breaking use of true-to-life colours and their focus on scenes of rugged Canadian landscapes, rural farms, and towns gave Canadians a new artistic identity.
Born and trained in England, Lismer had a natural genius for teaching. According to “Memories of an Art Dealer”, written by Blair Laing, “ … there is no doubt that Lismer, who was a born teacher, taught [Tom] Thomson informally something of Impressionist technique and that Thomson, the truly original artist, soaked up the lessons …”.
Among his many teaching positions, Lismer was Vice-Principal of the Ontario College of Art from 1919-27, Principal of the Nova Scotia College of Art, and Educational Supervisor at The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. An authority on art education for children, Lismer lectured internationally. As a result, Lismer was not as prolific an artist as his fellow Group of Seven members and his work was relatively unknown until Toronto’s Laing Galleries held a major exhibition of his paintings in 1955. As Laing writes in “Memories of an Art Dealer”, “… from 1928 and up to the mid-thirties, [Lismer] produced only a limited number of large paintings … [and] … sold almost nothing to the public during the first thirty-five years of his painting life.”
Oil on canvas, signed lower left; indistinctly inscribed verso
Bears title on Laing Galleries label attached verso
Small repair noted in centre
26 x 32 in., 66 x 81 cm
Provenance:
Purchased from Laing Galleries, Toronto
Presented as a corporate gift to a German businessman, 1957
By descent, to a family member in Alberta
Related works include:
A larger painting from 1925 in the National Gallery of Canada collection titled The Mill, Quebec [no. 5803] (see National Gallery of Canada by R. Hubbard, Volume 3, pg. 179]
A sketch titled Old Mill, Baie St. Paul [no. 50/52] in the Art Gallery of Ontario (see A.G.O. by the Art Gallery of Ontario, pg. 251)
ESTIMATE: $50,000 – 60,000
(Lot includes two books: Arthur Lismer Paintings 1913-1949 by S. Key, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1950 and
September Gale : a study of Arthur Lismer of the Group of Seven by J. McLeish, Dent and Sons, 1955.)
For images of Old Mill, Baie St. Paul, please contact us via e-mail at mail@levisauctions.com
Les Jardins Secrets du Vieux Moulin
Today, the mill shown in the painting is an interpretive museum called Les Jardins Secrets du Vieux Moulin,
Levis Fine Art Auctions holds two auctions a year in Calgary as well as specialized auctions for estates, corporations and galleries throughout Alberta. Clients include institutions, corporate collections, commercial galleries and private collectors from across Canada, the United States, and overseas. For more information, visit www.levisauctions.com or contact our office at (403) 541-9099.