Oil on canvas Masset QCIpurchased at a Hamptons yard sale for $50 by American art dealer Allen Treibitz, sold for $349,250 Wednesday evening at the Heffel House fall auction in Toronto.
Posted at 9:13 a.m.
Updated at 9:59 a.m.
The canvas painted in 1912 by Canadian Emily Carr was estimated between $100,000 and $200,000 by the auctioneer’s specialists, but tempers apparently ran hot on Wednesday. Heffel obviously did not reveal the identity of the buyer, but confirmed that he was Canadian.
Three weeks ago, we told you the improbable story of the discovery of this painting by Allen Treibitz in a barn in the Hamptons.
Read our report
PHOTO PROVIDED BY HEFFEL
Full version of Masset QCI (1912), d’Emily Carr, 41 cm x 33 cm.
Masset QCIwhich refers to the village of Masset, in the Queen Charlotte Islands archipelago (now known as Haida Gwaii), is a work measuring just 41 cm x 33 cm. It represents a totem pole topped with a grizzly bear. Emily Carr painted it after a two-year stay in Paris in a series on indigenous art.
Another highlight of this fall auction was the sale of three works by Tom Thomson, instigator of the Group of Seven, for nearly 5 million. First with the sale of Winter Morning for 2.2 million, then that of Tamarack Swamp for 2.1 million, and finally Northern Lake 541 250 $.
