This day in history: An art dealer’s personal collection goes up for sale

Article content

Torben Kristiansen was one of Canada’s leading high-profile art dealers for decades. But sometimes it was difficult for him to part with the paintings he loved.

“He was a great dealer,” said Robert Heffel of the Heffel Gallery. “But at some point in Torben’s career… he preferred to own paintings rather than sell them.”

Article content

He laughs.

“I priced some things pretty high, because I wanted to keep them.”

Article content

You can see some of Kristiansen’s most prized paintings through next Wednesday, April 24 at the Heffel Gallery, 2247 Granville St., in a May 23 preview. Heffel Art Auction in Toronto.

Kristiansen died in 2023 at age 92 and his family has put 30 paintings from his collection up for sale. There are so many paintings that Heffel has sold them separately, Legendary: The Collection of Torben V. Kristiansen.

The Kristiansen collection contained three Tom Thomsons, five works by Lawren Harris, three by Jean Paul Riopelle, two by Emily Carr and two by EJ Hughes.

“He collected top-notch Canadian art,” said Lauren Kratzer of the Heffel Gallery.

In 1976, Kristiansen held an exhibition featuring 62 paintings from the Harris estate. One was a surprising summary of 1946, Mountain Experience. It has been in several exhibitions, but Kristiansen never sold it, he kept it.

“These Lawren Harrises were hidden in a storage area,” said Heffel, who runs the gallery with his brother David. “When we were working on the estate, there were many paintings of the Group of Seven in their closets/storage areas. “There was a very good inventory that I had hidden away over the years.”

Article content

Article content

The highest estimate in the advance is between $2.5 and $3.5 million for a painting of Riopelle “dripping” Verts ombreuses from 1949, which was painted a year after Riopelle moved to Paris from Montreal.

“In Heffel’s history we have only sold one 1949 Riopelle, back in 2013,” Heffel said. “Nineteen hundred and forty-nine Riopelles are very, very rare.”

Kristiansen was a charismatic guy, passionate about art and with a talent for showmanship. During a visit to his Art Emporium gallery on Granville Street in 2010, he ushered a reporter into his office, turned off the lights and shined a small flashlight on a Riopelle abstract to show how the artist had superimposed his paintings. .

There are 94 works in the total sale, including a section on contemporary and post-war art, and a section on Canadian, Impressionist and modern art. The total sale estimate is between 15 and 20 million dollars.

One of the highlights is a 1908 Carr watercolor, War Canoes, Alert Bay, an early version of a 1912 oil painting that was Carr’s first work to sell for $1 million. It is now one of the cornerstones of the collection of the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.

Article content

She made the watercolor after a trip to the west coast and before traveling to France, where she was influenced by Fauvism.

“She went to Alaska and saw the First Nations villages,” Heffel said. She “decided that she needed more training, so she went to France, came back and had the artistic tool kit. But to get some of that source material (for later paintings) she looked back at the watercolors she did in 1908.”

The watercolor has an estimated price between $500,000 and $700,000. It is displayed near an oil-on-paper version of a later canvas by Carr, Despised as Wood, Loved of Heaven. The canvas is in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery; The oil on paper has an estimated price between $250,000 and $350,000.

Despised as Wood shows two slender trees that managed to survive the logging that wiped out the rest of a forested area. Kristiansen sold the painting to the current owners in 1974.

One of the sleepers in the auction could be an AJ Casson oil, Frosty Morning. Painted in 1949, it depicts a serene morning farming scene in the Cloche Mountains of northern Ontario and has an estimated value of $250,000 to $300,000.

Article content

Another could be Harris’s 1918 painting Red House, Barrie, House Group XXX (est. $200,000-$300,000). It shows a spring view of a house Harris revisited in 1924 for Pine Tree and Red House, Winter, City Painting II, which sold for $2.875 million at a Heffel auction in 2007.

[email protected]

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know – add VancouverSun.com and LaProvincia.com to your favorites and subscribe to our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber — for just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The province.

Article content