VANCOUVER - A painting by Lawren Harris has posted a record selling price for the Group of Seven artist at an auction in Vancouver.
"Pine Tree and Red House, Winter, City Painting II," sold for $2.875 million, including the 15 per cent buyer's premium.
The previous record for a Harris work was $2.2 million.
The 1924 painting, which depicts a red-brick house with green, shuttered windows that are partially obscured by a large, snow-covered pine tree in the foreground, blew past pre-sale estimates of $800,000-$1.2 million.
The Heffel Fine Art Auction House's spring auction on Wednesday night featured seven rare paintings that could fetch more than $1 million each, including Pine Tree and Red House.
Ten other paintings by Harris were also on the auction block.
David Heffel, who co-owns the art auction house with his brother Robert Heffel, said a record number of people had seen the paintings during 13 days of previews.
A total of 222 paintings were part of the biannual auction that premiered in 1995 with $1 million in gross sales, with each work worth about $30,000.
As the auction neared its conclusion late Wednesday, a spokewoman for Heffel said total sales were on track to exceed $21 million, well past the pre-sale estimate of $16 million.
"There's a lot of thirsty collectors out there hunting for these works -- new collectors as well as people who have been collecting for many years, which is adding to the overall strong strength of the market," Heffel said.
"We're seeing that not only in Canada but worldwide. In addition to that, auctions have really become retail venues for collectors to add to their collections. So there's a much broader base of collectors than what we've seen historically."
Heffel said the quality of the paintings, along with the unprecedented buzz about Canadian art, would make the sale a watershed event for the Canadian market.
"It is our best sale and perhaps we won't be able to come up with this calibre of paintings in the future."
Many of the paintings in the sale were bought by collectors in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, during the golden era of Canadian art collecting.
"It was a time when you could acquire paintings directly from Emily Carr or Lawren Harris or A.Y. Jackson and those days are gone. Now those collectors are also moving on and as the paintings change generations a pocket of them have hit the market all at once."
"Pine Tree and Red House" has only been sold once, he said, going from Harris to its present owner in 1944.
"So that painting is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Whoever is successful tonight will really win the prize in this evening's sale. That painting probably won't hit the market again until my grandchildren start collecting paintings," said Heffel, whose two kids are in elementary school.
Ian Thom, senior curator of historical art at the Vancouver Art Gallery, says a hot economy is driving the sale of high-priced art that people are buying as an investment.
"Unfortunately for public institutions it makes it a little difficult because the extremely robust state of the art auction market means that institutions simply can't compete," he says.
"We hope that the people who buy art (pieces) will decide one day to give them to us."
Among the paintings sold at the auction is one titled Okanagan Lake, by British Columbia artist E.J. Hughes.
The painting of the striking, panoramic view from the east side of the lake, done in vivid blue jewel tones, is dated 1959.
It was bought by a collector at an Ontario estate sale for $200 six years ago and has since attracted widespread attention across the country.
The painting was expected to fetch about $100,000 but sold for $402,500, including the buyer's premium.
Six other works by Hughes were also up for auction, including one sketch.
Two paintings by Alexander Colville -- a contemporary of Hughes -- who at 87 is still toiling with the brushes, were also featured in the auction and Heffel anticipated the hammer would go down on a record-setting price for one of the works.
