Heffel Fine Art Auction House (or Heffel) is a division of Heffel Gallery Limited. Heffel maintains offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Heffel Fine Art Auction House (or Heffel) is a division of Heffel Gallery Limited. Heffel maintains offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
In 1978 art collector Kenneth Grant Heffel (1935–1987) established Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc. in the former Royal Bank of Canada building on South Granville Street in Vancouver. In 1980, the former industrialist purchased the Fannin Hall Collection of 145 works by Canada’s Group of Seven artists and their contemporaries for $6 million. [1] In February, an exhibition of this collection established his reputation as a dealer of important Canadian art.
On his death in 1987, [2] his sons David Heffel (born 1962) and Robert Heffel (born 1964), both educated in art history, took over the business. Renamed Heffel Gallery Limited, the company continued to show work by well-known Canadian artists such as Alex Colville, Guido Molinari, Emily Carr and Lawren Harris. [3] In 1995, the two brothers established the division of Heffel Fine Art Auction House. The inaugural auction held in Vancouver was the first in Western Canada to record sales over $1 million. [4]
Heffel was the first in Canada to adapt the traditional auction format to the Internet. In 1999, Heffel held its first online auction in September. [5] In that same year, Heffel established the tradition of semi-annual live auctions and, in 2003, began to alternate between a spring auction held in Vancouver and a fall auction in Toronto. The auction house was also the first in Canada to broadcast sales live on the Internet using a multi-camera webcast. [6]
In 2002, Heffel opened an Ottawa office and established Heffel Gallery in Toronto, at 13 Hazelton Avenue in Yorkville. In 2005, Heffel established Galerie Heffel in Montreal at 1840 Sherbrooke Street West and, in 2007, employed a Calgary representative. With offices across Canada, the company is described as a "globally significant, yet surprisingly local, institution." [7]
The fall, 2004 live auction established Heffel as the leader in Canada’s fine art resale market. [8] Since then Heffel has maintained an approximate 60% share of the market. [9] In spring 2007, Heffel set the record for the highest grossing live auction of Canadian art. [10] By June 2013, with more than $325 million in total art auction sales, Heffel had sold more Canadian art than any other auctioneer in the world. [11]
Since about 2016, Heffel Fine Art's business model has shifted toward private and online sales. [12]
The Group of Seven, once known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, with "a like vision". It originally consisted of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist who was inspired by the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. She also was a vivid writer and chronicler of life in her surroundings, praised for her "complete candour" and "strong prose". Klee Wyck, her first book, published in 1941, won the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and this book and others written by her or compiled from her writings later are still much in demand today.
John Christopher Pratt was among Canada's most prominent painters and printmakers. In addition to a body of highly acclaimed paintings, prints, drawings and writing, he designed the flag of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a 15,300-square-metre-building (165,000 sq ft) adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Francis Rattenbury, the building the museum occupies was originally opened as a provincial courthouse, before it was re-purposed for museum use in the early 1980s. The building was designated the Former Vancouver Law Courts National Historic Site of Canada in 1980.
Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the Refus Global, the 1948 manifesto that announced the Quebecois artistic community's refusal of clericalism and provincialism. He is best known for his abstract painting style, in particular his "mosaic" works of the 1950s when he famously abandoned the paintbrush, using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas, giving his works a distinctive sculptural quality. He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morrice to attain widespread international recognition.
Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as a leading member of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art and as a visionary in Canadian landscape art.
David Alexander Colville, LL. D. was a Canadian painter and printmaker.
Alfred Joseph Casson was a member of the Canadian group of artists known as the Group of Seven. He joined the group in 1926 at the invitation of Franklin Carmichael, replacing Frank Johnston. Casson is best known for his depictions in his signature limited palette of southern Ontario, and for being the youngest member of the Group of Seven.
Edward John Hughes was a Canadian painter, known for his images of the land and sea in British Columbia.
Unity Bainbridge was a Canadian artist and writer of poetry inspired by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and its landscape.
Clara Isabella Harris was a Canadian artist. She worked in the media of painting, watercolours, sculpture, sketching, and wood carving.
Lawren Phillips Harris was a Canadian painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, printmaker, muralist, and art educator. He was known for the highly precise style and disciplined execution of his war art, portraits and abstractions. As an art educator and administrator at Mount Allison University, Harris made a considerable contribution to the arts in the Atlantic provinces.
Lillian Irene Hoffar Reid was a Canadian painter. She was in the first graduating class, June 1929, at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art. She taught at the Vancouver School of Art from 1933 to 1937.
The Indian Church is a 1929 painting by Canadian artist Emily Carr. Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris bought the painting to showcase it in his dining room, and called it Carr's best work. In 1930, the work was shown in the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Canadian Art organised by the National Gallery of Canada. In 1938, the painting was chosen for an exhibition titled A Century of Canadian Art, at the Tate Gallery. The exhibition was described by Vincent Massey as "a most representative showing of Canadian painting and sculpture, including all schools and all periods."
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery is a Canadian fine art corporation located in Montreal and Toronto. A member of the Art Dealers Association of Canada, the firm provides acquisition and evaluation services for collectors, as well as exhibitions and sales of Canadian art by such artists as Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Jean Paul Lemieux, David Milne, Robert Pilot, and Marc-Aurèle Suzor-Côté. Alan Klinkhoff, a frequent commenter on Canadian art and art market, is quoted in the Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Financial Post, The New York Times, and on CBC Television. The gallery, a successor to Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, is known for museum-quality, non-sale exhibitions of important Canadian painters.
Bess Larkin Housser Harris (1890–1969) was a Canadian painter who participated in Group of Seven exhibitions and was a member of the Canadian Group of Painters.
Nan Lawson Cheney (1897–1985) was a Canadian painter and medical artist.
Léon Bellefleur D.F.A. was a French-Canadian abstract painter and print-maker.
Peter Clapham Sheppard, also known as P. C. Sheppard and as Peter C. Sheppard, was a Canadian painter, known for his figurative work and for his city and landscape scenes.
Cowley Abbott Canadian Art Auctioneers is an auction house in Toronto, Canada, which holds live and online auctions of Canadian historical, post-war and contemporary artwork, as well as international art. It also sells work through private sales and conducts appraisals and provides art consultancy. It was founded in 2013 with the name of Consignor Auction House and was rebranded in 2019 as Cowley Abbott Canadian Art Auctioneers.
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