Steve Martin Continues to Make Lawren Harris Collectors Very Happy

Heffel announced today that they will be selling a massive Lawren Harris Rocky Mountain work that was featured in the traveling exhibition organized by Steve Martin.

Heffel has already made the most of the show by setting a record for the artist earlier this year with a C$4.6m sale for Mountain and Glacier. This work comes from the Imperial Oil collection. With an estimate of C$3-5m, it clearly aims to set Harris’s record price yet again:

Mountain Forms is a large-scale masterpiece by Harris, commanding in scale and rich in colour, standing at five feet tall and nearly six feet wide. The work depicts Mount Ishbel located in the Sawback Range in the Rocky Mountains. Consigned from the prestigious Imperial collection, the fall auction offers collectors an incredible opportunity to own a rare-to-the-market Harris canvas, very few of which are in private hands today.

“An artwork of this importance comes up once in a lifetime, at most,” said David Heffel, President of Heffel Fine Art Auction House. “The pinnacle of our father’s career was selling this painting in 1980, and Robert and I are honoured to offer it once again.”

Mountain Forms comes with an impressive exhibition history, having travelled extensively across North America for major exhibitions throughout its lifetime. Most recently, the work toured with, and starred in, The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, a critically acclaimed exhibition co-curated by Steve Martin. The display garnered a new appreciation for Harris with successful showings at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and finally at Toronto’s own Art Gallery of Ontario. Beyond its recent appearances, the canvas was also included in a touring exhibition across five American states in 1930 and an exhibition that took place in five major Canadian museums in 2002.