Colourful painting of a memorial pole in Haida Gwaii dates to 1912, when Carr made a journey up the west coast by steamship
Everybody who’s ever attended a garage or estate sale has hoped to find something rare and expensive.
But Allen Trebitz never could have dreamed of finding a 1912 Emily Carr painting of a memorial pole in Haida Gwaii in a barn in East Hampton, New York.
In fact, the Long Island art dealer had never even heard of Carr when he spotted a small painting at the top of the barn wall last spring.
“You could see it, but it wasn’t really out there in the open,” said Trebitz.
“The barn had art and Americana, objects, all sorts of things. It was hanging with 50 other pieces of art. I bought like 25 pieces.
“I knew the piece had a look, but I didn’t know the artist at that point and I didn’t realize its value when I put together my package of stuff.”
He paid $50 US ($67.67 Cdn.) for the painting. The artist’s name was clearly written in the corner, and he did some quick research and discovered it was the find of a lifetime.
With the aid of his friend, Antiques Roadshow appraiser Phil Weiss of Weiss Auctions, he contacted Vancouver’s Heffel Gallery. It will be sold at the Heffel auction of Canadian, Impressionist and Modern Art on Nov. 20.
The painting is called Masset, Q.C.I., and has a pre-auction estimate of $100,000 to $200,000. But it could sell for much more — a larger 1912 Carr painting with a similar First Nations theme sold for $1,681,250 at a Heffel auction in 2023.
Both were painted during a trip Carr made up the west coast to First Nations villages aboard Canadian Pacific steamships. She had recently returned from studying in Paris, where she had been introduced to fauvism, a colourful modern style, and the paintings from the trip reflected it.
“It’s my favourite (Carr) period,” said David Heffel, who runs the Heffel Gallery with his brother Robert.
“It’s when she’s got her new-found fauvre tool box, and painted in the modernist style she had discovered and trained on in Europe. She brought that to the west coast and applied it to First Nations subject matter.
“It’s a gem of a painting, it’s got some great fauvre colours to it. It just sings.”
How it did it get to a wealthy enclave for the New York elite?
In 1930, Carr travelled to Ontario. Her friend Nell cosier had moved from Victoria to the Hamptons to be the caretaker of a Hamptons estate with her husband, and in her memoirs, Carr wrote of travelling to the location on Long Island and staying with cosier for a week.
The painting may have been a gift from Carr to cosier. It also may have been purchased by the owner of the estate — Carr painted a price of $35 on the back of the artwork.
The small painting (16 by 13 inches, or 41 by 33 centimetres) was probably among the 200 paintings Carr had for sale at the Dominion Hall in Vancouver in April, 1913. It got good reviews, but wasn’t a financial success.
“She stalled in her career, she wasn’t able to make ends meet and sell her work,” said Heffel. “So there’s a lean period in the late teens to the early 20s where she virtually quit painting. It wasn’t until her rediscovery by and support from Lawren Harris (in 1927) that she got back at it.”
Why an Emily Carr painting was hung in a barn is hard to fathom. Trebitz said it looked like it had been there for decades, but it had weathered the years well.
“It’s amazing that this was in such great shape when I got it, (considering) its environment and how long it had been sitting out,” he said. “It just needed refreshing.”
The 61-year-old Trebitz has made some great discoveries before. He once found a portfolio by American artist Wayne Thiebaud in an apartment: “I paid like $5 for it and got $108,000.”
