In September 2016, a Toronto auction house offered one of its periodic online auctions of art. The pieces were Canadian (mainly), of reasonable quality (generally) and would go to the highest bidder (always). Descriptions of each painting included the name of the artist, title of the work (perhaps, in some cases, the imaginative creation of the auction staff) and its provenance, if known, e.g., “private collection, Ottawa.”
This particular offering of several hundred works included one large painting described as “Canadian School, 1930s, Study for Spring Thaw, signed Clarence A. Gagnon, dated 1909 on the stretcher. Estimate $700–$1000.” The painting had apparent age, character, style and a pleasant familiarity, but curiously bore no resemblance to Gagnon’s Spring Thaw or to any other authenticated work of Clarence A. Gagnon (1881–1942).
The authentic and finished Spring Thaw, by Gagnon, hangs in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. In...
Jon S. Dellandrea is an academic, art historian and writer. He has served as vice-president of the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo and pro-vice-chancellor of Oxford University. He is a senior fellow at Massey College and the vice-chair of the board of the Art Canada Institute.
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