Jean-Paul Lemieux, the Quebec artist, made CA$1.095m (US$1,055,460) at a Canadian art auction, last week. Which isn't bad when you consider he's been dead for 21 years...
The artist, who died in 1990 aged 86, was one of the foremost painters of the 20th century from the Canadian province of Quebec.
Monday night saw a live auction in Toronto held by Sotheby's Canada. In the end, Country Club, a light-hearted tableau of two affluent ladies at lunch, brought CA$1.095m including buyer's premium.
And the sale is even more impressive considering this is the third Lemieux canvas to have sold for more than CA$1m this year.
His 1970 masterpiece Nineteen Ten Remembered auctioned for CA$2.34m only last week in Toronto, setting a new World Record price for the artist. The auctioneer was Heffel Fine Art.
 Jean-Paul Lemieux's Country Club art brought CA$1.095m including premium |
This smashed Lemieux's previous CA$1.024m record set only six months before, also at Heffel, by his piece Les Moniales.
Needless to say, interest in Lemieux's artworks is building. As is the market value of another deceased Quebec master, JW Morrice (1865-1924).
Morrice's art piece Evening Stroll, Venice from the early-20th century sparked a bidding war between two of Canada's pre-eminent art dealers.
David Loch, a Winnipeg-based gallerist, and Ash Prakash, a collector based in Toronto, went head to head until Mr Prakash placed a winning bid of almost $1.5m.
The Toronto collector also bought two other works by Morrice. They were a small oil sketch, titled Venice, that sold for $82,000 (estimated at $50,000-$80,000) and a French garden scene, consigned by a New York collector, that went for $232,500 (estimated at $200,000-$300,000).
Sotheby's auction at the Royal Ontario Museum sold about 130 of the 182 lots, totalling sales of close to $8m over the firm's $6.6m high estimate.
