Bryzgalski painting of snowshoers in striped coats star of HBC’s first online auction

A women leaves the downtown Toronto flagship Hudson Bay Company store in Toronto on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO — The first in a series of online auctions to sell off Hudson’s Bay’s treasures closed Thursday with one Kuba Bryzgalski painting of snowshoers in striped coats going for $170,000 and a single bidder dropping $27,100 total on seven vintage point blankets.

The purchases were some of the highlights of a frenetic sale Heffel Fine Art Auction House hosted to find new homes for 159 pieces from HBC’s collection.

Heffel already sold the highest profile pieces in the defunct retailer’s collection, including a Moroccan painting by former British prime minister Winston Churchill, in a live auction last month that raised more than $4.9 million for HBC’s creditors. It will sell the remainder of the 4,400-piece HBC trove online over the next year to shave down the $1.1 billion in debt it had when it filed for creditor protection in March.

While rare coins, retail antiquities and collectible toys will be part of future sales, Thursday’s auction was split into four sessions — fine art, blankets, Canadian historical paintings and portraits of past HBC governors.

Each session blew well past its closing time as bidders followed typical auction behaviour by waiting for the last minute to stake their claim to items that mostly surged beyond Heffel’s highest estimates. Nothing went unsold.

As is custom at auctions, every time someone made a bid in the last 90 seconds of a session being open, Heffel added 90 seconds more to the bidding window. That allowed the portion of the auction devoted to selling 52 vintage blankets to run 44 minutes overtime. The Canadian history part of the sale got an extra 39 minutes, the fine art sale 20 minutes and the portrait portion 25 minutes.

One of the snowshoers in the untitled Bryzgalski piece from 1998 wore a sac with the HBC name on the flap, driving up its value and helping it fetch the highest sum at Thursday’s auction.

However, several other pieces trailed closely behind.

A 1945 painting Norman Wilkinson made for one of the free calendars HBC used to distribute at stores and trading posts sold for $160,000. It depicted the Nonsuch, a merchant ship built in 1650 and used when HBC was a fur trading powerhouse.

Another untitled Bryzgalski showcasing a trading post went for $150,000 as did a Joseph Sydney Hallam painting from 1953 of men releasing a beaver from a trap.

Earlier in the afternoon, a white, six-point blanket with a pink stripe from 2006 was the hottest commodity in the auction’s second session. (Points are the lines featured on HBC’s blankets. They are used to denote the size and value a blanket carried in the fur-trading era.)

The winning bidder paid $11,000 for it, well above the $300 to $500 estimate Heffel had assigned every blanket available Thursday.

Auction houses usually assign items conservative values and it is typical for them to sell well above their estimates. Every item sold is subject to taxes and a buyer’s premium that is added later to the sum of the winning bid.

The six-point blanket with a pink stripe surpassed the $5,500 a four-point, white wool blanket with a single black stripe made and the $4,250 a 3.5-point, camel blanket made. Made in 1900, they were the oldest blankets on offer Thursday, though Heffel has promised more will make it into future HBC auctions.

Rounding out the auction highlights was a William Kurelek painting of sunlight breaking through the clouds above a mountain. The 1973 piece called “Smoking Mountain” sold for $75,000, making it the star of the fine art part of the sale.

In the portraits session, the big seller was a painting of John Churchill, the earl of Marlborough and one of HBC’s earliest governors. It sold for $20,000.

A portrait of King Charles II, whose royal charter established HBC in 1670, had a top bid of $15,000.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press