At its unveiling yesterday, Winnipeg Art Gallery officials were reluctant to discuss the price paid for Early Snow, but local art dealer David Loch of Loch Gallery Inc. - who sold the painting to the WAG - pegged the record-setting price for the rare Thomson winter scene at $1.15 million.
And if the WAG had not been able to meet Loch's asking price, he had another private buyer waiting in the wings who was willing to pay even more.
"There is no better place, in my mind, for this painting to be," Loch said in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he is taking part in Sotheby's spring auction of Important Canadian Art.
"This is money well spent ... It's a great work of art, and I think the gallery is to be applauded for having the courage to do what was necessary to acquire it."
Loch said that, to his knowledge, only one Canadian painting has ever been sold for a higher price - an abstract by expatriate Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, which fetched $1.6 million at auction in New York in 1989.
Early Snow, which Thomson created a year before his death in 1917, is the centre piece of the WAG's new exhibit The View From Here: Selections From the Canadian Historical Collection, which will have a free public opening this Sunday at 2 p.m. The exhibit runs until Dec 31.
The exhibit, comprised completely of works from the WAG's permanent collection, features 129 works that reflect the history of Canadian art between 1825 and 1955. In addition to the Thomson canvas, The View From Here includes paintings by all the other members of the Group of Seven, as well as works from such other Canadian notables as Emily Carr, Bertram Brooker, Alfred Pellan and David Milne.
"The View From Here tells the history of Canadian art from a Manitoba perspective," said WAG director Patricia Bovey. She wouldn't discuss the value of any individual paintings, but estimated the total value of the exhibit at between $12 million and $14 million.
"This collection is phenomenally important to Manitobans, and it's also one of the most important collections nationally ... This is one of the most important collections of Canadian art in this country. Manitobans should be very, very proud."
Loch explained yesterday that he acquired Early Snow last year from a private collector, and had a buyer in the U.S. lined up to purchase it. But the required export permit was denied the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board said losing the painting would diminish an important aspect of Canada's heritage.
During the subsequent six-month window provided for Canadian institutions to bid on the painting, the WAG stepped up and, with the assistance of a large federal-government grant and support from several other institutional and private donors, paid the asking price.
Early Snow is one of only 33 large oil paintings created by Thomson (1877 - 1917) during a brief artistic career that began in 1906 and ended with his mysterious drowning death in 1917.
Loch said at $1.15 million the WAG got a bargain because prices for Canadian art are on the rise. An Emily Carr painting sold this month for more than $1 million, he said.
"Paintings like (Early Snow), they don't make them any more," he said. "... If this painting was to come on the market today, we would get more money than we sold it (to the WAG) for, probably by a fair amount. It was well bought."
