work, and fear that we were
responsible for our own future—
and that of our families.
Why did you decide to go from
being a gallery to launching an
auction house in 1995?
It had been discussed in
Vancouver art circles that
there was a need for a great
auction house in Vancouver. At
the time, Butterfield's in San
Francisco was having great
success, gaining a notable piece
of the American art market.
That got us thinking about the
idea. We were also often losing
out to auction houses back
east, Sotheby's and Joyner's,
for Canadian artwork. And
then, in December 1994, I
had the birth of my first boy. I
remember sitting with him on
my knee and realizing that our
balance sheet didn't look that
great, and we had to come up
with a new business model.
As you've expanded eastward,
have you noticed much of a dif-
ference between cities and how
people buy art?
We've now conducted auctions
in Vancouver, Toronto and Cal-
gary, and each city is unique. In
Calgary, the excitement is great:
after every lot, people in the
audience applaud. In Toronto,
there's a long history of ball-
room art sales. Besides par-
ticipants, we get people who
regularly come to watch it
as a social event year after
year, whether it's a blizzard
outside or a mild winter day.
In Vancouver, prior to the
broadcast of our sales live
on the web, we would get
much greater numbers of people
travelling to the city from across
the country. While we don't
get as many people travelling
now, we hold the auction at the
Convention Centre, often with
a Holland America or Princess
boat in the background. We
compete with the beauty of the
city with our art.
Where are things headed?
In Canada, we're starting to
follow the international trend
towards postwar and contem-
porary work. Historically, in
London and New York, the
dominant sales used to
be the Old Masters; then,
by the 1970s, they were
surpassed in gross-dollar
value by the Impressionists
and post-Impressionists.
Now the dominant sales
are postwar and contempo-
rary. The biggest sale ever
was set last November at
Christie's in New York, in excess
of $860 million; five or six years
ago, the record sales were all
under $400 million. That pat-
tern is playing out in Vancouver,
although it's probably just in its
seed years now.
■
Coastal
Boats near
Sidney, B.C. (1952)
by E.J. Hughes
$1.1 million
SOLD: Heffel in
Vancouver,
May 2011
3
