TORONTO.- An important piece of Toronto’s architectural and artistic history is set to go under the auction hammer this month. The Bridge Builders, Construction, Bloor Street Viaduct, 1915, a major, museum-quality canvas by Toronto-born artist Peter Clapham Sheppard, an associate of the Group of Seven, will be offered at Cowley Abbott’s Spring Live Auction of Important Canadian Art on May 28, 2025. The rare and dynamic painting, estimated to fetch $100,000 - $120,000, captures the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct—an engineering feat that shaped the city over a century ago.
The painting documents the ambitious early 20th century infrastructure project. At the time, the Don Valley and River posed a major barrier to east-west travel, with the few existing flood-prone bridges located further south between Gerard Street and the lake. Though the viaduct proposal was voted down in 1910 and 1912, it was eventually approved, linking Bloor Street to Danforth Avenue and setting the stage for future urban expansion.
In Sheppard’s masterful composition, a central elevator tower dominates the scene, showing the support cables used to transport concrete-filled hoppers. The presence of workers throughout the piece brings the industrious moment vividly to life, emphasizing both the scale of the project and the effort behind it. The painting captivated art critics’ attention during its early exhibitions more than a century ago. Most recently the canvas was featured on the cover of Tom Smart’s 2018 book, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work.
This historical canvas is among many other artworks on offer in the May 28 auction that paint a portrait of more than 150 years of Canadian history including a rare 1864 scene by Frances Anne Hopkins capturing canoe travel just before rapid progress transformed travel; a J.E.H. MacDonald painting celebrated with a 2020 postage stamp and a survey of rare Lake Superior paintings by five members of Group of Seven.
The Spring Live Auction of Important Canadian & International Art will take place Wednesday, May 28 at 7 p.m. ET at the Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto, and live-streamed at cowleyabbott.ca. A preview exhibition is open to the public from May 16 to 28 at Cowley Abbott’s Toronto gallery, located at 326 Dundas Street West.
Additional Auction Highlights
Frances Anne Hopkins, Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior, 1864
Auction Estimate: $60,000 - $80,000
Last offered for sale more than a century ago in 1914, this highly celebrated image portrays one of Hopkins’ best known scenes, travellers in canoes. It is one of five known “studies” for a celebrated canvas in the collection of Calgary’s Glenbow Museum. This time capsule highlights a key moment in history: a transitional point when the canoe travel was being replaced by steamboats and railroads, just three years before Confederation. The market for Hopkins artworks has risen dramatically in the past 10 years, hitting a record-setting high of $552,000 in 2022 at Cowley Abbott, with a canvas tripling the previous record.
Emily Carr, Fir Trees
Auction Estimate: $275,000 - $375,000
A centrepiece of the auction, this stunning forest scene by one of Canada’s most celebrated female artists is a study of her masterful technique. Carr’s oil on paper sketches such as this one are amongst her most important contributions to Canadian art; no other Canadian painter explored the idea of the sketch more intensely and brilliantly.
The British Columbia landscape, is from a Calgary collection, descended to children living abroad. The painting will debut at auction on May 28.
Franklin Carmichael, Old Orchard, 1940
Auction Estimate: $400,000 - $500,000
This spectacular painting by the Group of Seven co-founder is related to a 1939 oil sketch in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The subject was a view just outside Carmichael’s home and studio in Lansing - what is now a densely populated North York neighbourhood in Toronto.
Group of Seven Lake Superior Artworks
The Group of Seven created many iconic artworks along the shores of Lake Superior. The Great Lake was a transformative subject that the artists regularly returned to. The auction features six artworks from Group of Seven artists that capture the majesty of the region:
• Lawren Harris, Northern Lake, 1922 (est. $300,000 - $500,000) (pictured above)
• Lawren Harris, Northern Lake, circa 1925 (est. $15,000 - $20,000)
• Franklin Carmichael, Port Coldwell, Lake Superior, 1928 (est. $70,000 - $90,000)
• Arthur Lismer, Light Breaking Through, Lake Superior, 1927 (est. $70,000 - $90,000)
• AY Jackson, North Shore, Superior, Near Coldwell, 1923 (est. $30,000 - $50,000)
• Frank Johnston, Along the Line, Algoma, 1918 (est. $15,000 - $20,000)
J.E.H. MacDonald, Church by the Sea, N.S., 1922
Auction Estimate: $125,000 - $175,000
With a scene reproduced for a 2020 postage stamp, this Nova Scotian seascape is the oil sketch for a major, well-known artwork in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. The painting, depicting a church in the village of Petite Rivière, marks a transition between the rolling rhythms and textured brush strokes of MacDonald’s Algoma canvases and the greater simplification of his mountain paintings.
William Kurelek, Farm Scene with Two Horses (Going to Feed and Rope), 1974
Auction Estimate: $100,000 - $120,000
This charming winter scene captures a moment of daily farm labour, a nostalgic moment of rural prairie life that Kurelek is recognized and celebrated for. The painting was purchased directly from the artist and has remained in the owner’s collection ever since.
Marcelle Ferron, Sans titre, 1964
Auction Estimate: $300,000 - $400,000
Sans Titre, 1964 is an exceptional painting from a prime period in the artist’s six-decade-long career. Now ranked among Canada’s top-selling artists, market demand for Ferron’s artworks has escalated dramatically over the past decade, regularly achieving six figures at auction. In 2022, Sans titre, 1960, an abstract painting from the same period, sold for $1.26 million in Cowley Abbott’s fall live auction, one of the highest prices ever achieved for her work.
