Lawren Harris painting Mountains East of Maligne Lake fetches $3M at auction

Mountains East ofMaligneLake, a 1925 Rocky Mountains canvas by Group of Seven co-founderLawrenHarris, fetched more than $3 million in Toronto on Wednesday.

The bidding war for the paintingtook place atHeffel'sannual fall auction of Canadian art, held Wednesday evening at Toronto's Design Exchange.

The hammer fell at $2.5 million, withthe final price includingauction house premium at $3,001,250.

Measuring about 103 cm by 133 cm andstill in its original frame,the dramaticmountain landscapedepicts peaks near Jasper, where Harris and A.Y. Jackson had visited in 1924.

Theoil-on-canvas painting wasone of eight Harris artworks featured in Heffel's most recent sale. Though part of a private U.K. collection since 1959 when a British collector working in Toronto originally purchased it from influential art dealer Blair Laingit's also been on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where it was on loan for the past decade. Heffel also offered Study for Mountains East ofMaligneLake, the graphite sketch Harris created as the groundwork for the later painting.

TheBrantford, Ont.-born Harris has traditionally achieved strong prices at auction, but in recent years, his work got an additional boost afterAmerican actor-comedian Steve Martin co-curated The Idea of North, a well-receivedexhibit of his paintings. Mountain Forms, which was from the collection of Imperial Oil, had been part of the show.