CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART - Heffel

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 39
28 JOSEPH FRANCIS PLASKETT
BCSFA OC RCA 1918 ~
Still Life After Breakfast
oil on canvas, signed and dated 1981
28 1/4 x 39 in, 71.7 x 99 cm
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Toronto
LITERATURE:
Joe Plaskett, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, 1977, pages 3 and 8
Judy Stoffman, “Still Carrying the Group of Seven’s Torch”, The Star,
Toronto, September 25, 2008
Joe Plaskett has always enjoyed dissecting and reveling in the intimate
expressions of the everyday, and Still Life After Breakfast is no exception.
His paintings, and in particular the still lifes, as Judy Stoffman writes,
“show an intimacy with past masters and a tender appreciation of the
present moment.” In this fine painting, Plaskett takes the daily activity of
breakfast and turns it into a sensuous and tactile celebration: half~eaten
grapefruits, croissants and café au lait bowls, along with a half~filled
marmalade jar, are the remnants of an animated morning complete with
good conversation. It is likely that the setting for Still Life After Breakfast is
Plaskett’s residence at 2 rue Pecquay in Paris, which hosted a plethora of
Canadian artists and writers such as Bill Reid, Jean Paul Lemieux and the
famed poet and writer Mavis Gallant. Plaskett comments on his painting,
“My work may be said to descend from the Impressionists. What I do
share with them is their subject matter ~ their delight in painting any
aspect of life around them. I do find a micro~cosmos of the universe in the
interior of a room. Its possibilities are inexhaustible, its variety infinite.”
ESTIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
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