Sept–October 2007 - Preview

Practical Art History orConfessions of a Fine Art AppraiserChapter 11. The Case of Red Fish with Blue Breasts.Several weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in an Antiques Road-show event tobenefit a local public art gallery. Among the many items I looked at was a coloured silkscreensigned “L. Bellefleur” in the plate .The work was in excellent condition, however, there was no indication of edition number,triage (total number of multiples) or artist’s signature (other than in the plate). This led me tosurmise that the work was probably not artist-made, but rather a commercially producedlimited-edition silkscreen.I recognized the work as a facsimile silkscreen ofCanadian artist Leon Bellefleur’s 1949 oil on canvaspainting entitled Red Fish with Blue Breasts(Poissons rouge aux seins bleus). It was purchased bythe National Gallery of Canada in 1953 from theGalerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal and has been in thenational collection ever since. The work wasexhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the winterLeon Bellefleur, Red Fish with Blue Breasts50 PREVIEWof 1951 as part of a touring show entitledContemporary Painters of Quebec, which includedexamples of younger Quebec artists such as Riopelle, Gauvreau and Dumouchel.Bellefleur was heavily influenced by the work of the contemporary German/Swiss artist, PaulKlee, who was an avid fisherman and juxtaposed scientific and mystic imagery in his worksGolden Fish, Fish Magic and Around the Fish. The similarity of Bellefleur’s titles in thepaintings Red Fish with Blue Breasts and Fish in the City suggest an homage to the master.The imagery in Red Fish with Blue Breasts is suggestive of a collection of strange,otherworldly, and as yet undiscovered sea creatures, each isolated and placed in adjacentholding trays pending further study. The creatures appear to have suggestions of eyes, fins,wings, rudimentary skeletal systems, external bladders, mouths and teeth. The title may refer tohumanities’ need to describe, categorize and understand the unknown.This silkscreen was probably produced circa 1966 by the Markgraf brothers, who hadimmigrated to Canada from Germany in 1957 and set up printing facilities in Quebec. Over thecourse of several years, they were engaged by the National Gallery to reproduce Canadianworks in the national collection. The work was a continuation of a project, initiated some yearsearlier by the gallery’s involvement with the Sampson-Matthews printing company thatincluded silkscreen reproductions of many Group of Seven painters (some of whom hadworked at Sampson-Matthews), and their contemporaries. In 1966 the National Gallery listedthe price of Cat. No. NG41-99, the Poissons rouge aux seins bleus silkscreen, at $14.In a 2004 essay in the Journal of Canadian Art History, Joyce Zemans wrote: “In 1969 AnthonyEmery, Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, described the Markgraf prints of contemporary art whichhad been created in partnership with the Canada Council. He praised their fidelity and compared their“brilliance” to what he deemed the “porridge and mashed-turnip-coloured [Sampson-Matthews]masterpieces squeegeed desperately through the silk-screens of the National Gallery during World WarII to give the nation’s defenders something to fight for or against.”In December 2004, a Vancouver auction house conducted a sale of silkscreens of the Groupof Seven and their contemporaries produced by Sampson-Matthews, realizing prices upwards of$2,500 each. Perhaps in the not too distant future similar prices for this far superior silkscreenmight also be realized.Next issue: The Case of A.Y. Jackson’s Smart River AlaskaBY JIM FINLAYFINLAY FINE ARTWEALTH MANAGEMENTjim_finlay@telus.net