LOT DETAILS
                      
                      
                      
                      

This session is closed for bidding.
Current bid: $15,000 CAD
Bidding History
Paddle # Date Amount

1775 29-May-2025 12:03:22 PM $15,000

The bidding history list updated on: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 06:12:05

LOT 432

BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 - 1998
Canadian

Burnished Butterfly
acrylic on board
signed and dated 1963-1997 and on verso titled on the gallery label, dated and inscribed variously
31 3/4 x 23 3/4 in, 80.6 x 60.3 cm

Estimate: $15,000 - $20,000 CAD

Sold for: $18,750

Preview at:

PROVENANCE
Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto


The butterfly is perhaps the most central and recognized motif in Jack Shadbolt’s entire body of work. To Shadbolt, it embodied the delicate beauty of the natural world and its cycles of life and death, while at the same time symbolizing the act of transfigurative rebirth. The palette he chooses for this work is dynamic – hot yellows and oranges a atop a field and sky of warm purples and maroons. Through this, its as though he seeks to express the unstoppable and surging energy of nature, present even in its most ephemeral forms. His gestural handling of paint is also very significant, adding to the image’s vigorous presence while at the same time positioning it between his oscillating engagements with representation and abstraction. Begun in 1963, this work was produced in the years just preceding his 1969 retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada, organized by Anthony Emery, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. This major travelling exhibition reignited Shadbolt’s career and cemented his status as a central figure in the Vancouver School of Post-War Canadian Art. Much like the butterfly, this painting underwent an extended period of metamorphosis: Shadbolt would revisit the painting through the following decades, changing the title several times, before finalizing the work in 1997.


All prices are in Canadian Dollars


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