Churchill’s Marrakech sells for $1.3M at Hudson’s Bay artworks auction

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And Churchill’s Marrakech sells for a cool $1.3 million, more than double its starting bid.

The energy in the room shifted once F.M. Bell-Smith’s Lights of a City Street was presented, as it’s considered one of the most famed paintings in the HBC collection.

Starting in six figures, the bid shot up fast. Staffers on the phones moved quickly yelling “bidding!”

At a bid of $525,000 David Heffler called last call. But a yell from the back from someone representing a phone bidder — “Bidding, bidding, bidding!” — brought the sale up to $550,000, sparking more laughter in the room.

But that bid lost out to a man at the back of the room, with the painting finally going for $575,000.

Bidding has now started for the “star of the auction”: Sir Winston Churchill’s oil painting Marrakech. Bidding has opened at $500,000.

Lights of a City Street by Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, one of most coveted paintings up for auction today, just sold for $575,000.

For those keeping track, that’s now the highest sale so far… but we still have Churchill’s Marrakech to come.

We just had our highest sale yet: $475,000 for Barnston and Ballantyne at Tadoussac, 1846 by Charles Fraser Comfort.

Auctioneer David Heffel stopped the bidding briefly before presenting Lot 16.

He said “it’s getting cold in here,” reached under the podium and threw on a Hudson’s Bay Company coat with its signature stripes.

The room burst into laughter. Heffel joked that bidders might get a Hudson’s Bay coat if they don’t leave with a painting.

We’re a little over halfway through the auction at this point, with The Spring Fur Brigade Leaves Lachine by George Franklin Arbuckle selling for $80,000.

But we’ve still to see some of the more high-profile paintings up for grabs today, like Lights of a City Street by Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith and the Winston Churchill painting Marrakech.

A couple of paintings so far have sold to a “Mr. Gretzky,” but it’s unclear if it’s THAT Mr. Gretzky … (a.k.a. NHL legend Wayne).

However, the auctioneer did make a comment after one sale about “shooting a puck into the net”, which seems to be hinting it could be Gretzky in the room making those bids.

There was a major bidding war over the third painting up for auction, by Adam Sheriff Scott.

Bids for Chief Trader Archibald McDonald Descending the Fraser, 1828, started at $25,000 but the number shot up to six figures within minutes.

Fair warning for a last call for bids was interjected twice by bidders in the room. When the bid rose to $290,000 giggles broke out in the room, with people stretching their necks trying to see who near the front made the bid.

Ultimately, the painting sold for $300,000.

In a post on her Substack, Anishinaabe journalist and author Tanya Talaga said the available works at today's auction are "remembrances of the good old days of colonial domination and oppression and the unfreedom of Indigenous peoples."

She points out that for more than 200 years, HBC "controlled most of Rupert's Land, about 8 million square kms from B.C. To Quebec to Nunavut and encompassing what are now six northern United States. Of course, First Nations peoples were living on this land — land that was stolen and claimed as if no one was around or living on it."

Talaga "bluntly" likened Rupert's Land to "a monstrous plantation for the British and for what was to become the fur-trading giant — the HBC."

Talaga added that the proceeds "should be going to the debt owed to First Nations people, whose land was stolen, families destroyed, just so European men could wear fancy hats."

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