Scene in the Northwest: Portrait of John Henry Lefroy, also known as
The Surveyor, is a painting by
Paul KanePaul Kane was an Irish-born Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Oregon Country....
circa 1845. It sold at auction in 2002 for
CThe Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
$5.1 million, making it the most expensive
Canadian paintingCanadian art refers to the visual as well as plastic arts originating from the geographical area of contemporary Canada...
ever sold. It was purchased by media magnate
Ken ThomsonKenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet , in Canada known as Ken Thomson, was a Canadian businessman and art collector who, at the time of his death, was the richest person in Canada, and the ninth richest person in the world, according to Forbes.com, with assets of approximately US $17.9...
, who donated it to the
Art Gallery of OntarioUnder the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg...
. The painting depicts British explorer
John Henry Lefroy Sir John Henry Lefroy, KCMG, CB, FRS, was a British military man and later colonial administrator who also distinguished himself with his scientific studies of the Earth's magnetism.- Biography :...
on his successful expedition to map the Magnetic North Pole.
Lefroy returned to Toronto in November 1844 and it is likely that Kane painted him soon after that. Lefroy helped convince
George SimpsonSir George Simpson was a Scots-Quebecer and employee of the Hudson's Bay Company . His title was Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land and administrator over the Northwest Territories and Columbia Department in British North America from 1821 to 1860.-Early years:George Simpson was born in Dingwall,...
to fund Kane's own western expeditions, which Kane began in June 1845. In the painting, Lefroy is dressed in the outfit of a
coureur des boisA coureur des bois or coureur de bois was an independent entrepreneurial French-Canadian woodsman who traveled in New France and the interior of North America. They travelled in the woods to trade various things for fur....
wearing snow shoes, standing in front of a
dog sledA dog sled is a sled pulled by one or more sled dogs used to travel over ice and through snow. Numerous types of sleds are used, depending on their function. They can be used for dog sled racing.-History:...
. In the background one of his companions walks towards a native woman's
tipiA tipi is a Lakota name for a conical tent traditionally made of animal skins and wooden poles used by the nomadic tribes and sedentary tribal dwellers of the Great Plains...
.
Lefroy returned to England in 1853 and took the painting with him. The original remained in the Lefroy family for some 150 years, but they had no knowledge of the artist or its value. It was forgotten in Canada until researchers at the
Library and Archives CanadaLibrary and Archives Canada is a national memory institution dedicated to providing the best possible account of Canadian life through acquiring, preserving and making Canada's documentary heritage accessible for use in the 21st century and beyond...
and the
Art Gallery of OntarioUnder the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg...
learned of its existence and located it in the possession of one of Lefroy's descendants. They opted to put it up for auction in 2002. It sold at auction in February 2002 at
Sotheby'sSotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
Canada in Toronto for $5,062,500. The painting was appraised at $450,000 to $550,000, but a competitive auction vastly exceeded its appraised value as Thomson's agent competed with two American bidders. Its sale price more than doubled the previous record for a Canadian painting—$2.2 million for
Lawren HarrisLawren Stewart Harris, CC was a Canadian painter. He was born in Brantford, Ontario and is best known as a member the Group of Seven who pioneered a distinctly Canadian painting style in the early twentieth century. A. Y. Jackson has been quoted as saying that Harris provided the stimulus for the...
's
Baffin Island, which had been bought by Thomson the previous year. The sale price of
Scene in the Northwest was almost ten times more than had ever had been paid for a Kane work; the previous record was $525,000 for
Portrait of Maungwudaus in 1999.
While scholars had no knowledge of the original painting for over a century, a copy of the painting did remain in Canada. This version was acquired by the
Glenbow MuseumThe Glenbow Museum in Calgary is one of Western Canada's largest museums, with over 93,000 square feet of exhibition space in more than 20 galleries, showcasing a selection of the Glenbow's collection of over a million objects....
in Calgary in the 1950s. Its artist, and who was depicted, had been forgotten, leading to many decades of debate. Some scholars credited the Glenbow painting to Kane and others to
Cornelius KrieghoffCornelius David Krieghoff is probably the most popular Canadian painter of the 19th century. Krieghoff is most famous for his paintings of Canadian landscapes and Canadian life outdoors, which were sought-after in his own time as they are today. He is particularly famous for his winter scenes,...
. The rediscovery of the much higher-quality original has led to the consensus opinion that it is a copy of Kane's piece done by a lesser artist of the same period. One possibility is that it was created by Kane's wife, Harriet Clench, herself a skilled painter.