signed with monogram lower right; colour notations within the composition
8.25 × 13.75 in (21.0 × 34.9 cm)
Auction Estimate:$8,000 - $12,000
Sale date:June 1 - December 31, 2018
Price Realized
$7,670
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature
Joan Murray, “Kurelek's Vision of Canada”, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 1982, pages 14-15
Through his career and travels, William Kurelek depicted scenes from across the country, however the painter's most celebrated subjects are his representations of the Canadian prairies. “Prairie Landscape” exhibits Kurelek's skill in capturing not only the expansiveness of the western landscape, but also a sense of rhythmic movement through the scenery, the vegetation here bending slightly to the right throughout the composition while a large fluffy cloud is entering the scene from the left, beginning its traverse across the yellow sky. Joan Murray called this skill where “the whole pictorial surface is involved in writhing movement” a “quality inherent in Kurelek's work at its best.” Murray notes that when the “musculature is anchored by firm composition, the results are fresh and grand,” and that this quality of Kurelek's work was of interest to some of his fellow artists, including Ivan Eyre and Dennis Burton.
