Foreword to our Spring 2021 Sale of Modern, Impressionist and 19th Century Art
Click here to view our Spring 2021 Sale of Modern, Impressionist and 19th Century Art
These are extraordinary times. Thanks to the strong influence of Jonathan and Craig, we have invested aggressively in the Alan Klinkhoff Gallery platform in cyberspace. Adversity was avoided. Instead, we continued to offer the opportunity to interested art collectors to continue the pleasure of a visit, albeit virtually, and purchase if they wished to do so. At this time and going forward we are pursuing significant improvements in our presentation with the objectives of making our site easier for visitors to navigate and of increasing our audience among buyers and sellers of important fine art.
With the entire collection of Alan Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal & Toronto exhibited online at Klinkhoff.ca and with the transparency of prices posted, art collectors can and do visit from the comfort of their homes and home offices. We encourage inquiries not only by email but also by telephone. Insofar as our clients at this very moment include individuals locally in Toronto and Montreal where our storefront galleries are located, elsewhere in Quebec and Ontario, also Nova Scotia, Manitoba and British Columbia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, the United Kingdom, France and Israel, few of these collectors would be coming in the galleries regardless of the pandemic restrictions. FaceTime and Zoom visits are welcome.
For art collectors leary of purchasing a work they are seeing only on our site, we must share with you the following; in our recent survey sent to clients, every purchaser who expressed that concern and did buy, said that the work, when received, looked even better than it had on our site. So, fear not! If you like what you see at Klinkhoff.ca, you should anticipate liking it that much more when it arrives at your door. We reiterate that FaceTime and Zoom are welcome options to a physical visit.
Business is busy. “Collectors collect”, as we say. It should not surprise you to read that collectors are housebound. The international art press describes a phenomenon of “Covid collecting” whereby art collectors are increasingly interested in art.
Our recent sale of The Montship Collection attracted astute collectors (Klinkhoff.ca/Montship). In a large part The Montship Collection (formerly Montreal Shipping company) was curated more than 40 years ago by Walter Klinkhoff Gallery. Alan Klinkhoff Gallery was honoured to find new homes for these fine pictures. We were able to present the various paintings with proper background and research, and with some relating first-hand experiences as well. Harold Beament, Jack Gray, Henry Simpkins, Lorne Bouchard, Bruce LeDain, Robert Pilot, Fred Taylor, Rita Mount, Richard Montpetit, Geoffrey Rock, John Fox, Eric Riordon, Leslie Smith, and others are all excellent artists of their respective generations. This quality of artwork available was evidence that a good picture does not have to cost tens of thousands of dollars to own.
The Collection of Mitzi & Mel Dobrin continues to have a purchasing audience. In February a connoisseur, a new client to the gallery, acquired the important Emily Carr Haida Totem and very fine Lawren Harris Morning Sun Over Hill, Lake Superior (Lake Superior Sketch XXVII), 1922. Only a couple of weeks prior to sending this catalogue to print, one Saturday afternoon, a neighbour of ours, spending much of the pandemic at his Laurentian country home, acquired one of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin’s excellent Goodridge Roberts paintings reproduced in our fall catalogues sale.
The success of the sale of The Collection of Mitzi and Mel Dobrin, the collection of Claude Le Sauteur paintings, the Fall catalogued sale and the Montship Collection is an example of our ability to showcase and sell entire collections of fine art to the benefit of all stakeholders. If one is considering selling an entire collection, an estate including fine art of quality, or simply one or two quality pictures, we are able to serve your interests to your advantage and with transparency. Collectors today benefit from the availability of a vetted selection of quality works offered at fair market values and with the opportunity and invitation to inquire and ask us to reconcile our opinions as to market values. We invite your inquiries.
Having written the above, we join you in the hopes that soon things will return to some semblance of normalcy. We shall look forward to meeting with you directly when conditions permit. In the interim, we wish you and yours good health.
Alan Klinkhoff
May, 2021