The Bay’s art auction ended yesterday, with a Norval Morrisseau painting selling for $27,500
The auction opened last year after the company filed for creditor protection and closed its locations
The Hudson’s Bay Company’s art auction, which opened last year after the major Canadian department store filed for creditor protection and closed all locations, finished this week, with a final series that included six paintings connected to the late Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau.
Per the Canadian Press, three paintings were by Morrisseau, and three had been created in his studio. One of them secured a winning bid of $27,500.
Related: The Hudson’s Bay location at Yonge and Bloor may become self-storage
A portrait of Duke of Marlborough John Churchill by the Studio of Michael Dahl earned the most in the final series of the auction, selling for $50,000.
The Bay’s art auction was facilitated by Heffel Fine Art Auction House, in hopes that the company’s 4,400-piece collection of art and artifacts would help repay creditors, to whom the Bay owed a reported $950 million.
Other pieces in the final series included vintage HBC calendars, advertisements and shopping bags, a Le Creuset x HBC Stripes cookware set and a basketball and jersey signed by former Toronto Raptors athlete Pascal Siakam.
Related: Inside the last day of Hudson’s Bay’s Toronto flagship
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
