Peter Clapham Sheppard

Elizabeth Street, Toronto

#
PETER CLAPHAM SHEPPARD, O.S.A., R.C.A.

ELIZABETH STREET, TORONTO

signed; with the estate stamp on the reverse
30 ins x 36 ins; 73.7 cms x 88.9 cms


November 19, 2018

Estimate $40,000-$60,000

Realised: $204,000

Record Price Achieved- $204,000

The group of Toronto Ward paintings produced by Sheppard, of which this lot is one of his finest, were executed at the beginning of the 1930s. Sheppard had painted the cities of Montreal and New York a few years earlier. Upon returning to Toronto, he turned his eye to a relatively poor neighbourhood rich in subject matter that had also attracted Lawren Harris who himself had immortalized the subject. Like Harris, Sheppard sought to capture the Ward’s “gritty working class streets (particularly Louisa and Elizabeth Streets), alleys, houses and shacks as portraits of resilient survival in places defined by transition and impoverishment.”

Canadian Fine Art

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