When Heffel Positive Artwork Public sale Home was on the point of promote the second spherical of treasures from Canada’s oldest firm, employees had been so awe in of one of many work that they began to suppose it was value an excellent deeper look.
The oil-on-canvas estimated to be from round 1665 depicted Prince Rupert. The English Civil Warfare commander turned the primary governor of the Hudson’s Bay Co. and his title was lent to the huge territory that ultimately comprised 40 per cent of Canada.
He appeared within the portrait in a heavy coat and armoured breastplate with a baton in his proper fist, his left hand on a sword and a violent battle behind him.
HBC’s artwork catalogue credited the piece to the studio of Anthony van Dyck, a Flemish portraitist recognized for historic, spiritual and mythological works. However as bids for the piece began to pour in final November, Heffel employees developed a modicum of doubt that turned them into fashionable Sherlock Holmes tracing a thriller throughout Europe and North America.
By the point the roughly 361-year-old portray hits the public sale block subsequent month in a buzzy stay sale, it’s going to have a special artist’s credit score.
Heffel wound up with the portray after Hudson’s Bay collapsed final 12 months. As soon as it closed its 80 shops, it turned to Heffel to place a dent in its $1.1 billion of debt by promoting its 4,400 items of artwork and ephemera by means of a stay public sale final November and an ongoing sequence of on-line gross sales.
Heffel employees determined to offer the Prince Rupert portray one other look in November, when it was on the block with HBC blankets and portraits of its governors. Then, it had an estimated worth between $4,000 and $6,000.
The Prince Rupert portrait regarded so spectacular that Heffel employees, together with some who’re painters, puzzled about HBC marking it a studio manufacturing — when an artist’s assistants create a bit partly or wholly underneath their course as was widespread observe.
On condition that public sale homes stay and die on the credibility of the works they promote, president David Heffel briefly eliminated the piece from the sale till his employees had time to play detective.
They referred to as in historians, together with David Franklin, an knowledgeable in Renaissance and baroque artwork and the controversial former deputy director of the Nationwide Gallery of Canada.
He agreed the brushwork was so “spontaneous and audacious” that the piece was value investigating.
“No assistant painted like this,” he defined in an electronic mail to The Canadian Press.
He additionally realized the painter van Dyck died in 1641, however the portrait’s topic, Prince Rupert, was born in 1619 and regarded significantly older than 22 — Prince Rupert’s age when van Dyck died.
He set off to corroborate the hunch with “affected person bookish analysis” throughout the libraries and archives of London museums.
The earliest document mentioning the portray that the researchers discovered was an 1821 letter from the corporate’s secretary. It stated the work, which hung in a corridor of HBC’s then-London headquarters, was painted by van Dyck and given to the then-fur buying and selling enterprise, when it was based in 1670.
The researchers then discovered documentation from the primary and solely time the portray was exhibited. It was 1932 in London and the piece was then credited to Flemish painter Jacob Huysmans.
Nevertheless, a assessment from that point stated it bore the refined lighting and depth of characterization of Peter Lely, a knighted Dutch portraitist as soon as the principal painter to Prince Rupert’s cousin King Charles II.
By 1937, an article researchers discovered had discredited the van Dyck attribution and decided the portray was “in Lely’s undoubted method.”
It’s unclear whether or not HBC knew of that attribution and if it did, why it didn’t give it any lasting credence when works by a grasp like Lely could be thought of extra beneficial than a studio piece.
An essay Franklin wrote concerning the piece for Heffel stated assigning Lely’s title to the portrait “ought to by no means have been unsure” as a result of there’s a later model of the portray in Italy that Oliver Millar, a British artwork historian and van Dyck and Lely knowledgeable, referred to as a “absolutely autograph” of Lely.
Absolutely autograph doesn’t imply an artist signed a bit however that she or he painted your entire factor as an alternative of getting studio assistants do some or the entire work.
The model despatched to the Galleria Palatina in Florence in 1677 is barely totally different from the HBC unique. It doesn’t have the flash of purple on Prince Rupert’s upturned left sleeve cuff, nevertheless it does have a brand new scarlet sash.
It wasn’t unusual for a number of variations of works by grasp painters to be made as a result of members of the aristocracy had been typically requested for work. Studio copies with slight variations had been a cheap approach to meet the demand, Franklin stated.
Bolstering Heffel’s Lely attribution was the truth that HBC’s model of the portray has a roughly utilized bituminous patch defining the hair and face. A copyist wouldn’t have left that seen within the remaining picture, Franklin’s essay stated.
The amassed proof was sufficient to persuade Heffel to reattribute the portray.
Franklin was “emotional.”
“One feels a direct kinship with a seventeenth-century painter,” he defined. “Given the HBC connection, recovering an object for Canadian artwork is doubly particular.”
For David Heffel, it felt “a bit bit like profitable the Stanley Cup in Sport 7.”
Whereas new works are being found on a regular basis and fraud is rampant, it’s a rarity to have the ability to appropriate a centuries-old attribution.
“This portray specifically has opened a brand new paradigm of investigation and discovery,” Heffel stated.
The Peter Lely will doubtless be offered on Could 21, when Heffel hosts its semi-annual public sale. Will probably be the lone HBC piece within the sale and carry an estimated worth of as much as $150,000.
Estimates are usually conservative and items typically promote for far more. For instance, a college of Peter Lely portrait — a time period additionally denoting outdoors help — from the HBC assortment of King Charles II had an estimated worth of as much as $6,000 however offered for $15,000 in December.
Heffel expects the portrait being auctioned subsequent month to garner loads of curiosity due to its grandeur and historical past. The work’s backstory will solely make the piece extra fabulous, the gallery stated.
“We’ve by no means had the chance to return in time up to now prior to now by way of analysis,” David Heffel stated. “And I hope there’s a future alternative, however it could by no means occur once more.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed April 9, 2026.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press