Harold Town
Painters Eleven founder, ferociously prolific, and for a while the most famous artist in Canada.
Harold Town was born in Toronto in 1924 and was a founding member of Painters Eleven, the group that brought abstraction to Ontario in 1953. He worked at a pace and across a range that few could match — single autographic prints, the Toy Horse and Enigma series, collage, the Great Divide paintings, murals, book illustration and a great deal of writing and public argument, since he was a formidable and combative critic of the Canadian art world. He was represented at the Venice Biennale twice and died in 1990.
A Canadian market where his standing has fluctuated more than most: enormously prominent in his lifetime, quieter afterwards, and now steadily reassessed. The single autographic prints of the 1950s — each one unique, made from an inked plate and printed once — are historically the most important part of the output and are frequently misdescribed as editions. Collages and the 1960s paintings lead. Town worked at high volume across four decades, so supply is substantial and quality varies; date and series matter more than size.
If you own a work by Harold Town
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.