NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips announced that Peter Doig’s Rosedale will be offered as the top lot in the May Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in New York on 18 May. The large-scale painting was executed in 1991 and stands nearly seven feet tall by eight feet wide, depicting a Toronto home through a tapestry of snow and tree branches. Expected to realize in excess of $25 million, the work has never been publicly offered and is poised to set a new auction record for the artist.
Jean-Paul Engelen and Robert Manley, Worldwide Co-Heads of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “Rosedale is a fresh-to-the-market masterpiece, emblematic of Doig’s instantly recognizable style and painted in the pivotal years of his career. This is the most impressive work by the artist to be offered at auction in recent years and we’re delighted to include it as the star lot of our May Evening Sale. Whitechapel Gallery’s recent announcement that he has been awarded their title of Art Icon for 2017 underscores Doig’s tremendous artistic significance and his continued contributions to the field of contemporary art.”
Rosedale dates from a pivotal moment in Peter Doig’s career, shortly after the artist’s graduation from the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Painted in 1991, the work was created for his celebrated solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, after he had won the prestigious Whitechapel Artist Prize that year. In the lead up to that exhibition, Doig produced a small number of large format canvases that represent the touchstone of his subsequent oeuvre, including Rosedale.
Depicting a grand Rosedale manor in Toronto’s ravine, the richly detailed surface is formed of abstract gestures that coalesce to reveal a home through the static of snow and thicket. Based on the artist’s own photographs, Doig described painting Rosedale “through the screens of nature,” painstakingly building up fragments of the house through the dense network of trees, as opposed to fully painting the architectural elements and then painting over them with the branches and snow in the foreground. Building on art historical and pop culture references ranging from Richter, Pollock, Bonnard and Munch to record covers, vintage postcards, and Doig’s own archive of photographs and memories of his early experiences in Canada, the visual play of impasto and glazes conjures the cinematic quality of a vintage film reel and the nostalgic glow of memory.
