Vintage Hudson’s Bay blankets, more paintings headed for online auction

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TORONTO — If you’ve ever wanted to own a vintage Hudson’s Bay blanket, you’ll soon have a chance.

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The company is putting 52 blankets, including two dating back to 1900, up for sale later this month. Some of them are almost 100-year-old point blankets with HBC’s classic green, red, yellow and indigo motif, while others are slightly more recent and feature scarlet, lavender, wild cranberry, rose, empire blue and gold hues.

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The blankets will join 107 pieces of art ranging from depictions of HBC’s fur-trading era to portraits of its past governors to form a group of 159 treasures destined for the first of several online auctions Heffel Fine Art Auction House is hosting on behalf of the former department store.

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The first online sale will run from Nov. 12 to Dec. 4, 2025, with others to follow next year. They are meant to drum up cash to repay the collapsed retailer’s creditors and help HBC find new homes for its 4,400 art pieces and artifacts.

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Heffel estimates the point blankets being sold are worth between $300 and $500 each.

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A four-point, white wool blanket with a single black stripe and a 3.5-point blanket in camel are the oldest. The points were used in the fur-trade era to denote the size and value of blankets.

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Other blankets in the auction came from more recent decades and some are caribou throws rather than point blankets. Heffel says there will be more blankets in a future auction.

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Aside from blankets, the first group of items headed for sale includes a bronze sculpture of several businessmen clad in hats and long coats by William Hodd McElcheran and many oil, watercolour and mixed media paintings.

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The painting with the highest value is expected to be “Smoking Mountain” by William Kurelek, a Canadian artist known for his farm scenes, apocalyptic visions of the end of the world and biblical stories involving lessons of morality. The piece has an estimated value of $30,000 to $40,000, Heffel says.

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The next highest estimate is a painting of a boat at the edge of the River Loing in France from the father of Canadian impressionism Maurice Galbraith Cullen. It is believed to be worth $15,000 to $20,000.

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While Heffel has estimated the value of the items in the online auction, they will be listed as “unreserved,” allowing them to attract offers of any amount and then be sold to the top bidder. Bidding for many items will start at a few hundred dollars.

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That’s far less than the starting prices expected for 27 works belonging to HBC that Heffel will sell at a live auction on Nov. 19. That auction includes pieces from former British prime minister Winston Churchill, expected to fetch up to $600,000 and Toronto co-founder William von Moll Berczy, which could go for $90,000.

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The head of Heffel has said the pieces in the live auction are “the cream of the crop,” but art lovers and historians will likely still find value in the contents of the online auctions.

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Highlights of the first online sale include works from painters John Geoffrey Caruthers Little and Rene Jean Richard, as well as Norman Wilkinson scenes of Baffin Island, Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) and the Hudson Strait in Nunavut and Cape Wolstenholme in Quebec.