A.Y. Jackson’s “Radium Mine,” painted in 1938, is to be sold Nov. 22 at the Heffel Fine Art fall auction of Canadian art. (Courtesy Heffel Fine Art)
An all-but-forgotten, 74-year-old painting by the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson, a large canvas on which the renowned artist depicts the Northwest Territories mine that produced uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb, has emerged from the obscurity of a private collection to be sold this month at one of three major fall auctions of Canadian art.
Jackson’s Radium Mine — nearly a metre wide and held since it was painted by the family of Gerald LaBine, the artist’s friend and the owner of the mining operation along the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake — represents a remarkable convergence of the histories of Canadian art, national industrial development and the global nuclear age.
The painting, to be sold Nov. 22 at a Heffel Fine Art auction in Toronto, shows a bird’s-eye view of the mine site on a peninsula jutting out into the lake, located about 440 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife. Radium Mine, expected to sell for up to $300,000, was exhibited only once, in 1939, and has remained with the LaBine family as a prized memento of Jackson’s visit to the site just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Another Jackson painting of the mining operation is held by the National Gallery of Canada.
“Not only is Radium Mine one of Jackson’s finest works,” state’s Heffel’s catalogue entry for the painting, “it is also historically significant. At its heart is the story of two exceptional Canadians — a gifted artist and a bold entrepreneur — linked by their thirst for adventure, imagination and love of their nation.”
But there is a darker subtext to the image, as well, linking Jackson’s scene to the world-changing devastation unleashed upon Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. Uranium extracted from what became known as the El Dorado mine site had been Canada’s key contribution to the Manhattan Project during the war.
Port Radium’s miners and the Dene workers employed in transporting the radioactive material south from Great Bear Lake would go on to suffer high rates of cancer. That led to Deline — the aboriginal community nearest to the mine —becoming known as the “village of widows.” In recent years, the Canadian government has funded cleanup efforts around the mine as part of a long-term environmental remediation project.
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The painting is expected to sell for between $900,000 and $1.2 million, the highest estimated value of any artwork to be auctioned at the Sotheby’s sale.
