Mary Frances West Pratt
Mary Frances West Pratt was a Canadian painter.
Based on ArtValue.ca records, Mary Frances West Pratt's estimated art value is C$60,000 (*)
Mary Frances West Pratt's work could be available for sale at public auction with prices in the range of C$10,000 - C$250,000, or even much higher.
ArtValue.ca has 158 auction art sale records for their oil painting results, with prices in the range of C$10,000 to C$250,000.
Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes
Mary Pratt is one of Canada's finest realist painters, noted for her sensitive use of light and depiction of domestic tableaux which arise from the everyday, yet transform into the sublime. Still life is one of the subjects in her body of work that she has continuously returned to, and Primary Fruit is a superb work from this genre. In this fine painting, the fruit is luscious and perfect, symbolic of abundance and the continuity of life. Pratt has arrayed it enticingly on a ceramic plate, with a simplified textural backdrop of grass, emphasizing the objects and the sunlight which reveals every detail, then gleams back in reflections from their surfaces. To capture the ephemeral effects of light, Pratt began taking photographs of her staged still lifes in 1969. In her awareness of how light activates objects lies a contemporary link to the incomparable light-washed interiors of the Dutch 17th century master Johannes Vermeer. Pratt, in her exquisite rendering of surfaces and highly realistic examination of objects, leads us to an experience of something beyond, an experience of beauty and perfection that creates an aesthetic gestalt.