Beaverbrook exhibition is who's who of British and Canadian masters

There are 75 paintings in the Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery show at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.

The roster of painters in the exhibition reads like a who’s who of British and Canadian artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, including John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Wyndham Lewis, Lucien Freud, Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson.

But there are also some striking works by U.S. artists like John Singer Sargent and Europeans like Henri Matisse, Eugene Delacroix and Salvador Dali.

Most of the paintings were collected by Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken), a Canadian who became a business tycoon and press baron in London. But many of the key works in the show were originally collected by Sir James Dunn, a friend of Beaverbrook’s.

After Dunn died, his wife married Beaverbrook, and some of the Dunn collection ended up in an art gallery Beaverbrook established in Fredericton, N.B., including Salvador Dali’s portraits of Dunn (whom he portrayed as Augustus Caesar) and Lady Dunn (whom Dali painted on a horse, with a falcon perched on her arm).

The 1949 Salvador Dali painting La Turbie: Sir James Dunn.

The 1954 Salvador Dali painting Equestrian Fantasy: Lady Dunn.

Although she had been dubbed “the most beautiful girl in England,” the exhibition catalogue relates that Mona was filled with “despair and suicidal feelings” and suffered a tragic death.

“After a torrid affair with English politician Lord Birkenhead,” says the catalogue, “she died from peritonitis at age 26, possibly from complications from having an abortion.”

The 1915 William Orpen painting Mona Dunn.

Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Audain Art Museum, 4350 Blackcomb Way, Whistler

Until Sept. 11

Tickets: Adults $18, youth free

audainartmuseum.com

jmackie@postmedia.com

The 13-foot tall Salvador Dali painting Santiago El Grande.