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Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine sold for $12-million at auction in London.

You could claim Peter Doig as one of those people who's Canadian by virtue of the old saw "as Canadian as possible under the circumstances." And the circumstances are riper than ever to include the acclaimed artist in our cultural catchment, thanks to the recent sale at auction in London of a Doig canvas for a record $12-million. Though Doig was born in Scotland in 1959 and now makes Trinidad his primary base, the 13 years he spent in Canada, starting at age six, clearly inform his most striking work. Like the record-setting The Architect's Home in the Ravine, shown here, an image remembered from his Toronto childhood which Doig painted in oil when he was 32 and living in the U.K. Torontonians may recognize the home as that of star architect Eberhard Zeidler, who designed it for its wooded Rosedale ravine site in the late 1960s, a half-decade before his most famous commission, Toronto Eaton Centre. (Zeidler sold the house in 2011.) Doig's previous auction record, $11.3-million, was set six years ago in London. And wouldn't you know, it was for another unabashedly Canuck-themed canvas, White Canoe, painted in 1991, the same year he completed The Architect's Home in the Ravine. – James Adams

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