Artist Doig’s ski art sells for millions

A “majestic” oil painting of skiers by the Edinburgh-born artist Peter Doig has been sold for more than £14 million at auction.

Doig, 66, completed “Ski Jacket” in 1994, the same year he was nominated for the Turner Prize.

The painting shows a snowy mountain landscape with dozens of tiny figures skiing between trees and chalets.

The snowy masterpiece, measuring over 2m across, was the leading lot in Christie’s 21st Century Art Evening Sale in London.

It was sold for a staggering £14,270,000 — more than double the low estimate of £6 million.

Its sale, after nearly 13 minutes of intense competition amongst six bidders, was greeted with a round of applause.

The painting was the leading lot among artworks from the collection of Ole Faarup, “one of Denmark’s most visionary art collectors”.

The furniture and design retailer, who died in February this year, spent five decades acquiring artworks, including several by leading British artists, including Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and Doig.

Faarup acquired Ski Jacket soon after it was completed in 1994.

It had been unseen in public since it was shown in Aalborg, Denmark, in 2012.

Proceeds from its sale will benefit The Ole Faarup Art Foundation, dedicated to helping emerging and established artists by placing their work in museums and public collections around the world.

Christies said: “Ski Jacket is a majestic work from a pivotal moment in Peter Doig’s career… This richly layered snowscape dramatises the hazy sensations of remembering, and – through skiing – the slippery, thrilling pursuit of painting itself.”

Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959, but moved with his family to Canada as a child and, after returning to Britain to study art, has lived in Trinidad since 2002.

Now one of the world’s most sought-after living artists, several paintings by Doig have achieved eight figure sums at auction.

His Turner Prize nomination in 1994 followed several years of mounting critical acclaim and coincided with important works such as Ski Jacket, in which he used screens of snow to partially veil his paintings.

While winter sports have personal significance for Doig, a keen ice hockey player, Ski Jacket was based on a photograph of a Japanese ski slope that his father found in a Toronto newspaper.

Doig has previously told how “snow somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards”.

The conifers and chalets in the painting bring together the cabins and trees for which the artist is best known.

Also in the sale was Doig’s “Country Rock” (1998-99), a monumental 3metre wide painting depicting Toronto’s iconic rainbow tunnel, which made £9,210,000.