Lawren Harris, Tom Thomson and Alex Colville paintings smash records at auction

Paintings by famous Canadian artists — including Lawren Harris and Tom Thomson — garnered record prices on Thursday night at the Heffel Fine Art Auction at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Toronto.

• Alex Colville's Harbour painting sells in auction for $1.6M
• After the Storm, believed to be Tom Thomson's final artwork, set for auction
• Lawren Harris art championed by Steve Martin in new exhibit The Idea of North

Lawren Harris's Mountain and Glacier was the biggest seller of the night, going for $3.9 million and breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's pieces. It sold way over what was expected, which was a price between $1 million and $1.5 million.

The $3.9 "hammer price" doesn't include a commission that pushes the final cost of the work even higher.

Another of Harris's pieces, Winter Landscape, sold for a hammer price of $3.1 million — also one of the night's highest prices. That piece also sold way over the $1.2 to 1.6 million estimated value. Harris paintings are always a big draw, and there may have been increased interest in his work given the buzz around a Steve Martin-curated exhibit at the Los Angeles Hammer Museum.

The exhibit will also hit Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario in 2016.

Alex Colville's Harbour sold for a hammer price of $1.6 million, more than doubling the expected price, which was between for $500,000 and $700,000. 

After the Storm, by Tom Thomson sold for a hammer price of $1.1 million — it had been expected to sell between $500,000 and $700,000. The work is believed to be the final painting completed by Thomson before his mysterious death in July 1917. 

Other Group of Seven artists' works also fetched jaw-dropping prices well above $150,000, such as works by A.Y. Jackson and J.E.H. MacDonald.

Two ceramics by Emily Carr were also sold, as well as her painting Forest Interior, which went for $200,000. The night also featured some international names, such as pieces by pop-art favourite Roy Lichtenstein. His print Modern Room fetched $120,000, setting an international record for the sale.