Winnipeggers back city's feverish efforts to buy rare oil painting of Winnie-the-Pooh

The city of Winnipeg, known more for its blustering winds than its association with a perpetually flustered bear, is in a bother over the idea of owning a rare oil painting of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Children are breaking open their piggy banks, seniors are dropping off $20 bills and well-heeled Winnipeggers are brandishing their chequebooks so the city can buy the large oval-shaped painting of A. A. Milne's famous bear, honey pot in paw, at Sotheby's auction house in London next week. A poll conducted by a local radio station hasn't turned up one person who is against the idea, said Mayor Glen Murray.

'People here are very attached to Winnie-the-Pooh, and Winnipeggers get downright indignant when people don't know that the Winnie in the Pooh is the same Winnie as in Peg." The inspiration for Mr. Milne's classic creature was an orphaned black bear. It was bought in White River, Ont., by a Manitoba veterinarian-turned-infantryman named Harry Colebourn who was travelling by train bound for England in August of 1914. He affectionately dubbed his adoptee Winnie, after his hometown.

Before he was shipped to France to fight in the First World War, he donated the tame mascot to the London Zoo, where it delighted children with its antics for years. Christopher Robin Milne, the son of author A. A. Milne, was one of them. (The cuddly ursine "of very little brain" made his first appearance in Mr. Milne's When We Were Very Young in 1924, then in Winnie-the-Pooh two years later.)

Even Catherine Porter, Sotheby's specialist in children's books, hopes the painting ends up on public display because it is "such a striking image." Indeed, it is the only known painting of Winnie-the-Pooh in oil by E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of Mr. Milne's books, who rendered it the 1930s for a Bristol tea shop called Pooh Corner.

"It's the quintessential Winnie-the-Pooh, standing there with his big, round tummy and the honey pot and the bees," Ms. Porter, a senior consultant with Sotheby's, said in a telephone interview from London yesterday. "I expect it to do very well."

That could translate into hundreds of thousands of Canadian dollars, considering that Christie's in London sold an ink drawing by Shepard last December for $112,500 (U.S.), and it was only 14.5 centimetres by 19. The catalogue estimate was $30,000 to $45,000 (U.S.), the same as that posted for the 93-cm-by-71-cm oil painting.

Ms. Porter said Winnipeg's main competition won't come from purveyors of fine art but from collectors of Pooh memorabilia. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to which Mr. Shepard donated hundreds of his Pooh sketches, was sent a catalogue, as was the Garrick Club, a private London club that collects literary keepsakes and even receives funding from Mr. Milne's estate. Winnipeg is pinning its hopes on the skills of David Loch, a Winnipeg booster and one of Canada's top art dealers.

Mr. Loch, owner of Loch Mayberry Fine Art Inc., goes to more than 20 auctions a year for his wealthy clients, although he usually deals in Renoirs and Tom Thomsons. The civic-minded Winnipegger has been an integral part of the city's transformation of Assiniboine Park into a cultural haven, complete with sculpture garden, art gallery and band shell.

Normally, a painting such as the one by Mr. Shepard wouldn't have registered on his radar screen, but when Mr. Loch saw the Sotheby's catalogue featuring the colour Pooh painting on its cover, he took it as a sign that he should forge ahead with the next project for the park: a Winnie-the-Pooh museum.

Now even he, the veteran art professional, has caught auction fever. 'In all honesty, when I'm operating like this, keyed up like I am, this is me at my best," he said. "This is probably the most important picture I've ever bought."

The mayor said Mr. Loch is under considerable pressure to perform next Thursday, when he bids on the painting by telephone from a Toronto hotel room. 'The whole hometown team is counting on him," Mr. Murray said. "He's either going to come back a hero or his name is going to be mud."

Mr. Loch said the only reason he wouldn't get the painting is if he doesn't have enough money. But he can't say how much he needs because that would be like showing his hand in a poker game. He shrugged off the Sotheby's catalogue estimate as a conservative estimate. "Anybody's who thinks they can get it for that is dreaming."