A Tom Thomson oil sketch of Ontario's northern wilderness sold for $934,000 at auction in Toronto on Monday, well above the last record price for a Thomson painting.

Art dealer David Loch of Winnipeg won a brisk bidding war for the painting, Burnt Area with Ragged Rocks, at the Sotheby's and Ritchies auction of Canadian art.

Burnt Area with Ragged Rocks was painted by Tom Thomson in Algonquin Park. It sold at auction for $934,000.
(Courtesy of Ritchies)

The Algonquin landscape with stripped trees and a marshy lake in the background had been projected to sell for $150,000 to $250,000.

"It's an exquisite painting, we knew it would do really well," said Sotheby's president David Silcox.

The last record price for a work by Thomson was $460,000 in November 2005, he said.

Thomson left just two dozen canvases when he died in 1917, though he produced numerous oil sketches like the one sold and was an inspiration for the Group of Seven artists who followed him in painting the Canadian wilderness.

The Thomson work and a winter scene by Montreal painter Ethel Seath, which sold for $267,000, were the highlights of the auction. All prices include a buyer's premium.

Cab Stand in Phillips Square set a record price for a work by Seath, a member of the Beaver Hall group of Quebec artists. It had been projected to sell for $40,000-$60,000.

An Emily Carr work on paper, Young Tree in Surging Growth, sold for $520,000, also a record for her work.

The Toronto auction was the first significant Canadian art auction since the death last spring of Ken Thomson, the media magnate who was an enthusiastic bidder for Canadian works.

Sales at auction totalled $7.4 million. Works by David Milne, Cornelius Krieghoff and by a group of post-war artists were among the 193 items on offer.

While bidding on a few items ratcheted up excitement in the auction house, many of the works sold within their expected range.

Two works created at the same time of the same subject by different Group of Seven painters were brought together briefly for the auction.

Lawren Harris's Lake Superior Sketch sold for $209,500 and A.Y. Jackson's Lake Superior, Autumn sold for $54,000. Both prices were within the expected range.

Harris and Jackson had set up their easels side by side to paint the scene along the Lake Superior shore.

The paintings were sold one after another but to different buyers and will be separated again.