Winter Morning, an oil on panel work Tom Thomson completed in the spring of 1915, sold for nearly $1 million at auction Tuesday. Winter Morning, an oil on panel work Tom Thomson completed in the spring of 1915, sold for nearly $1 million at auction Tuesday. (Joyner Waddington)

Works by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson drew spirited bidding at auction in Toronto Tuesday night, with a notable forest landscape by Thomson ultimately fetching nearly $1 million.

Thomson's Winter Morning, an oil painting of a snow-covered forest scene dating from 1915, sold for $973,000 (including an 18 per cent buyer's premium) at the annual Joyner Waddington fall auction of Canadian fine art.

The painting drew attention, in part, because the reverse features both the artist's signature — a rarity for Thomson — as well as a host of interesting scribbles that track its provenance, including Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris's note "Not for sale."

The price Winter Morning achieved is among the top 10 for one of Thomson's works.

Harris himself was also one of the evening sale's highlights, with his canvas Mountain, Consolation Lake fetching $708,000. The artist gave the work, which depicts Mt. Quadra in Banff National Park, to his second wife, Bess, and it has been passed down through the family for years.

Franklin Carmichael's Mill Houses, West River, a northern Ontario industrial landscape that was once in his family's private collection, also sold for $708,000.

Pop artist Charles Pachter's Dressage, one of his Queen Elizabeth II and Moose pieces, sold for $35,400.

The Canadian auction season continues in Toronto with the Heffel sale on Thursday and the Sotheby's auction on Dec. 3.