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He and his advisers gave a number from 1 to 10 to a particular work, making it clear how adamantly his bidder should go after the piece, particularly if it was destined to become part of his collection at the new, renovated Art Gallery of Ontario, said Dennis Reid, senior curator of Canadian art at the AGO. Thomson was continuing to acquire works for the collection in the week before his death on Monday at the age of 82.

Thomson had a careful, calculated approach to buying art, yet his presence helped to maintain the market's momentum. Observers say that when the billionaire media magnate decided he had to have a major Canadian piece, he was more than willing to pay record prices, notably $5.06-million in 2002 for Paul Kane's 1845 oil painting Scene in the Northwest -- Portrait.

Observers feel that Thomson's death will have a big impact on the Canadian market, which has maintained a solid footing since the dot-com stock boom of the late 1990s.

Even while helping to buttress the high end of the market for the rarest major Canadian works, observers say Thomson indirectly broadened the interest for lesser known and contemporary Canadian art.

"What we've been very excited about in the last two years is that the field has broadened incredibly in terms of those who are enthusiastic about Canadian paintings -- not only in the traditional 19th-century and early 20th-century group. We're very excited because there is a new group of Canadians who are interested in buying contemporary Canadian art at auction," said Hugh Hildesley of Sotheby's and a veteran watcher of the Canadian market.

He added that Thomson may have pushed younger buyers to more contemporary objects, in part because the price for older, major works rose too high. "He would rejoice in the fact that this will not mean the departure of the Canadian art market. He helped it grow to a point where it has tremendous stability," Hildesley said.

However, Vancouver's Anthony Westbridge, publisher of the Art Market Report and the Canadian Arts Sales Index, suggested that the key question is how many bidders there are in Thomson's echelon. There's the risk that without Thomson, the market could thin out.

"My gut reaction is that it could have a serious impact at the very high end of the market, which in itself might also impact the lower end of the market. If the pieces that people were expecting to go for $1.5-million or $2-million now start going for $500,000 or $600,000, what does that do to the pieces going for $50,000 to $100,000?" Westbridge said. "If nobody is going to replace him, then I think prices might well step back a little bit."

Yet Gabrielle Peacock, director of fine art at the auctioneers Ritchies in Toronto, feels that many buyers may have in fact been scared away from bidding on works that they felt Thomson was interested in.

And as the AGO's Reid noted, "It takes two people to establish an auction record price. One person doesn't do it alone. My sense is that there are more than two out there. I don't think you are going to see any less action around the great, great objects. I really do think that Canadian art, in that sense, has come of age.

"The great objects are recognized immediately, and there are a handful of collectors out there who are prepared to go the limit to try to get them."

Ultimately, the kind of works Thomson collected come up for public auction so infrequently that there will always be a market for such rare items.

"Keep in mind, we didn't go out to set the market," said David Loch, Thomson's close friend and art adviser. "Anything that I bid on, on behalf of Mr. Thomson, in all the years I did it for him, I was the last man in the bidding. We weren't the first people in [making early bids]. We were the last people in. The market itself determined where these paintings and works of art were going."