PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Kaspar Gallery, Toronto
Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc., Vancouver
Corporate Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
The E.J. Hughes Album, The Paintings - Volume I, 1932 - 1991, 2011, reproduced page 73

“There can be little doubt that Hughes has a unique place in the history of British Columbian and Canadian art. He has a vision that is unmistakably his own, and yet it is his great gift that these images, the product of that vision, belong to us all. They enable us to experience and understand the landscape, and our relationship to it, in a new and deeper way.” – Ian M. Thom

The waterfront around Crofton, not far from E.J. Hughes’s home in Duncan on Vancouver Island’s east coast, was one of his favourite areas to paint, and the small Crofton ferry was a choice motif. This beautiful painting is replete with fascinating visual elements - from the sculptural driftwood in the foreground and the beach with its patterning of rocks and beach-goers to the charming ferry sailing to port backed by the vitality of Crofton’s active industrial area. Not only is Low Tide at Crofton Beach an outstanding example of Hughes’s exceptional attention to detail, it also exhibits his sensitivity to atmosphere. In the sky, smoke from the stacks on the horizon are contrasted with vaporous clouds, and in mid-ground, delicate reflections shimmer across the still water. Hughes’s coastal palette of blues and greens is enlivened by touches of bright orange on the beach and on the dock in the distance. Low Tide at Crofton Beach is an outstanding example of Hughes’s vision of the West Coast, in which communities live in a harmonious balance and nature is an object of transcendental enjoyment.

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