Sold for: $4,375

PROVENANCE
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 119, the related 1953 canvas Unloading Logs, Comox Harbour reproduced page 120
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes: One Collector’s Odyssey, 2005, reproduced page 34 and listed page 165 and the related 1953 canvas reproduced page 12 and listed page 166
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced page 33 and listed page 84
Jacques Barbeau and Lara Shecter, E.J. Hughes at the Audain Art Museum, 2016, the related 1953 canvas reproduced page 55

Living on Vancouver Island during the 1950s, E.J. Hughes had access to numerous nearby sketching sites. While he often chose to depict natural landscapes, he also had an interest in industrial scenes. Ian Thom writes that “over the years, [he] paid particular attention to the logging industry.” Technically sophisticated and with a fine sense of perspective, this sketch from 1948 is replete with details, such as the angled logs of the ramp, the jumbled logs below, and the precise guylines associated with the operation. The artist’s written notations for future reference can also be faintly seen.

Like many of E.J. Hughes’s detailed preparatory sketches, A Log Dump at Royston, Comox Harbour relates directly to a fine canvas he painted a few years later. The oil painting, titled Unloading Logs, Comox Harbour (1953), is among works on loan from the Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection to Whistler’s Audain Art Museum. Unloading Logs has the distinction of being the first Hughes canvas that Jacques Barbeau acquired for his collection, adding to the graphite “cartoons” and watercolours he had collected before 1980.

Collector Jacques Barbeau said his interest in the art of Hughes was first sparked when he saw one of the artist’s paintings reproduced on the front cover of a 1958 Vancouver telephone directory. More than a decade later, in 1969, Barbeau acquired his first work by Hughes after paying a visit to the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, which had represented Hughes since 1951. Barbeau purchased several “cartoons,” the detailed graphite drawings that the artist, a meticulous draughtsman, would prepare leading up to an oil painting. Over the years, as Hughes transitioned from oils to acrylics and watercolours, the collection of Barbeau and his wife Margaret Ann (née Owen) grew to 80 works, encompassing sketches, prints and paintings from all phases of the artist’s lengthy career. Fifteen masterpieces from this prominent collection have been on loan to the Audain Art Museum in Whistler since 2016, on public display in the Barbeau–Owen Gallery.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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