Sold for: $205,250

PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto
Sold sale of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 30, 2018, lot 32
Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Jane Young, E.J. Hughes, 1931 – 1982: A Retrospective Exhibition, Surrey Art Gallery, 1983, reproduced page 67 and listed page 94
Leslie Allan Dawn and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994, page 39
Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album: The Paintings, Volume 1, 1932 - 1991, 2011, reproduced page 43

EXHIBITED
Surrey Art Gallery, E.J. Hughes, 1931 – 1982: A Retrospective Exhibition, November 18 – December 11, 1983, traveling in 1983 – 1985 to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Edmonton Art Gallery; Glenbow Museum, Calgary; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, catalogue #28

E.J. Hughes was already well known for his stunning West Coast landscapes when in 1956, sponsored by Vancouver art collector Doreen Norton, he took his first sketching trip to the British Columbia interior. Hughes was greatly impressed by what he saw; he wrote to Norton, “I can understand your enthusiasm in the country up there. The views are really magnificent.” In 1958, supported by a Canada Council fellowship, he returned to the Okanagan and to the area northeast of the Okanagan Valley. He made detailed graphite sketches that he later used in his studio at Shawnigan Lake, on Vancouver Island, to produce oils such as this magisterial work. This stunning panorama showcases Hughes’s keen powers of observation and his ability to divine the essence of the landscape. Here he captures both the fine details of the town, overshadowed by its dramatic setting, and the vastness of the surrounding landscape, from the sinuous Thompson River to the striking clouds rolling up over the distant mountains. The colour palette in this canvas is brilliant and intense - a hallmark of his sought-after 1960s works. Hughes’s unique and powerful vision of the landscape in works such as this made him one of the most important landscape painters in Canada.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars