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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 47
127 EDWIN HEADLEY HOLGATE
AAM BHG CGP CSGA G7 RCA 1892 ~ 1977
Canadian Minesweeper, East Coast
oil on canvas board, initialed and dated 1941
and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed
with the Dominion Gallery inventory #A2390
18 x 19 in, 45.7 x 48.3 cm
PROVENANCE:
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection
LITERATURE:
Rosalind Pepall and Brian Foss, Edwin Holgate, The Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts, 2005, reproduced page 156 and listed page 173
Pierre Théberge, “Come Discover the Eighth Member of the Group of
Seven, Edwin Holgate”, National Gallery of Canada Press Release, 2006
EXHIBITED:
The Elsie Perrin Williams Memorial Art Museum, label on verso
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Edwin Holgate, 2005,
catalogue #101
Pierre Théberge stated, “Edwin Holgate was a Montreal artist and a great
Canadian painter, attached to Québec’s rural culture yet open to the
world. Portraits, landscapes and scenes of daily life are depicted with
mastery but, above all, Holgate’s sensibility and expressiveness went
beyond mere representation and questioned the human relationship to
nature…Holgate’s work shows us an artist of talent, captivated by
everything around him, but especially by the human dimension of
things.”
During World War I, Holgate enlisted and served in France and Canada
with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces from 1916 to 1919. His work
Over the Top from 1918, now in the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art at
the Canadian War Museum, is a masterpiece that showed Holgate’s
sensitivity to the difficult nature of his subject. In it, we see three soldiers
exiting a trench at night in silhouette, guided by the faint light of a starry
sky. It is a tense and rather frightening scene, extremely evocative of the
danger the men faced. In the years between the wars, Holgate established
himself in Montreal. He traveled back to Europe to study, then on return
to Canada taught at the Art Association of Montreal and became a
member of the Group of Seven. He established himself as a fine figurative
painter, exploring modernism in his nudes and portraits of ‘Canadian
types’, and sketched the landscape of Canada, in particular that of
Quebec. He painted at Skeena with A.Y. Jackson, and executed murals for
the Jasper Room at the Château Laurier in Ottawa as well as for the
Canadian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
When World War II broke out, Holgate enlisted again, this time as an
official war artist. He did not see action, serving instead with the
Canadian Air Force at the shipyards in Sorel, Quebec (now Sorel~Tracy).
There, Holgate painted the activities of this busy shipbuilding dock,
which also served as a major wartime armament port. Among the men he
would have met were the sailors who served aboard the minesweepers.
He has captured all the tension and danger of their duty in this dramatic
scene from 1941. Canadian Minesweeper, East Coast is a dynamic and
energy~filled work. Holgate has painted the scene from a vantage point
that creates a strong feeling of tension. We are looking down onto the deck
of the ship, watching four men who are intent on their duties. The boat is
clearly caught in high seas, and the expanse of water beyond the safety of
the deck churns and boils. The angle of the deck, the frothing water and
our lofty vantage point all contribute to a feeling of charged tension ~
Holgate has caught the action at a high point indeed. An interesting
similarity of brushwork can be seen between the brush~strokes on the
hull of the ship and the way Holgate has handled the water with repeating
circular stokes. Despite the tension of the scene, its treatment is quite
decorative. The ship’s rigging, running in thin lines across and through
the foaming spray, is dynamic and precise. Holgate was a master of
sculpting his forms, and the shapes and planes of the minesweeper would
have presented an opportunity for him to exploit his colour~modeling
skills. The grey of the ship is uniform, but Holgate has given it interest in
his subtle shading, and treated this unyielding, bulky feature with
delicate and careful brushwork. The visual contrast of the ship’s brute
form against the energy of the wildly churning sea is masterful. However,
it is in the angle at which Holgate has depicted the deck of the ship where
he fully arrests our attention. The strong lean to the left makes us feel a
part of the scene, as if we are on the ship with Holgate, trying to keep our
balance as the men comb the water for mines.
ESTIMATE: $250,000 ~ 350,000