CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART - Heffel

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 13
6 EDWARD JOHN (E.J.) HUGHES
BCSFA CGP RCA 1913 ~ 2007
Unloading Logs, Comox Harbour
graphite on card, signed and dated 1952
and on verso signed, titled and dated
14 x 19 1/4 in, 35.6 x 48.9 cm
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the Artist
By descent to the present Private Collection, Vancouver Island
LITERATURE:
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, the canvas
produced from this drawing entitled Unloading Logs, Comox Harbour,
1953, in The Barbeau Foundation Collection, reproduced page 120
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes, 2005, the canvas produced
from this drawing entitled Unloading Logs, Comox Harbour reproduced
page 12 and a related drawing entitled Log Dump at Royston, Comox
Harbour reproduced page 34
In 1951, E.J. Hughes moved to Shawnigan Lake; from there he explored
the coastline of eastern Vancouver Island, finding great interest in all the
activities he saw, including working boats and harbours. On Vancouver
Island, logging followed farming as the mainstay of the economy. This
scene is of the log dump at Royston, started by R.J. Filberg, owner of
Comox Valley Logging. His son purchased this vigorous cartoon drawing
with lots 5 and 7 in this sale from Hughes’s studio in Shawnigan Lake.
Hughes’s ability to capture not just the details of the scene but its unique
feeling and clarity of atmosphere in highly finished graphite drawings
such as this is truly remarkable. These tonal drawings, called cartoons,
are rare, as he stopped doing them around 1959. His practice of executing
them at night from his annotated field drawings caused eyestrain, and he
was under pressure from Max Stern, his dealer at Dominion Gallery, to
produce watercolours and oils during daylight. However, Hughes was
known to have expressed a longing to return to making cartoons, for the
sheer enjoyment of the process of doing them.
ESTIMATE: $10,000 ~ 15,000
6