Sold for: $20,000

PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Sold sale of Important Canadian Art, Sotheby's Canada in association with Ritchie's, May 28, 2007, lot 197
Private Collection, Ontario

In 1936, after painting and teaching in Vancouver from 1926 on, Frederick Varley returned to the east, first living in Ottawa, then Toronto. However, British Columbia had made an indelible impression on him, and he longed to return. In 1957 he traveled back to that province with his patron Kathy McKay, this time not to the coast, but to the east shore of Kootenay Lake, in southeastern BC. This was the first of several trips to the area, with the last occurring in 1967.

The Skimmerhorn mountains, known as The Barrier, make up part of the Purcell range near Creston in the Kootenay region. Varley had often depicted rugged mountains such as this during his time in Vancouver, when he explored the North Shore range and camped and painted in Garibaldi Provincial Park. Skimmerhorn Barrier, BC relates back to his early coastal mountain subjects with its raw muscularity of form and sculpted planes. Cloud patterns and mists coalescing and dissolving over the mountains also fascinated Varley, and here the soft movement of the misty cloud rising at the top left is particularly poetic.

This work is #979 in the Varley Inventory listing.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars