Sold for: $85,250

PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist
By descent to the present Private Collection, British Columbia

LITERATURE
Letia Richardson, Silence and Solitude: The Art of W.P. Weston, Richmond Art Gallery, 1993, pages 13 and 14

EXHIBITED
Art Association of Montreal, Canadian Group of Painters, 1948
Western Canada Art Circuit Travelling Exhibition, 1948
Montreal Art Gallery, Canadian Group of Painters, 1949
Vancouver Art Gallery, Second Quarterly Group Exhibition, October 31 - November 19, 1950, catalogue #16

William Weston arrived in Vancouver from London in 1909 and soon became an important figure on the early Vancouver art scene – as an artist and art educator. The year before this work was painted, 1946, Weston retired from teaching at the Provincial Normal School in Vancouver, giving him more freedom to paint. That same year, he was given a one-person retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery; at that time, he was only the third artist to be so honoured, after Fred Varley and Emily Carr.

One of Weston’s important themes was the mountains of British Columbia, whether in summer, as in Red Mountain – New Denver, or in winter, covered with glaciers and snow. Weston was aware of Lawren Harris and his abstractions of mountains, but he differed from Harris in that he depicted specific locations and wanted “to keep something of the character of the mountain,” as he said. Letia Richardson wrote that “Weston’s strength was his ability to create an attractive beautiful environment and a scene of omnipotence and fear.” This is a stunning summer portrait of this mountain in the West Kootenay region, its verdant slopes cloaked in green. Shadowed fissures crease its sides, increasing the sense of its sculpted mass. Red Mountain towers before us, remote and unknowable, creating a sense of awe with its stark power.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars