Sold for: $73,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, British Columbia

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 197, reproduced page 204
Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album: The Paintings, Volume 1, 1932 - 1991, 2011, reproduced page 88 and a wider view of this scene from 1989 entitled The Mouth of a Creek, Cherry Point, BC reproduced page 85

This is a rare E.J. Hughes acrylic from 1991, as in that year he stopped painting on canvas and switched to watercolours. Hughes’s handwritten inscription on a label on verso states, "Cherry Point is on the east coast of Vancouver Island, a few miles south of here (Duncan). The dark red trees are not wild, but ornamental trees in the garden of a seaside cottage, which is out of the picture to the left. The pencil sketch for this painting must have been done at the end of summer as the maples are turning yellow and orange." Hughes’s close observation of his subject manifests in intriguing details such as the driftwood tossed up onshore and crows perched on the beach and atop an evergreen. His layered vista is at first close and intimate, then lures our eye to more distant points of land. Ian Thom acclaims High Tide at Cherry Point as “a contemplative image, an ode to the beauties of the landscape that Hughes has depicted so faithfully and intensely for almost sixty years. Like all of his work, it encourages us to look with greater attention and to really 'see' the world.”

Included with this lot is a drawing by Hughes with his annotations related to the work. The dimensions of the drawing are 14 x 11 inches.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars