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 became an early mainstay of the economy. This scene captures the log dump at the port of Royston, BC, which was established by Robert J. Filberg (1889 – 1977), owner of the Comox Logging and Railway Company. Filberg’s son, Robert McCormack Filberg, purchased this vigorous preparatory sketch along with two other graphite drawings from Hughes’s studio in Shawnigan Lake in the 1950s.

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 producing them in the early 1960s. His practice of executing them at night from his annotated field drawings caused eye strain, 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 enjoyed the process of creating cartoons and often expressed a longing to return to them.

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