Sold for: $70,800

PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc., Vancouver
Peter and Joanne Brown Collection, Vancouver, acquired from the above in 1983
Sold Sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 23, 2016, lot 201

LITERATURE
Eve Lazarus, "Frederick Varley's House," http://evelazarus.com/frederick-horsman-varleys-lynn-valley-1881-1969, accessed May 31, 2016

After the closure in 1935 of the British Columbia College of Arts, which Frederick Varley had founded with Jock Macdonald, Varley concentrated on his painting, living a hermit-like existence in a house on the bank of Lynn Creek on Vancouver's North Shore. This house had a spectacular view to Mount Seymour and Lynn Peak that Varley could paint right from his studio. Years later, he confessed in an interview, “That was the happiest time. The only place in the world that I truly felt was mine.” The area around Rice Lake held a great attraction for him. Varley was working mostly in watercolour during this time, and this is a particularly fine watercolour of this location, with a wide range of pastel tints applied with a flurry of brush-strokes that capture the delicate beauty in the profusion of vegetation around the trail. Varley entices our eye to follow the curve of the trail towards the peaks and a blue sky marbled with clouds. This striking mountaintop view contrasts the intimate scale of the foreground, with its soft growth, with the strength of the triangular rocky peaks.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars