Sold for: $55,250

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

LITERATURE
Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album: The Paintings, Volume 1, 1932 – 1991, 2011, the 1979 oil Low Tide at Crofton Beach reproduced page 73

One of E.J. Hughes’s favourite subjects was Crofton, a town with a deep-water port and a ferry terminal for Saltspring Island. In the background is a pulp and paper mill; on the east shore of Vancouver Island, industry existed side by side with nature, and Hughes found these juxtapositions interesting. As early as 1939, Hughes explored this subject with Orville Fisher and Paul Goranson in a suite of 12 murals with themes of British Columbia’s industry and life, created for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.

In Low Tide at Crofton Beach, Hughes deploys a striking perspective along the beach towards the ferry terminal and mill, and depicts numerous people enjoying the ambience of the shore. The composition is meticulously thought out: after passing over the foreground screen of branches, everything points forward - the huge driftwood log leads the eye to stairs to an unseen house, and then lines of rocks lead the eye along the beach to the small ferry, an iconic image in Hughes’s work. The natural colour palette is punctuated by splashes of colour: beach towels draped over a boulder, bright hues of clothing, the cars on the ferry, and the red ends of stacked lumber on the mill dock.

After 1991, Hughes exclusively painted watercolours. He often returned to past subjects, as he did here, to a 1979 oil, and this remarkable work showcases Hughes’s technical prowess and his refined compositional skills.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars