E.J. Hughes painting with personalized letter in Heffel spring sale
Posted Apr 19, 2012 12:04:54 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER – An E.J. Hughes painting containing a personalized letter from the late British Columbia artist is among the works bound for Heffel Fine Art Auction House’s spring sale next month.
Entitled “Englewood,” the piece includes a typed note — dated April 12, 1989 — in which Hughes explains how he came to paint the work in his Shawnigan Lake studio in 1951.
Hughes also wrote: “I hope that as the years go by, you will get much more pleasure from your painting, and that you will notice different little things about it every time you see it.”
The oil-on-canvas has a pre-sale estimate of $250,000 to $350,000.
Other highlights of Heffel’s Canadian spring art auction, set for May 17 in Vancouver, include eight works by Emily Carr. Among them is “Eagle Totem,” a mature period oil-on-canvas with a pre-sale estimate of $600,000 to $800,000.
The sale also has 36 works by members of the Group of Seven, including Lawren Harris’s sketch “Lake Superior,” which is returning to Canada from the U.K. It’s expected to fetch $400,000 to $600,000.
Other highlights include “La plage americaine” (pre-sale estimate of $500,000 to $700,000) by Jean Paul Lemieux, whose “Nineteen Ten Remembered” went for $2.34 million at Heffel’s fall 2011 auction. The auction house says that’s the world record for post-war and contemporary Canadian art sold at auction.
Heffel’s spring sale also has nine paintings by 92-year-old B.C.-based artist Gordon Smith, who is considered the province’s greatest living artist.
A total of 185 lots are in the sale, which Heffel expects will achieve between $9 and $12 million.
Previews of the works will be held in Montreal (April 26 to April 28), Toronto (May 3 to May 5) and Vancouver (May 12 to May 16).
Heffel’s fall sale totalled $16.8 million in sales.
