BURST
The E.J. Hughes painting Entrance to Howe Sound sold for $4,801,250 at a Heffel auction in Toronto on Nov. 19, the highest price ever paid for an artwork by a B.C. artist.
It was painted in 1949, based on a graphite sketch Hughes had done in 1937. The subject is a small island filled with trees, in the midst of the wavy blue waters of Howe Sound. A Union Steamship is sailing by, with dark mountains looming behind.
“It’s a blockbuster, from his prime period,” said David Heffel, who runs the auction with his brother Robert.
The previous record for a B.C. artist or artwork was Emily Carr’s The Crazy Stair (The Crooked Staircase), which sold for $3,393,000 at a Heffel auction in 2013.
The previous record for an E.J. Hughes painting was the $2,041,250 paid for his 1946 painting Fishboats, Rivers Inlet, at a Heffel auction in 2018.
The auction began with a bang, with 27 works from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s art collection. All 27 HBC paintings sold for more than their pre-auction estimate, led by the 1935 Sir Winston Churchill painting Marrakech. It sold for $1,561,250, over 2 1/2 times more than its high estimate.
“There was global interest in it,” said David Heffel “The good news is it was sold to a Canadian.”
There was spirited bidding for many of the HBC artworks, even for paintings done for HBC calendars. Charles Comfort’s Barnston and Ballantyne at Tadoussac, 1846, had an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000, but sold for $571,250. The painting features two traders in the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s distinctive striped coats, and Heffel got into the vibe by donning one when he sold the lot, which drew laughter from the live audience.
Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith’s 1894 painting Lights of a City Street had a higher estimate ($100,000 to $150,000) than the Comfort painting, and also wound up soaring to new heights, selling for $691,250.
Entrance to Howe Sound came from the Lillian Mayland McKimm Collection. McKimm died at age 100 shortly before the Vancouver preview for the auction began.
“She had received a letter from both the King of England, the prime minister and the governor general congratulating her on her centennial birthday,” said Heffel.
McKimm was originally from Calgary but had been on Vancouver Island since the 1970s. The Hughes painting was a perfect fit in her house.
“She had it displayed above her mantelpiece, overlooking the waterfront on a beautiful 10-acre property in Sidney,” he said. “It was an idyllic setting for an idyllic painting.”
Hughes was a war artist for Canada during the Second World War, and Entrance to Howe Sound was executed with paint and canvas that he was given when he left the Armed Forces.
“When the war artists were decommissioned in ’46, they were allowed to take all their materials from the Ottawa studios,” said Heffel. “Hughes ended up in Shawnigan Lake or Victoria with the means to create some masterpieces in that period. (But) it was a time where he’s not very prolific at all.”
That makes late-1940s Hughes paintings rare, and valuable. Entrance to Howe Sound was purchased by an online bidder.
“We have hundreds empowered to bid online,” explains Heffel. “Within that context, there’s a couple dozen that are empowered to bid over that million-dollar-to-$5-million price bracket.”
Entrance to Howe Sound is now the fourth most expensive Canadian artwork sold at auction. The 1926 Lawren Harris painting Mountain Forms tops the list at $11,210,000, followed by two Jean-Paul Riopelle abstracts, Vent du Nord, which sold for $7,438,750 in 2017, and Sans titre (Composition No. 2), which sold for $5,701,250 in 2023.
New records were set for 16 artists: Hughes, Bell-Smith, Comfort, James Wilson Morrice, David Blackwood, Franklin Arbuckle, William Berczy, Lorne Bouchard, Paraskeva Clark, John Innes, Cornelius Krieghoff, Charles Pachter, W.J. Phillips, Adam Sherriff Scott, Niviaqsi, and Francis Holman.
The overall sale totalled $31,446,999.80. It included four parts.