- 83
Edwin Headley Holgate 1892 - 1977
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 CAD
bidding is closed
Description
- Edwin Headley Holgate
- Sketch in Winter
- signed with initials lower right; dated ca. 1938 on the reverse
- oil on panel
- 21.2 by 26.8 cm.
- 8 1/4 by 10 1/2 in.
Provenance
Private Collection
Catalogue Note
Holgate’s considerable talents show their strength and depth in this fine, small winter sketch. Perhaps his breadth of technical prowess as a printmaker (exceptional woodblock engravings), book illustration, portraits, murals, all in addition to his figure and landscape paintings, helped make him so. In any case, his ability to render a scene such as this with such consummate skill sets him high among his contemporaries.
The subject is a simple hillside in his beloved Laurentians, where the terrain is heavily treed but hilly, dotted with lakes, and sliced by rushing rivers and small rivulets where trout abounded. This hillside, however, has been cleared, and the view stretches up to the two peaks, miles away. The few buildings placed before us are not particularly striking, but they create a weight at the bottom of the picture space. The scattering of bare rocks behind them and on up the hill, pepper the middle distance judicially. Just below the peaks is a long line of forest, which flows across the whole panel from side to side and up through the pass between the two peaks.
This is a masterful work, packed with detail, yet open and airy, and full of light. And like so much of Holgate’s work, it does not follow a formula: but has created its own original pattern.
The subject is a simple hillside in his beloved Laurentians, where the terrain is heavily treed but hilly, dotted with lakes, and sliced by rushing rivers and small rivulets where trout abounded. This hillside, however, has been cleared, and the view stretches up to the two peaks, miles away. The few buildings placed before us are not particularly striking, but they create a weight at the bottom of the picture space. The scattering of bare rocks behind them and on up the hill, pepper the middle distance judicially. Just below the peaks is a long line of forest, which flows across the whole panel from side to side and up through the pass between the two peaks.
This is a masterful work, packed with detail, yet open and airy, and full of light. And like so much of Holgate’s work, it does not follow a formula: but has created its own original pattern.