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Former Vancouver Art Gallery curator Ian Thom wrote the catalogue entry for the painting, and said meeting Stern was “a turning point in Hughes’s life, because Stern agreed to take on Hughes’s work at his gallery.
“More importantly for the financially struggling artist, Stern agreed to buy the paintings outright, thus assuring Hughes of an income.”
The painting itself is a classic Hughes coastal scene — a Canadian Pacific steamship billowing dark smoke out its funnels as it pulls into the dock, with smaller boats, a lighthouse and islands looming in the background.
The dark blue of the water is reminiscent of the water in Fish Boat, Rivers Inlet, a 1946 Hughes painting that sold for a record $2.04 million in 2018. Three Tugboats, Nanaimo Harbour is no less charming, but has lighter colours, more in keeping with his popular coastal scenes in the 1950s and ‘60s.
![The 1952 E.J. Hughes painting Three Tugboats, Nanaimo Harbour will be sold at the Dec. 2 Heffel auction, and has a pre-sale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. For John Mackie [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://smartcdn.prod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/hughes-three-tugboats-nanaimo-harbour.jpg?quality=5&strip=all&w=100)
Heffel is also very high on Green and Gold, Portrait of Vera, a striking 1933-34 Frederick Horsman Varley painting of his most well-known muse, artist Vera Weatherbie. It’s estimated at $500,000 to $700,000.
The fall sale is the 25th anniversary of the first Heffel auction.
“Our first live sale was at the Wall Centre in November, 1995,” Heffel recalls. “We had a fabulous Alex Colville, Dog and Groom, on the cover (of the catalogue). In fact we often say that was the sale we had the most fun at, because we were just rookies out of the box.”
The Heffel brothers had taken over the Heffel gallery at 2247 Granville after its founder, their father Ken, died of a heart attack on Oct. 13, 1987. He was only 53.
