This Week in History, 1947-2023: An iconic B.C. painting goes up for sale for the first time in 75 years

In 1940 the Alma Mater Society at the University of British Columbia started collecting 15 cents per student to put together an art collection. 

In 1948, the non-profit student organization purchased its first artwork, the E.J. Hughes painting Abandoned Village, Rivers Inlet, for $150. 

Seventy-five years later, it’s going up for sale at the May 25 Heffel Auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art. The pre-auction estimate is $1.25 million to $1.75 million. 

Abandoned Village, Rivers Inlet was painted in 1946-47, just after Hughes was demobilized from the Canadian Army, where he had been a war artist. 

Hughes was never that prolific, but works from the late 1940s are quite rare, because he typically only finished one or two paintings per year. Many consider this his best period, and his 1946 painting, Fishboats, Rivers Inlet, sold for a record $2,041,250 at a Heffel auction in 2018.