DISTANT FERRY AT TWILIGHT

9,600.00
Price Realized: $
Artist: Robert Wakeham Pilot
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm)
Notes:

signed lower right

Note: This work was selected by Rous & Mann Press Ltd. (Toronto), the year following Pilot’s death, to illustrate a 1968 winter desktop calendar. A copy of the calendar accompanies this painting.

As a young man, Robert Pilot’s first exposure to art was through his step-father, artist Maurice Cullen, in whose studio he assisted, and with whom he often travelled and sketched. Pilot continued his art education at the RCA and the Art Association of Montreal, under the tutelage of William Brymner. After serving in the First World War, Pilot accepted an invitation to exhibit at the first Group of Seven show in 1920, as one of only three invited guests (the others were Albert Robinson and Randolph Hewton). Afterwards, with the generous assistance of an arts patron, Pilot travelled to Paris to further his studies. He trained at the Academie Julian, painted at Concarneau the following year, and exhibited at the Paris Salon, becoming elected to the Salon National des Beaux-Arts. Upon his return to Canada, early success continued with the purchase of a work by the National Gallery of Canada, a solo exhibition at the Watson Galleries, and.election into the RCA. Pilot was a decorated artist during his carrer, and in 1968, following his death, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts honoured Robert Pilot by organizing a retrospective exhibition of his work, which also travelled to The National Gallery in Ottawa and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Robert Pilot is one of Canada’s most important painters working in the Impressionist tradition. He is particularly renowned for scenes of Quebec City, and of ferries crossing the St. Lawrence. This ethereal work depicts a distant ferry in a misty, atmospheric landscape. It exemplifies the mastery of technique that led art critic Paul Duval to refer to Pilot as “a pictorial poet of twilight”. Here, PiIot’s use of soft colour, brush work, and subtle tones adeptly captures the mood, the season and that time of day where the vestiges of daylight cede to the blues and pinks of evening.

12,000.00
Estimate:
16,000.00
 - 
LOT: 70

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