Provenance

Private Collection, Alberta
Christopher Varley Art Dealer Inc., Toronto
Private Collection, USA

Metchosin was the most important of all the sites where Emily painted. She loved to sketch and paint its glorious coastline, dramatic seascapes and skies, quiet woods, and farmlands. In Emily’s day Metchosin District included the gravel pits at Royal Bay and Braden Mountain in the Metchosin Hills. In June and September of 1936 Carr had permission to park the “Elephant”, her caravan trailer, in a small wood above the Producers Sand and Gravel Pit in Metchosin. In Hundreds and Thousands, Emily describes her struggles to paint the gravel pits and the beauty of space: “The predominating characteristic here, perhaps, is space, the great scoops out of the gravel pits, the wide scoop of sea”. Dola Acres, daughter of Bert Parker, superintendent of the gravel pits, remembers that Carr’s caravan was parked up in a grove of trees on the hillside. Emily felt that she had done good work during her camping trips here in the “Elephant”.