Description:

Frederick Arthur Verner, OSA, ARCA (1836-1928), Canadian
SHORELINE, SUNSET, 1887

watercolour on wove paper
signed and dated lower left
12.5 x 25 in — 31.8 x 63.5 cm

Estimate: $7,000—9,000 CAD

  • Provenance: Sotheby's Canada, Toronto, 13 May 1974, lot 134
    Private Collection, Toronto, ON
  • Dimensions: 12.5 x 25 in — 31.8 x 63.5 cm
  • Medium: watercolour on wove paper
  • Notes: Frederick Arthur Verner emerged as one of the most distinctive painters of the Canadian West, despite spending much of his mature career in England. After brief training in England in the 1850s, Verner returned to Canada and opened a studio in Toronto. Initially working in photography and photo-colouring, he soon turned to painting scenes of Indigenous life and the prairie landscape, subjects that were already being impacted by settlement and industrial expansion. During the 1860s and 1870s, Verner travelled west to sketch buffalo herds, camps, and river scenes, gathering material that he would later rework into finished oils and watercolours.

    In August 1880, Verner relocated permanently to England. As Joan Murray explains: “except for three trips home, he stayed there for the rest of his life. Probably his move to London was an indication of the growing popularity of his work. As a painter of the North American frontier, he was a rara avis in London. His canvases ‘have all the charm of complete novelty to most of the British public,’ Toronto’s The Globe said in 1908. He did not wish to stay in Canada and eke out a meagre existence like his friend Paul Kane, [...or] George Catlin. Verner wanted to do better.”[1]

    Painted in 1887, probably while Verner was living in England, this watercolour depicts a serene wilderness scene at sunset. Verner had worked consistently in watercolour since the 1850s, and, as Murray notes, after 1877 many of his finest works were executed in the medium.[2] Here, the setting sun marks a calm transitional moment as night approaches. The sky dominates the composition, reflecting what Paul Duval identified in 1967 as a defining feature of Verner’s work: “the sky [is] an omnipresent symbol to the unroofed frontier traveller and Verner conveys its significance in watercolour in a manner rare among his contemporaries.”[3]

    [1] Joan Murray, The Last Buffalo. The Story of Frederick Arthur Verner, Painter of the Canadian West, Pagurian Corporation, 1984.
    [2] ibid.
    [3] https://www.klinkhoffart.com/verner-frederick-a
  • Condition: Good overall condition.
    Slight water accretion upper right quadrant.

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May 28, 2026 5:00 PM EDT
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