Edwin Headley Holgate

Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes

This depiction of a brown-eyed ski patroller is a fine example of Edwin Holgate's ability to express character through a few choice details. The young woman is confident, bold and strong. Her lips match the colour of her coat and her eyes the colour of the mountains, thus she is linked to the setting in this concise, focused work that speaks of the outdoors, of the cold and of physical activity. The sitter was the first female ski patroller to work at Morin Heights ski hill in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec. She was 21 years old at the time and is wearing her bright orange ski patroller's uniform. Holgate was also a good skier, and the Holgates and the family of the sitter were friends, as they all lived in Morin Heights. The sitter had copied a pattern for a bomber jacket that Holgate liked and sewed it for him, and this portrait was painted in return. She had sat for her portrait before, being the subject of lot 180 in this sale. Holgate's portraits are iconic - The Lumberjack, in the collection of the Sarnia Public Library and Art Gallery, Ludivine, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Naturalist, in the collection of the Musée du Québec and The Skier, in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, are definitive Canadian images and, in The Ski Patroller, we now have another.