Lot 87
BARKER FAIRLEY, R.C.A.
Additional Images
Provenance:
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Sweetman
Private Collection, Brighton, Ontario (by descent)
Literature:
Barker Fairley and Gary Michael Dault, Barker Fairley Portraits, Methuen, Toronto, 1981, page 96 and page 97, reproduced in colour.
Note:
Born in 1915, Paul Sweetman was an archaeologist (the first to survey Peterborough’s famous Petroglyphs), a chorister (with a passion for Gilbert and Sullivan), and an alumnus of the University of Toronto, where he would have met and befriended Fairley.
Reflecting on this portrait, Barker Fairley wrote, “This study of Paul I have always felt especially proud of without asking myself why. I painted it years ago and have looked at it frequently since, but only now do I begin to see the light. I remember saying suddenly to myself that if a familiar friend of Paul’s were walking up to the picture, he would say that this was Paul long before he was near enough to identify the features, because in a very special way the whole thing is Paul...”