Study for 25 cent coin / Design for coin, wolf, 1965

In this study for the twenty-five cent coin depicting a howling wolf (which he eventually used instead for the fifty-cent coin) (left), Colville explores how to represent the animal. By using carefully modulated shades of grey, he produced a naturalistic impression of the seated animal’s stance, and the texture of its fur. For the artist, the howling wolf symbolized the “vastness and loneliness of Canada.” As with his preparatory sketches for his paintings, Colville’s sketch for this coin on the right relies on a geometric matrix to create ordered relationships between the various compositional elements. Many of Colville’s works display his passion for order, which developed in reaction to the chaos he witnessed in the Second World War as an official war artist.