PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes: One Collector’s Odyssey, 2005, pages 75 and 95, reproduced page 82 and listed page 164, and the related 1953 oil painting reproduced page 50 and listed page 166
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced pages 21 and 68 and listed page 84
Robert Amos, E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia, 2019, the related 1953 oil painting reproduced page 167

Although E.J. Hughes is most often associated with Vancouver Island, where he lived for many years, the central-coast fjord of Rivers Inlet represents an iconic subject within the artist’s renowned production. Jacques Barbeau writes that this sketch “was executed in 1937 when Hughes was engaged in commercial fishing in Rivers Inlet.” According to Barbeau, “E.J. often reminisced about his arduous fishing experiences in that area in the 1930s. This was not a vocation that he cherished. It was only a means of survival made necessary by the general economic depression of that period.”

From early sketches such as this one, Hughes would go on, after the war years, to paint bold, dramatic canvases such as Fishboats, Rivers Inlet (1946) and Abandoned Village, Rivers Inlet (1947). This specific sketch he translated into the oil painting titled Rivers Inlet in 1953, soon after he had gained representation by Max Stern at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, and as he was gaining notice in the Canadian art world.

This early work was executed at a time when Hughes, recently graduated from art school, was working to establish himself as a commercial artist. The sketch shows his successful use of patterning, in the lines used to shade the distant landforms and the sinuous repeating curves of the motorboat’s wake. Hughes was always a meticulous draughtsman, and here one can see the faint grid pattern he used to construct and balance his composition.

Collector Jacques Barbeau said his interest in the art of Hughes was first sparked when he saw one of the artist’s paintings reproduced on the front cover of a 1958 Vancouver telephone directory. More than a decade later, in 1969, Barbeau acquired his first work by Hughes after paying a visit to the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, which had represented Hughes since 1951. Barbeau purchased several “cartoons,” the detailed graphite drawings that the artist, a meticulous draughtsman, would prepare leading up to an oil painting. Over the years, as Hughes transitioned from oils to acrylics and watercolours, the collection of Barbeau and his wife Margaret Ann (née Owen) grew to 80 works, encompassing sketches, prints and paintings from all phases of the artist’s lengthy career. Fifteen masterpieces from this prominent collection have been on loan to the Audain Art Museum in Whistler since 2016, on public display in the Barbeau–Owen Gallery.

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