PROVENANCE
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 22, reproduced page 24
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes: One Collector’s Odyssey, 2005, reproduced page 32 and listed page 164
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced page 5 and listed page 84

E.J. Hughes made this rare early print while he was a student at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts. Thom calls it “the best of the early prints” and acknowledges the “unusual subject—a man making a drawing of a skull.” The image incorporates bold graphic effects and a shallow space that still draws the eye into the image. The dramatically lit figure could be the young artist himself. We are left to wonder at the meaning of the title Hughes gave this work, but Thom concludes that “the quality of preternatural stillness combined with a subtle psychological tension, the freezing of transient life into a timeliness moment, are features that inform all of his work.”

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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