Sold for: $4,375

PROVENANCE
By descent to a Private Collection, Vancouver
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 5, 1998, lot 4
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 25, same image reproduced page 38
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes: One Collector's Odyssey, 2005, page 87, reproduced page 88 and listed page 164
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced page 17 and listed page 84
Robert Amos, E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia, 2019, page 26, same image reproduced page 25

EXHIBITED
Vancouver Art Gallery, B.C. Society of Fine Arts: 27th Annual Exhibition, April 16 - May 2, 1937, catalogue #72

E.J. Hughes is renowned for his BC coastal and interior landscapes, rendered in oil, acrylic, and watercolour. His work in the medium of printmaking is less well known. Ian Thom wrote, “Although his print oeuvre is small—only twenty or so—he is one of the most significant printmakers to have worked in British Columbia.”

Angling for commercial success in the Depression years, Hughes produced a small suite of linocuts depicting Stanley Park in the mid-1930s, including this pleasing view of Second Beach. Dating from 1936, this early work predates the building of Second Beach Pool in 1940. It brings to mind the fine block prints of Walter J. Phillips, whose work Hughes admired. Of special interest, Robert Amos relates that it was while sketching in Stanley Park that Hughes met his future wife, Fern Smith.

Jacques Barbeau wrote about this print, “The mood is tranquil and serene. Yet it illustrates Hughes’ subtle ability to suggest less to achieve more.” With very few colours and sure, sinuous lines, Hughes generates interest in the foreshore rocks, the ocean waves and the dark evergreens beyond. Near Second Beach telegraphs Hughes’s graphic design skills and is one of his rare print works. This same image, with a slightly different tonal range, is in the National Gallery of Canada’s Prints and Drawings collection (acc. no. 29253).

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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