Sold for: $4,688

PROVENANCE
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, reproduced page 34, the related 1952 pencil sketch reproduced page 116, and the related 1953 canvas reproduced page 117
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E.J. Hughes: One Collector’s Odyssey, 2005, reproduced page 21 and listed page 164, and the related 2004 watercolour reproduced page 85 and listed page 168
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced pages 15 and 78 and listed page 84
Robert Amos, E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia, 2019, the related 1953 canvas reproduced page 17 and a photo of Hughes with the related 2004 watercolour reproduced page 16

EXHIBITED
Vancouver Art Gallery, Exhibition by Paul Goranson, Ed Hughes and Orville Fisher, December 6-15, 1935, catalogue #21
Vancouver Art Gallery, Exhibition of Drypoints by Paul Goranson, Ed Hughes and Orville Fisher, August 11-23, 1936, catalogue #16

E.J. Hughes began to make drypoint etchings in 1935, after graduating from art school, and in that year produced 11 such prints, most of them landscapes. These works ably demonstrate Hughes’s skill as a draughtsman. Because the medium relies on direct drawing on a copper plate, the etchings also have a charming sense of immediacy.

Robert Amos, the official biographer of Hughes, notes that from 1933 to 1939, students from the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts would spend 10 days each summer on Savary Island, staying at the Royal Savary Hotel. Trees on Savary Island and another etching, of a fellow student, capture what was no doubt an enjoyable and memorable excursion for the young art student.

Relying on this early etching, Hughes later reinterpreted this image as a pencil sketch (1952) and then as an oil on canvas (1953, in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), both titled Trees, Savary Island. Decades later, he would also paint the same scene in watercolour (2004).

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.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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