PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist
David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, 1974
Estate of the Artist
Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal
Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Important Canadian Art, Sotheby’s Canada in association with Ritchie’s, May 25, 2009, lot 51, reproduced back cover
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
James Adams, “$175,000 for $70 Harris Sketch a Bright Spot in Sale,” Globe and Mail, May 26, 2009, mentioned page R3
Sarah Stanners, Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2, 1955 – 1965, 2024, reproduced page 281, catalogue #1.157.1961.430

EXHIBITED
Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal, Jack Bush, 1909 – 1977, 1985

Jack Bush referred to the background colour of this painting as “Matisse blue.” Ten days prior to painting June 24–26, Bush was deeply impressed by the perfect simplicity of Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River (figure 1), which he saw while visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. The swathe of blue down the right-hand side of Matisse’s large-scale painting is picked up by Bush and made more vibrant in his own painting. The same blue appears in a few other select areas in Matisse’s masterwork, as well as a Kelly green colour that Bush seems to carry over to his late June painting.

Matisse painted Bathers by a River over several years, first between 1909 and 1910, again in 1913, and completing the composition between 1916 and 1917 by adding the bold vertical bands to the background, doing away with a river scene to frankly present figures in abstraction. The four figures themselves are drastically simplified, with circles and loose arcs for breasts, empty ovals for faces and columnar limbs.

For Bush, it was the feeling of the painting, not its treatment of subject matter that inspired him. When he encountered Bathers by a River, he was struck by the power expressed by such simple means and felt encouraged to distill his own work down to basic shapes enlivened by colour. Bush’s painting June 24–26 is entirely composed of rectilinear shapes, including a central band of unpainted canvas that echoes the background of Matisse’s painting.

On the same trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, Bush also admired Mark Rothko’s art. At the time, in 1961, the institute owned two Rothko paintings: Untitled (Painting), dated 1953 – 1954 (figure 2); and Number 19, from 1949. However, the latter was on tour at the time of the Canadian painter’s visit. The untitled Rothko must have been the one Bush eyed. This large work on canvas is a quintessential Rothko featuring two hovering fields of colour united by a coloured border; it is a sweet medley of orange, yellow and apricot. The dominant orange in the Rothko painting surely inspired the orange in Bush’s June 24–26. The influence is even more convincing if we consider the technique used to apply the colour.

When looking at Bush’s painting, we see a dark pink or magenta (it is hard to determine against the blue background) showing through beneath the orange bar. With the yellow bar, a lighter and brighter yellow is seen underneath, at the edges. These sections of underpainting appear deliberate, rather than some sort of change of mind in the artist’s choice of colours. It is possible that Bush emulated the effect that Rothko created with his paintings, where layer upon layer of slightly varying colours translate into a warm and buzzing full-bodied colour.

Bush’s June 24–26 presents a carefully considered crescendo of colour, not simply slapped together but lovingly inspired by Matisse and Rothko, yet presented in a style all his own. If this highly original painting must be categorized, it belongs to his Thrust series, which brought him positive critical attention in New York in 1962. Bush was entering the international art scene and he did so boldly, with a respect for the recent past and a clear vision for fresh compositions in his own future.

We thank Dr. Sarah Stanners, director of the Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné, contributor to the Bush retrospective originating at the National Gallery of Canada in 2014, and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Art History, for contributing the above essay.

This work is included in Stanners’s recently published Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, as #1.157.1961.430.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars