PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist
Acquired by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) for its Contemporary Art of the Western Hemisphere Collection, New York, 1941
Tobias Fischer Auctions, New York, 1966
Frederick W. Thom Ltd., Toronto
Private Collection, Ottawa

LITERATURE
Retrospective Exhibition: W.P. Weston, A.R.C.A., Vancouver Art Gallery, 1959, the related ink drawing reproduced front cover and on the invitation to the opening
Ian Thom, W.P. Weston, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1980, listed pages 35 and 39

EXHIBITED
British Columbia Society of Fine Arts 24th Exhibition, Vancouver, 1934
University of British Columbia Art Center, Vancouver, 1935
Art Gallery of Toronto, An Exhibition of Paintings by the Canadian Group of Painters, January 1936, titled as Howe Sound

William Percy Weston is a remarkable figure in the history of art in British Columbia. Born and trained in England, Weston immigrated to BC in 1909, when he took up a position as an art teacher at King Edward School. In 1914, he was appointed the art master at the Provincial Normal School where teachers were trained. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1946.

His position at the Normal School meant that he was not dependent on his art to make a living. This allowed Weston to take considerable time to evolve his painting style to one that he felt reflected the drama and beauty of the BC landscape. The progress towards his mature style was slow. As Weston himself commented, “I painted some pretty wild things, but I always came a little closer to my own language of form and the expression of my own language of form and the expression of my own feeling for this coast region; its epic quality, its grandeur, its natural beauty.”[1]

For Weston, Howe Sound—Yesterday, Today and Forever was a singularly important painting. At the time, an artist could expect few sales.[2] This canvas entered the collection of IBM in 1941, becoming part of the corporation’s Contemporary Art of the Western Hemisphere Collection. This purchase represented an important recognition of Weston and his work. Indeed, when Weston was given a retrospective exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1959, he used an ink drawing of the painting as the only illustration in the catalogue, even though the canvas was not in the exhibition.

In a brief introduction to the same retrospective, artist Gordon Smith wrote of Weston’s paintings, “They are full of enthusiasm and vitality that he still has as he climbs over the rocks in search of a sketching site.”[3]

This “enthusiasm and vitality” is evident in Weston’s commanding depiction of the waters and mountains of Howe Sound. The “epic quality” of this landscape is seen in both Weston’s title and in the visual drama of the painting. The foreground is indicated by a single decayed tree trunk, which places the viewer above and before the grand expanse of Howe Sound and the islands and dramatic mountain peaks that define the landscape. The eye is drawn across the water to the lower mountain forms, which frame the majestic, snowbound peak in the background. As Weston’s title suggests, this magnificent landscape has a timeless beauty and power.

Weston’s goals as an artist are clear in his own words:

The mountains and forests are so gigantic that man seems puny and his slight inroads are comparatively insignificant. If, as I believe, the function of the artist is to express his reactions to the environment, he cannot but record the overwhelming preponderance of nature and omit the human element. Trees two hundred feet high and mountains ranging from five to fifteen thousand feet so outscale man and his works that one hardly notices his presence.[4]

Howe Sound—Yesterday, Today and Forever is a superb example of Weston’s work. The canvas deeply reflects, in the words of one reviewer and fellow artist, “his innate reverence for nature’s handiwork.”[5]

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay. Thom is the author of W.P. Weston, published in 1980.

1. Quoted by Margery Dallas, Portrait of an Artist: W.P. Weston, A.R.C.A., C.G.P., B.C.S.A., 1962, unpublished manuscript, Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

2. Only 22 of the 58 works shown in Weston’s 1959 retrospective were in collections, and only two of them were in public collections.

3. Gordon Smith, untitled introduction, Vancouver Art Gallery invitation, 1959.

4. W.P. Weston, undated note, formerly in the collection of his daughter, Mrs. Doris Wood.

5. Mildred Valley Thornton, “Veteran Artist’s Work on Show,” Vancouver Sun, May 12, 1959, 31.

Howe Sound—Yesterday, Today and Forever was featured on a card issued under the title British Columbia Artist Series. The cards do not have a publication date, but they were likely printed in the mid-1940s.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars