Edward John Hughes, BCFSA CGP RCA (Canadian, 1913-2007)
Looking South Over Skaha Lake (British Columbia)
signed and dated 'E.J. Hughes 1961' (lower right) and signed and dated again, and titled (on the stretcher bar)
oil on canvas
30 x 40 in.
framed 40 x 50 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance
The artist.
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, Canada, May 1961, from the above.
Waddington Galleries, Montreal, Canada.
Property from a Private Bel Air Estate.

Exhibited
Ottawa, Canada, National Gallery of Canada, The Fourth Biennial of Canadian Art 1961, May 19 - September 3, 1961.
Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, E.J. Hughes: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 5 - 29, 1967, [the exhibition traveled to York University, Toronto, November 13 - December 8, 1967].

Literature
E.J. Hughes and Dorothy Shadbolt, E.J. Hughes: A Retrospective Exhibition, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1967, unpaginated, illustrated.

Edward John 'E.J.' Hughes was an important 20th Century Canadian landscape and seascape painter. With a charmingly unique style difficult to categorize, Hughes' carefully crafted compositions are defined by the use of skewed perspective, simplification of form, flat planes of space, an obsessive focus on minute detail within a broad scene, saturated color and hyper-locally identified subjects. Rigorous preparation, and compositional structure and organization, are hallmarks of the artist's work, as seen in the mature period masterwork, Looking South Over Skaha Lake.

Born in North Vancouver to parents of modest means, Hughes spent his earliest years in the harbor city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island before the family returned to North Vancouver when he was 10. From an early age, Hughes was interested in drawing, and he focused on the local harbor and dock activity near his childhood homes, a subject that he would return to throughout his artistic life. At age 16, Hughes enrolled at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts, a progressive art school with a rigorous class schedule whose instructors included Frederick Varley, a member of the Group of Seven.

In his early career, Hughes worked as a printmaker and a muralist, and in 1939 he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Artillery as a gunner. In 1942, Hughes became Official Army War Artist and worked in Canada, Great Britian and Alaska until 1946, producing an estimated 1,500 wartime works.

After leaving the army, Hughes and his wife, Fern Smith, returned to the West Coast of Canada in 1946. In the post-war period, Hughes's paintings focused more intentionally on the local landscape, and he began to produce works that would indicate the direction of the rest of his career. Hughes process of creation during this period was to make in situ reference sketches in pencil, and occasionally smaller oil sketches on panel. He would then return to the studio and often, before embarking on a full-scale oil painting, would continue to organize multiple sketches into 'intensely worked' complete compositional cartoons. ¹ As his career progressed, Hughes streamlined his preparatory process and preceded the final oil painting with a finished watercolor, as was the case with the present work.

Hughes was the first recipient of the newly established Emily Carr Scholarship in 1947, created to support young artists. He was nominated by Lawren Harris, a Group of Seven member who was living in British Columbia. The two-year scholarship gave Hughes financial freedom to focus on his work and he made many sketching and painting trips during this period. Hughes joined the Canadian Group of Painters in 1948, and institutions began purchasing his work including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the University of Toronto, and the National Gallery of Canada (where he was distinguished as one of the few living artists represented in their collection at the time).

Hughes met Dr. Max Stern, owner of Dominion Gallery in Montreal in 1951 and the dealer purchased all available paintings on the spot, which was the start of a decades long exclusive relationship. Despite his growing success, Hughes lived a very reclusive life, and Stern supported the artist both financially and emotionally, writing regular expressions of support in their frequent correspondence. ² 'Stern's assessment of his new artist was astute. He realized that Hughes was not a man of the world and perhaps not entirely sure of his direction as an artist. One of the features of Stern's correspondence is the constant reassurance of his belief in the value of Hughes' work and vision.' ³

'By 1960s, Hughes had earned a considerable reputation in Canada and certainly with in British Columbia, partly due to the efforts of Max Stern to promote his work across Canada but also because of the consistent creation of remarkable compelling works. His importance was increasingly recognized.' ⁴ In 1961, the same year of the present work, Hughes was included as the only realist artist in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on British Columbian art called 'Five B.C. Painters.' ⁵

Hughes spoke about his preferred landscape subjects in the documentary: '...One of the many reasons I paint is because I think nature is so wonderful. I want to try to get my feelings of that down on canvas. If possible, I feel that when I am painting, it is a form of worship. I see how wonderful nature is and how wonderful art is...and by trying to produce these works of art, I feel that I am just showing my appreciation of these creations. It feels so much better to me to think that an artist is working to show his appreciation of what already has been created than creating things himself.' ⁶

Hughes first visited the city of Penticton and Okanagan Lake in 1956 and returned to the area in 1958. Depictions of Okanagan Lake are numerous in the artist's oeuvre but the present work depicting nearby Skaha Lake is a rarer subject. According to Hughes scholar and artist Robert Amos, '[t]he artist had been in the area sketching in 1958. At that time he took the bus south from Penticton, asking to be let off when he saw this site. In a letter to Max Stern, director of the gallery, which accompanied the painting, Hughes explained that 'the bright green patches on the hill sides are irrigated fruit orchards, probably apples or peaches, as this is part of the Okanagan Valley, well known for its fruit growing.' ⁷ Amos confirms that 'Hughes sent the canvas to his exclusive dealer, the Dominion Gallery of Montreal, on May 15 1961, and for Looking South over Skaha Lake, 30 x 40 inches he was paid $275...Shortly after Hughes sent the canvas, on June 3 1961 he sent along the watercolour (sic) of Looking South Over Skaha Lake, 14 x 16 inches to the Dominion Gallery. This watercolour (sic) preceded the oil, as was his habit.' ⁸

In Looking South Over Skaha Lake, the sweeping view of the freshwater lake is from a high hillside vantage point, with colorful topographical layers of natural and planted flora in the foreground that guide the viewer's eye toward the deep blue calm lake waters. Although nature dominates the scene, red roofed houses dot the surrounding hills, and a white-lined road and railroad track are visible nestled into the hillside curves.

In works such as Looking South Over Skaha Lake, Hughes's singular style and passion for the British Columbian landscape are in technicolor view, reminding us of the artist's important contributions to the history of Canadian Art.

We are grateful to Robert Amos, Hughes scholar and artist for his assistance in cataloging this lot. The painting will be included in Robert Amos's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

¹ Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, Douglas & McIntyre, Ltd., 2002, p. 73.
² Ibid., p. 88.
³ Ibid., p. 89.
⁴ Ibid., p. 157.
⁵ Ibid., pp. 157-8.
⁶ As quoted in Ibid., p. 158.
⁷ Robert Amos, professional communication, March 14,2024.
⁸ Ibid.
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The work retains original canvas and stretcher bars. There are scattered areas of craquelure concentrated primarily in the sky upper right and upper left, in the lake upper center, and left and right of train tracks lower center. Minor white spots of surface accretions and a scattered 4 in. area of an older surface accretion on the water left center. A pea-sized spot of arrent white paint splatter lower right edge with a smaller one in the field lower center.

There is a surface drip upper left - does not fluoresce. Under UV examination, no evidence of retouch.

Photos of the artist painting the preliminary watercolor of Looking South Over Skaha Lake curtesy of Robert Amos.