Lot 73: Edward John (E.J.) Hughes 1913 - 2007 Canadian oil

Edward John (E.J.) Hughes 1913 - 2007 Canadian oil on canvas Mt. Stephen 32 1/4 x 25 inches 81.9 x 63.5 centimeters signed and dated 1963 and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed with the Dominion Gallery inventory #D33442 Literature:Leslie Allan Dawn and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior, Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994, page 43 Ian M. Thom, E.J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002, page 158 The E.J. Hughes Album, The Paintings - Volume I, 1932 - 1991, 2011, reproduced page 39 Provenance:Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, British Columbia In 1963, E.J. Hughes received his second Canada Council grant, and with the $3,000 he was awarded he was able to travel to the Interior of British Columbia to areas such as the Thompson Valley and the Fraser Valley near Lillooet, and as far east as the Alberta Rockies. The subject of this exceptional oil is Mount Stephen, located in the Kicking Horse River Valley of Yoho National Park, half a kilometre east of Field in British Columbia. Hughes used a recent purchase, a Pontiac Acadian car, to access his subjects, carry his art supplies and protect his pencil sketches from sudden bad weather. Hughes did not learn to drive until he was 45, but found the use of a car to be most liberating. His success in the early 1960s made this possible - his paintings were used for the covers of two BC Telephone Company directories, he had completed a Canadian Pacific Railway mural commission and the Dominion Gallery in Montreal was handling sales of his work. Recognition was on the rise, and in 1961 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation included him in a short television documentary on British Columbia artists called Five BC Painters. Hughes further describes this scene on a paper label on verso: "The greenish-whiteness of the Kicking Horse River in the foreground is not caused by foam but by a white sediment brought down by its tributary, the Yoho River. The tunnel entrance on the left is the famous CPR spiral tunnel, and the tunnel entrance on the right is, I believe, just a small tunnel. The small red car between these is on the main Trans-Canada highway, and the gravel road at the bottom of the painting is the Yoho Valley Road." It was not uncommon for artists to be daunted by the vast scale, density of forest and panoramic majesty of British Columbia, particularly the Rockies. Hughes's humble and reverential nature can be sensed in a letter to his sister regarding the landscape he had seen on this trip in which he states, "It will be a problem to make art out of such beautiful and picturesque subjects, but I feel it can be done..." Clearly, in Mt. Stephen he rose heroically to the challenge, due to his great love of nature and predilection for panoramic scenes. In the 1961 CBC film, Hughes stated, "One of the reasons I paint is because nature is so wonderful...I feel that when I am painting, it is a form of worship." Hughes's paintings of the 1960s are sought after because of their brilliant colour palette, fineness of detail and intensity of vision. Mt. Stephen embodies all these properties. It is a stunning composition, with the regal peak the focus, wrapped by a glacier at the top, and with screes of rock debris running down its flanks. Hughes's inclusion of elements such as the roads and the red car brings the warming presence of humanity into the scene. They also add a sense of scale to the vastness of the scene - demonstrating that here, nature overwhelmed man. His palette of greens is cool, dominated by the light and dark olive tones in the evergreen forest. In counterpoint to the predominantly green, grey and ochre palette is the foaming white water in the river and the white snow still lingering in the rocks and on the glacier at the peak. Hughes contrasts this white with tones of peridot in the water and teal in the glacier. He had a keen eye for patterning, which is consciously emphacized in the loose tumble of rocks gathered at the top of the slope, the stands of evergreens and the vegetation dotting the steep hillsides. Al these fine elements make the magestic Mt. Stephen a superb example of Hughes's 1960s period, an embodiment of the sublime beauty of British Columbia.