Jack Shadbolt’s Mountain Light from 1988 stands as a compelling work by one of Canada’s most influential modernists, capturing both the physical majesty of the Pacific Northwest and the artist’s deeply personal visual language. Created during a mature phase of Shadbolt’s career, the painting reflects his enduring fascination with landscape as an expressive and symbolic field in which memory, sensation, and natural forces converge.

By 1988, Shadbolt had long moved beyond representational conventions, engaging instead with a gestural abstraction that evokes rather than describes. In Mountain Light, the titular subject emerges in layered passages of luminous colour, dynamic brushwork, and rhythmic composition. Shadbolt’s mastery lies in his ability to balance structure and spontaneity, anchoring the composition while allowing the paint itself to articulate motion and energy.

Mountain Light also reflects the artist’s long-standing engagement with global artistic traditions. Influences from Asian calligraphy and European modernism are subtly integrated into the work, infusing it with a sense of gestural immediacy and contemplative balance. Yet the painting remains distinctly rooted in British Columbia, where Shadbolt lived and worked for much of his life. In this work, Shadbolt invites the viewer to experience the landscape as a living, shifting phenomenon - an enduring testament to his belief in the expressive power of modernist painting.

Torben V. Kristiansen, a legendary figure in the Canadian art world, was a steadfast champion of Jack Shadbolt for many decades. As the owner and operator of the Art Emporium on Granville Street for more than 60 years, Kristiansen was both an astute collector and a discerning dealer of Shadbolt’s work throughout this remarkable period. Kristiansen’s passion for collecting extended broadly across Canadian art - he was an avid supporter of the Group of Seven, Jean Paul Riopelle, Tom Thomson, with a particular focus on artists from British Columbia such as Emily Carr, Gordon Smith and Shadbolt, among others.

Larger than life - much like Shadbolt himself - Kristiansen often spoke in his later years about the idea of an auction dedicated solely to Shadbolt’s work. Heffel is honoured to present this curated selection from his storied collection.

For the biography on Torben V. Kristiansen in PDF format, please click here.