Literature continued:

Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album, Volume 1, The Paintings, 1932 – 1991, 2011, the related 1952 canvas reproduced page 18 and listed page 91

Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes through the Decades: The Paintings, 1936 - 2006, 2012, the related 1952 canvas, titled Taylor Bay, Gabriola Island, reproduced page 17 and in a photo page 107

Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, titled as Taylor Bay, Gabriola Island, reproduced page 39 and listed page 85

CBC News, “E.J. Hughes Paintings Going to Audain Art Museum in Whistler,” October 7, 2014, the related 1952 canvas reproduced, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/e-j-hughes-paintings-going-to-audain-art-museum-in-whistler-1.2789783

Jacques Barbeau and Lara Shecter, E.J. Hughes at the Audain Art Museum, 2016, the related 1952 canvas reproduced pages 33 and 45

John Moore, “Audacious Audain,” BC BookWorld, Summer 2016, the related 1952 canvas, titled Taylor Bay, Gabriola and dated 1964 [sic], reproduced page 7

Robert Amos, The E.J. Hughes Book of Boats, 2020, the related 1952 canvas, titled Taylor Bay, Gabriola, reproduced page 31 and a detail pages 32 - 33



E.J. Hughes developed his paintings in a methodical manner. Beginning with a drawing on location, he often made tiny compositional studies, followed by what he called a “cartoon.” The cartoon was executed with a soft pencil on Hi-Art illustration board, a thin sheet of cartridge paper mounted on cardboard for stability.[1]

Hughes made his first cartoons during World War II, while working in the Canadian war artists’ studio in Ottawa. The cartoon was a very useful step in establishing values before moving into colour. After the war, Hughes drew these in the evening at the kitchen table while he and his wife listened to the radio.[2]

In 1958, Hughes realized that this night work was becoming too much for his eyes, and so began to make watercolours in the daytime as preparation for his oil paintings. Yet, in writing to his dealer, Max Stern, Hughes noted: “Composing cartoons in tone only is something I am glad to have spent so many years doing, and I think it would be advisable for many young student-painters to do so.”[3]

All the stages that led to Hughes’s paintings are the subject of keen interest and allow us to understand how he achieved his powerful compositions. Taylor Bay, Gabriola Island, BC (1952), the painting that resulted from this working drawing, is now part of the Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection works on display at the Audain Art Museum at Whistler, and is justly considered one of his masterpieces.

We thank Robert Amos, artist and writer from Victoria, BC, for contributing the above essay. Amos is the official biographer of Hughes and has so far published four books on his work. Building on the archives of Pat Salmon, Amos is at work on a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.

1. Leslie Allan Dawn and Patricia Salmon, E.J. Hughes: The Vast and Beautiful Interior (Kamloops, BC: Kamloops Art Gallery, 1994), exhibition catalogue, 42.

2. Ibid., 41.

3. E.J. Hughes to Max Stern, December 30, 1960, Special Collections, University of Victoria.

For the biography on Jacques Barbeau and Margaret Owen Barbeau in PDF format please click here.