Gordon Smith, following his time as a soldier in World War II, settled in British Columbia, the home of his wife, Marion. For Smith, the abundant forests of the Pacific Coast became a subject to which he returned many times in his painting career. These forests had been the subject matter for many artists before him—notably Emily Carr and the Group of Seven painter Arthur Lismer, to name only two. The forest was also an important subject for Smith’s contemporaries such as E.J. Hughes and Don Jarvis. Smith sought a means to depict the forest in his own style. Unlike Carr, Smith did not work directly from nature, choosing to work from photographic images, which he took in abundance. Smith was also keen to challenge himself as a painter, and Late Summer is an excellent example of his singular artistic vision.

Smith eschews an easy composition by choosing to engage directly with the brilliantly sunlit forest itself rather than an extensive vista. We are immediately confronted with the visual splendour of the natural world. The dense growth of a variety of trees, both coniferous and deciduous, animates the whole surface of the work. Just behind the prominent screen of foliage in the foreground is an intensely lit area of brush that allows Smith to define the spatial recession of the image. Behind this pool of light, a curtain of larger tree trunks constitutes the background. Smith only hints at the landscape beyond these trees, causing the viewer to return to the intricately varied forms of the trees and brush of the middle and foreground.

Smith’s command of colour and form is especially evident in the foreground foliage. His brushwork is both rapid and incisive, vividly suggesting the tangled foliage but never closely defining the individual leaves. It is in the brightly lit middle ground of the image that Smith demonstrates his command of both form and brushwork. Brilliant light almost dissolves the forms of leaves, branches and tree trunks, but Smith is careful to preserve enough of the trunks to suggest their substance and strength. The upward thrust of the tree trunks evokes both the richness and vitality of the natural world. The illuminated patch of trees on the left side of the painting, echoed by a softly lit group of trees at the right, provides a subtle balance to the dramatic lines of the tree trunks in the background. The whole image is alive with a sense of the life and energy of the forest.

Like Carr and Lismer before him, Smith found his own painting vocabulary to depict the wondrous variety of coastal British Columbia’s forest landscape. Late Summer is a vivid confirmation of both the uniqueness and power of Smith’s oeuvre.

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay.