BCSFA CGP OC RCA
1913 - 2007
Canadian
Allison Harbour
graphite on paperboard
signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 1955 and inscribed with the Dominion Gallery inventory #A1632 on the gallery label
15 x 19 1/4 in, 38.1 x 48.9 cm
Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000 CAD
Sold for: $52,250
Preview at:
PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Barbeau Owen Foundation Collection, Vancouver
LITERATURE
E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Galerie Dominion, Dominion Gallery, 1991, the related 1991 canvas The Store at Allison Harbour II listed page 24
From Sketches to Finished Works by E.J. Hughes, Nanaimo Art Gallery, 1993, the related 1991 canvas listed page 18
Jacques Barbeau, A Journey with E. J. Hughes: One Collector’s Odyssey, 2005, reproduced page 7 and listed page 166
Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album, Volume 1, The Paintings, 1932 – 1991, 2011, the related 1991 canvas reproduced page 88 and listed page 100
Jacques Barbeau, E.J. Hughes Through the Decades, Volume 2, The Paper Works, 1931 – 1986, 2014, reproduced page 47, a detail image reproduced page 76, and listed page 85; the related 1991 canvas reproduced page 77
Jacques Barbeau and Lara Shecter, E.J. Hughes at the Audain Art Museum, 2016, the related 1991 canvas reproduced page 83
EXHIBITED
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, E.J. Hughes, RCA: 40 Years with Galerie Dominion, 1991, the related 1991 canvas
Nanaimo Art Gallery, From Sketches to Finished Works by E.J. Hughes, 1993, the related 1991 canvas
Between 1944 and 1959, in preparation for his oil paintings, E.J. Hughes made “cartoons,” detailed graphite studies complete in every detail. The oil painting of The Store at Allison Harbour (1955, private collection) was preceded by the fine cartoon offered here.
The cartoon shows a quaint little shop, Allison Harbour Trading, situated on a wharf, where it is fronted by flowers in planters and a comfortable bench. To the left is a fishing boat, the Cruiser, which is unusually compact from bow to stern. A dog sits on the foredeck in front of the cabin. The mariner’s laundry is hung out to dry at the stern.
Hughes liked this image so much that he painted it twice. In his descriptive note for the second painting, The Store at Allison Harbour II (1991), he wrote: “This painting was produced from a pencil sketch done on the spot in 1953, during a trip on a small oil tanker, and sponsored by Imperial Oil. The location is a refuge for small boats, halfway up the BC coast and opposite the open Pacific Ocean.”[1]
As usual the cartoon and painting are almost identical, though the cartoon shows more of the dock in the foreground. In the painting the stovepipe on the right was subsequently straightened and the planks on the dock below have become less ragged.
The painting Allison Harbour II was exhibited at the Dominion Gallery in 1991 and in the show From Sketches to Finished Works by E.J. Hughes (Nanaimo Art Gallery, 1993) and was also published as a Christmas card by Unicef in 1994.
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 five books on his work. Building on the archives of Hughes’s friend Pat Salmon, Amos is at work on a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.
1. Frame label written by Hughes for the 1991 acrylic The Store at Allison Harbour II. A copy of the label is in Special Collections, University of Victoria.
For the biography on Jacques Barbeau and Margaret Owen Barbeau in PDF format, please click here.
Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000 CAD
All prices are in Canadian Dollars
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