Rare among paintings by E.J. Hughes, this complex and charming watercolour has never been published before. In the summer of 1967, Hughes made the short drive from his home at Shawnigan Lake to Crofton. From there he caught the little ferry across the Stuart Channel to Vesuvius, a village on Saltspring Island four kilometres away. The painting Vesuvius Wharf, Salt Spring Island had its origin in a remarkably detailed sketch Hughes drew on the island at that time.
Every four years or so, Hughes took a summer-long break from his studio to go out into the field to make drawings. These formed the basis of his paintings in years to come. To help fund his sketching trips, he received grants from the Canada Council in 1959, 1963 and 1967. In a letter to his sister Zoe in March 1967, Hughes explained:
I applied for the full amount of $5500 but was awarded $3700. However this will still allow about seven months of sketching and help us finance a newer car for the thousands of miles of driving under pressure. This time I’m sketching in territory I haven’t covered in former trips. Namely to northern BC as far as Hazelton and Prince Rupert, to south east B.C. in the Kootenays, … and in the Gulf Islands as well as in areas of the east coast of Vancouver Island that I have missed. Fern is coming on the longest trips with me.[1]
On May 12, 1967, Hughes reported to Max Stern of the Dominion Gallery: “I am commencing my Canada Council sketching trips now, on the largest of the nearby Gulf Islands, namely Salt Spring Island, and commute almost daily from home to motif by car ferry from nearby Crofton on Vancouver Island.” His Saltspring Island subjects included Vesuvius, St. Mary’s Lake, the village of Ganges and Fulford Harbour.
Later that summer he spoke with staff writer Marie Cadorette of the Prince George Citizen:
“In the first few years after the war, I was known as B.C.’s primitive painter,” recollected Mr. Hughes.
“As I began to get more atmosphere in my work and a little less design I was classified by one critic as a magic realist.
“In one way I still represent a primitive—I still get every shape finished sharply.
“I am deliberately painting what is picturesque,” he said with conviction.
“Many painters try to avoid the beauty of nature.
“They are so afraid their paintings will be called pretty and picturesque.”[2]
Hughes completed the summer’s travels in late August and on October 21, 1967, he dispatched his first new painting, Vesuvius Wharf, Salt Spring Island, to his exclusive dealer, the Dominion Gallery in Montreal. Just at that time the first Hughes retrospective exhibition, curated by Doris Shadbolt, was on show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Under the auspicious headline “The Hughes Revelation,” well-respected critic Joan Lowndes’s review appeared in the Vancouver Province. “To stand among Hughes’ paintings is to experience mind-expansion as the doors of perception swing open,” she wrote. “Here is a painter whom we must revalue upwards.”[3]
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. E.J. Hughes to Zoe Foster, March 1967, and other correspondence, Special Collections, University of Victoria.
2. Marie Cadorette, “Academy Artist Visits Here on Sketch Tour,” Prince George Citizen, July 24, 1967, 4.
3. Joan Lowndes, “The Hughes Revelation,” Vancouver Province, October 6, 1967.
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