PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, inventory #E1756
Private Collection, Montreal, April 2, 1954
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, inventory #D6854, May 29, 1969
Private Collection, Vancouver, June 19, 1978
Sold sale of Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 24, 2011, lot 52
Private Collection, Vancouver

BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Archives of the National Gallery of Canada, Lawren Harris, letter to H.O. McCurry, December 1950
Jacques Barbeau, The E.J. Hughes Album: The Paintings Volume I, 1932 - 1991, 2011, entitled Bones Bay, reproduced page 21

In 1953, E.J. Hughes was asked by the publishers of Standard Oil’s magazine The Lamp to travel up the British Columbia coast on their supply ship, the Imperial Nanaimo. He was to provide illustrations for a story about the ship and its work on the coast. Hughes, who had not had a significant commission since he worked on mural commissions in the 1930s, was advised by his Montreal dealer, Dr. Max Stern of the Dominion Gallery, to agree to the commission, but he also advised Hughes to sell the resulting paintings through the gallery. The contract was arranged through Dr. Stern, and Hughes made a voyage up the British Columbia coast in the summer of 1953.

Hughes produced a number of highly detailed pencil drawings on the journey, complete with colour notes. He submitted the drawings to the editor of The Lamp and five subjects were selected for colour illustrations in the magazine. Hughes then worked up the paintings in the fall of 1953 and early winter of 1954.

One of the communities visited was Bones Bay, on West Cracroft Island in Johnstone Strait. From 1928 until 1951, Bones Bay was a thriving cannery run by the Canadian Fishing Company. Both gillnetters and seine fleets provided fish for the cannery. By the time Hughes visited in 1953, the cannery operation had been closed, but Bones Bay was still a port for the fishing fleet. Like most of the communities visited by the Imperial Nanaimo, Bones Bay was remote, only accessible by water. The visits of the ship were therefore welcome and vital, but were – of necessity – brief, the crew concentrating on off-loading the fuel as quickly as possible.

Hughes detailed these visits and the role of the Imperial Nanaimo in his paintings. Although he was very conscious of the fact that this was a commission (note the Imperial Oil Limited sign), these works far transcend commercial illustration, and Hughes was careful to balance the sign with two other text elements. The paintings Hughes produced from this trip are remarkable for their ability to suggest something of the character of the communities visited and the life of the ship itself.

In Storage Tanks at Bones Bay, Cracroft Island, Hughes has given us the view from the deck of the ship. The only indications of the ship itself are the elements that appear at the lower edge of the painting, the chain-link rail and, at the lower right, a red stack, a white railing and a lifebuoy. Our concentration is clearly meant to be on the activities onshore and Hughes has directed our eyes there in a variety of ways, most notably in the forceful lines of the hoses which lead from the ship, the vector of the railing at the lower right and, at the left, a piece of the ship’s rigging. Indeed, the dock and area around the storage tanks are alive with activity – three men at their work and a large black dog to supervise! Although Hughes does not show us the faces of the men in any detail, he has given them each an element of individuality: the uppermost man with his bushy black beard, the green cap of the fellow in the middle and the distinctive “Indian” sweater worn by the man on the dock. Even the oil drums are differentiated in shape and colour. Hughes has also been careful to make the storage tanks themselves slightly different in scale and colour.

Each element of the composition contributes to making us believe in the veracity of the scene but, when we take time to analyze how the composition has been put together, we realize that, far from being casual, this painting is the result of great deliberation. For example, to balance the relative busyness of the fore- and middle grounds, Hughes has made the background of the image serenely calm, with a screen of trees atop a rocky slope, and the trees of the middle ground providing a visual bridge. Hughes has given us much to captivate our eyes, from the shadows of the oil drums on the dock to the view into the storage shed and tiny area of water, but the real wonder of this image is the light that pervades the whole scene. It seems to imbue the world – the trees, bushes and ground cover in particular – with a great vitality. As in all of Hughes’s best work, Storage Tanks at Bones Bay, Cracroft Island has a timeless quality but is vividly present. As Lawren Harris wrote of Hughes’s work, “It is that kind of painting – factual, detailed, accurate, full of interest but its art quality transcends all of these.”

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