Sold for: $7,500

PROVENANCE
Sold sale of Sotheby's Canada in association with Ritchie's, May 28, 2007, lot 167
Private Collection, Ontario

This Jack Bush oil sketch is a fascinating work that speaks both of the artist and his time. During this period, Bush was a classically trained artist and draughtsman, engaged in a Group of Seven-inspired en plein air practice. As with many Ontario-based artists from the generation following the Group, he altered their lyrical styles with a more drastic and angular approach, in line with the rise of the more industrial tone of modernism. While still romantic in feeling, the scumbled surface and akimbo angles also suggest, in retrospect, the artist’s movement toward abstraction. Notably important, however, are the artist’s materials themselves. The support is not typical of the ones used both earlier and later by Bush, and under close inspection, some of the painting’s textures appear out of sync with the brush-strokes and forms. In 1932, as the Great Depression began to exert its toll, Bush found himself working on more affordable boards, and sometimes, as may be the case here, painting over existing paintings for want of another surface. What remains is a work by a struggling young artist still in search of his place in art history.

The above essay was provided by Heffel. We thank Dr. Sarah Stanners for her assistance with researching this work.

This work will be included in Dr. Sarah Stanners’s forthcoming Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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