Artist Information
Artist
Edward John Hughes, RCA, OC, OBC (1913-2007)Role
ArtistDate made
1958Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in North Vancouver, Edward John Hughes was a renowned Canadian painter, known for his strong and compelling images of the land and sea in British Columbia. He is recognized as one the most distinctive and long-lasting artists in B.C. art history. He was a full-time professional artist for over seventy years, producing an outstanding body of work.
Hughes studied at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art, graduating in 1933. One of his teachers, famed Canadian Group of Seven artist Frederick Varley (1881-1969), and another member, Lawren Harris (1885-1970), saw his talent, recommending him for the inaugural Emily Carr Scholarship. In 1934, he formed an artistic partnership with Vancouver artists Orville Fisher (1911-1999) and Paul Goranson (1911-2002). Together, they completed murals for the Malaspina Hotel in Nanaimo and for the B.C. Pavilion at the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco.
At the outset of World War II, Hughes enlisted with the Royal Canadian Artillery as a gunner, serving as an Official Canadian War Artist until 1946. It is said he produced perhaps the "most significant body of work by a Canadian artist in the Canadian War Museum". After discharge, he returned to the West Coast settling in Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island. Hughes spent much of the rest of his life on the Island pursuing a lifelong study of the province and its landscape, painting pictures of scenery, steamboats, islands, and the ocean. In the 1950s and beyond, Hughes' commissions and reputation grew, especially after Dr. Max Stern, owner of the Dominion Gallery in Montreal with whom he had an exclusive contract, encouraged him to expand his range of subject matter. He was one of 18 Canadian artists hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway to paint an interior car mural on the new transcontinental train. And Canada Post used one of his images on a stamp commemorating 125 years of Confederation.
He exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1950, 1968, and 1970. Hughes was awarded with Honorary Doctorates from the University of Victoria in 1994 and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1997. In 2003, the Vancouver Art Gallery held a solo retrospective exhibition of his work, a show that displayed his stature as a chronicler of the West Coast, and of B.C. The Gallery has the most extensive public collection of Hughes' work. Hughes died on the Island at the age of 93, leaving behind a lengthy record of creative achievement.
For further information see -
Robert Amos, “E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island” (Victoria, B.C.: TouchWood Editions, 2018).
Robert Amos, “E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia” (Victoria, B.C.: TouchWood Editions, 2019).
Robert Amos, “The E.J. Hughes Book of Boats” (Victoria, B.C.: TouchWood Editions, 2020).
All three books available in the UCBC Library.
