BC LANDSCAPES EXHIBITION

This month we had planned an exhibition celebrating our unique and diverse province - in light of the many wildfires and their devastation we have decided to donate a portion of the proceeds from any sale from our BC Summer Exhibition to a Wildfire Relief fund to help families in need. We hope that you are all safe, our hearts go out to all of those affected in BC as well as across Canada and the US, including Maui.

Our Summer Exhibition highlights paintings of beautiful British Columbia from our current collection. Enjoy a tour through our province including views of homesteading on Shuswap Lake, historic Victoria Harbour, the start of the Cariboo Trail at Yale, Haida Gwaii, Jervis Inlet, and our local Vancouver Harbour and Garibaldi Park.

The deepest fjord on the coast of British Columbia, Jervis Inlet stretches almost 90 km from the Straight of Georgia near Texada Island to the Skwakwa River. The three arms, Prince of Wales Reach, Princess Reach, and Queens Reach are the site of two of Canada’s highest waterfalls, James Bruce Falls (840 m) and Alfred Creek Falls (700 m). The best known inlet in the area is Princess Louisa Inlet which is accessed through Malibu Rapids. Princess Louisa Marine Provincial Park is the home of Chatterbox Falls and is one of BC’s hidden gems. This view most likely depicts Goliath Bay on the left with Mount Churchill in the distance.

Born in Dresden, Ontario in 1890, Mildred Valley Thornton received her early training at Olivet College (Michigan), the Ontario College of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent many years working among the First Nations people of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, attempting to recapture on canvas their vanishing culture.  Her book Indian Lives and Legends, published in 1966, is an account of her experiences while painting the First Nations people of British Columbia. Settling in Vancouver in the early 1930s, she became the art critic for the Vancouver Sun, a position she held for 16 years. 

Thornton was a charter member of the Saskatchewan Woman’s Art Association; President of the Canadian Women’s Press Club; a member of the Native Sisterhood of B.C.; and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, England for her contribution to the heritage and cultural preservation of Canada's First Nations. Her paintings are in the collections of the National Gallery, Ottawa; The Glenbow Museum, Calgary; the McMichael Collection, Ontario; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She was also honoured by two of the native tribes: the Kwakuitl made her a  princess of the Clan Eagle and named her "Ah-ou-Mookht" meaning "she who wears the blanket because she is of noble birth", and the Cree named her "Owas-ka esk-ean" or "putting your best ability for us Indians". She died in Vancouver in 1967 at the age of 77.

Born and educated in England, at the age of sixty-two Charles John Collings immigrated to Canada in 1910 with his wife and two sons. They settled on the remote Seymour Arm of Shuswap Lake where the family pioneered and forged an English Tudor country house out of the Canadian wilds, which still stands today. It was here that Collings found true and lasting inspiration for his artwork. He perfected his technique using paper soaked in water then mixing the colours directly on the paper. Collings sketched “en plein air” but created the finished works in his studio; thus giving his imagination free reign. Collings continued to paint and travel throughout Western Canada and made trips to Nipigon and Niagara. Always an ardent climber, he hiked the Rockies and the Selkirks actively until his death at the age of 83. Collings Biography

This rare watercolour sketch, dated 1865, depicts Yale, BC which sits at the beginning of the Cariboo Road, also called the Great North Road, Cariboo Wagon Road, or Queen’s Highway. The road stretched from Fort Yale through the hazardous canyon territory north via the Fraser Canyon over Hell’s Gate, connecting to the Cariboo Road at Clinton to the terminus at Barkerville. Originally a rough and dangerous ‘mule trail’, the road was built to lower supply costs to the gold fields of the Cariboo. Frederick Whymper was hired to publicize the new road, however the enterprise was plagued with problems and the project was eventually abandoned. This sketch is dated 1865 and depicts the picturesque town situated where the Fraser River emerges from the mountains showing the contrast of wilderness and frontier civilization. On the left is the original log house which served as both store and Hudson’s Bay Company fort, behind which is the Church of St. John the Divine. Along the main thoroughfare in the center are the false-front saloons, hotels, stores and liveries of the main town, with the steamer to the right on the river. Yale was a popular subject and painted many times by Whymper, who used his pencil sketches to create watercolour copies on demand for sale. Watercolour sketches of Yale are held by Library and Archives Canada, the National Gallery, and the British Columbia Archives, and Milton & Cheadle and Robert Brown both used these depictions of Yale as illustrations in their books. 

Ronald Jackson is well known for his marine paintings depicting British Columbia’s coastal views, usually containing the detail of a ship or fishing vessel traveling through the islands off the West Coast, the Queen Charlotte Islands and Quatsino Sound. He painted in a semi-impressionistic style and exhibited regularly with the B.C. Society of Fine Arts and the annual B.C. Artist’s Exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He was a founding member of the Canadian Society of Marine Artists.

John A. Hammond, Rca, Osa
Canadian 1843-1939

This is a rare view of Victoria Harbour by Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, one of the few that we have seen. Bell-Smith’s first formal excursion through the Rocky Mountains in 1887 on the newly built Canadian Pacific Railway marked a notable change in his subject matter as he strived to capture the sublime beauty and boldness of the rugged Canadian landscape. Along with photographer William Notman Jr. and Lucius O’Brien, Bell-Smith was one of the first Canadian artists to take advantage of this promotional program organized by the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway. This trip provided him with access to Western areas including Banff, Kicking Horse, the Selkirk Mountains and Victoria Harbour.

The well-known British Columbia architect and painter Samuel Maclure was born in Sapperton, New Westminster in 1860 to John and Martha Maclure. He studied painting at the Spring Garden School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1884-1885. He was also a self-taught architect of over 450 commissions and is best known for his Tudor Revival and Craftsman style houses in New Westminster, Vancouver, and Victoria. He was the foremost domestic architect of his time and known for open plans and two-storey central halls using native materials and local construction techniques.

Samuel Maclure married the accomplished pianist and portrait painter Margaret Catherine (Daisy) and the couple were founding members of the Vancouver Island Arts and Crafts Society in 1909. Samuel was also a consultant to the Butchart Gardens near Victoria where he designed many of the famous historic buildings as well as several additions to the residence Benvenuto.

Maclure painted extensively, documenting the local landscape and indigenous portraiture in watercolour. He was published in Canadian Illustrated News (Montreal) August 20, 1881, and Studio Magazine (London) XLV (1909) 122-4. He exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy in 1906, and his work is represented in the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Maltwood Art Museum at the University of Victoria, and the Public Archives of British Columbia. His architectural plans and drawings are held in the University of Victoria Architecture and Special Collections (Samuel Maclure fonds). He died in Victoria in 1929.

Charles Hepburn Scott was born in Scotland but settled in Vancouver in 1915. He played a visionary role in uplifting the art of western Canada, lobbying for the establishment of an art school and an art gallery at a time when neither existed.  He was appointed Director of the Director of the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University) where he worked from 1926 to 1952, and was instrumental in establishing the school as an influential Canadian institution. As a painter Scott was particularly fond of painting the beautiful landscape of British Columbia; he went on field trips with the school as well as accompanying Jock MacDonald and Frederick Varley on sketching trips to Garibaldi Provincial Park.

Charles Hepburn Scott (Canadian 1886-1964) ‘The Sitting Cloud on Top of Garibaldi Mountain’, oil on board signed lower left "Charles H. Scott", inscribed on reverse "The Sitting Cloud on Top of Garibaldi Mountain, Charles H. Scott A.R.C.A" Size: 12 h x 15 w in J17734 

This wonderful example by the rare BC painter Alice Blair Thomas depicts Vancouver’s North Shore mountain with the Lions in the background and Deadman’s Island in the foreground. Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1857, Thomas receiving primary education from a governess before going on to study at Bishop Strachan’s School in Toronto. She married Richard Thomas in 1887 and they remained in Toronto where she was active in the arts for the first decades of the twentieth century. She exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1901, 1904 and 1916.  In 1916 she and her husband moved to the West, where she continued her work as an artist in Vancouver, British Columbia. Thomas worked largely in oil and watercolour as a genre, landscape and Western artist.

In 1917 the couple moved to Los Angeles, California. Thomas became active in the local art scene, exhibiting portraits and landscapes at the Pasadena Art Institute in the late 1920s and with the California Art Club. She also travelled through Washington State where she painted the Olympic Mountains, and continued to spend time in Canada even after her move to the United States. She was a founding member of the British Columbia Society of Fine Arts in 1933. Alice Blair Thomas died in Los Angeles in 1945.

Peter Ewart
Canadian 1918-2001