Last month Coastal Boats Near Sidney sold for $1.14 million, propelling E.J. Hughes into an exclusive group of 12 Canadian artists who have sold paintings for more than a million dollars.
I love his work and thought he had always lived on Vancouver Island, so I was interested in his Vancouver connection.
Edward John Hughes was born in North Vancouver in 1913, but moved to Nanaimo with his parents, Edward Samuel Daniel Hughes and Katherine (McLean) soon after. The family moved back in 1923, and according to the Street Directories, Edward Hughes was a musician with the Orpheum Theatre. For the next several years they lived at 621 East 8th Avenue in North Van and Hughes attended North Vancouver High School and took private art classes with Mrs. Verrall at North Star School. The family disappears from the city directories in 1931 and Hughes pops up at 4675 West 4th Avenue in 1934. By that time he would have been in the last year of a four year program at the Vancouver School of Decorative & Applied Arts studying under artists such as Fred Varley and Jock Macdonald.
One of his best known paintings—Indian Church, North Vancouver is also one of his earliest. According to a book by the Heffel Gallery (1990), Hughes did the first sketch in 1931 when he and another student were examining the vestibule of St. Pauls Indian Church on West Esplanade. Chief Andy Paul appeared and told them to join the service or leave. They left, but Hughes came back and made his first sketch. Hughes told writer Patricia Salmon “Once Lawren Harris wrote me from the east suggesting that it wouldn’t sell because it was too dark. I feel it has been successful.”
In 1938 Hughes was one of three unknown artists commissioned to paint murals for the Malaspina Hotel in Nanaimo. The work was boarded up in the ‘50s and rediscovered during demolition of the hotel in 1996. Hughes became an official war artist. He moved to Victoria in 1946, was awarded the Emily Carr Scholarship in 1947, and eventually died in 2007 at the age of 93 after a long and highly successful career.
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1 comment on “E.J. Hughes”
After being restored by Cheryl Harrison part of the “Malaspina Mural” was installed in Nanaimo’s convention centre and can be viewed on weekdays. It’s about nine feet high by fifteen feet long on a 10″ thick slab of concrete.