NANAIMO PLANS HUGE HUGHES CELEBRATION

E.J. Hughes, View of Shawnigan Lake, watercolour, 2004.

While recently clearing what remained of the historical Malaspina Hotel for a downtown revitalization project in Nanaimo, B.C., workmen uncovered a piece of Canadian art history. Painted in 1938 as a wall mural, E.J. Hughes’s Lieutenant Malaspina Sketching the Malaspina Gallery was once again brought to light.

An early and treasured example of Hughes’s illustrative work, the City of Nanaimo decided to preserve and restore the mural, making a place for it in the new Port of Nanaimo Centre. To celebrate the restored mural’s unveiling, the Art Gallery of Nanaimo will mark Hughes’s life and work with a cultural event kicking off May 14, and including screenings of a documentary about Hughes and the mural, an exhibition of work from the Gallery’s collection, and a historical and art historical symposium on the work, and on Vancouver Island at the time of Malaspina.

One of the most renowned painters to have lived and worked on Vancouver Island, E.J. Hughes documented, with a highly stylized realism, the most beloved aspects of life on the island. His depictions of local customs and landscapes — the fishing boats and arbutus trees, rain forests and coastal towns — brought him wide recognition.The Vancouver Art Gallery, which holds the largest public collection of Hughes’s work, exhibited more than one retrospective of his work in the 70 years that he painted before he passed away in 2007.