The four-volume compendium of all the known paintings by renowned Canadian colourist Jack Bush (1909-1977) was released in fall 2024 after more than 12 years of research and preparation.
Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné by Sarah Stanners is superb. It’s a comprehensive documentation spanning six decades in the career of one of Canada’s most internationally acclaimed modern artists of the twentieth century. Bush’s own record books and inventories establish the chronological order of the works and notes from his personal diaries further our understanding of his process.
Catalogues raisonnés are rare among Canadian publications; this one is an accomplishment that is invaluable for art historians, museums, galleries, libraries, students, collectors, dealers and artists. The scope covers his lifetime and accounts for 1,850 paintings in watercolour and gouache on paper, and in oil, Magna acrylic resin and acrylic on canvas and linen. Barr Gilmore’s cohesive design for the multi-layered publication enlists Bush’s colour palette elegantly throughout the volumes and presents the contents with clarity.
Stanners travelled internationally to examine Bush’s paintings in private and public collections. New digital photographs were taken whenever possible, and the colour and quality of the reproductions were carefully monitored in the printing of the publication. She is careful to note if paintings are reproduced from old images and degraded slides and even describes aspects of the paintings that aren’t apparent in the images such as a particular gloss or matte surface or the quality of the edge between colours. Each volume concludes with a summation of thumbnail images that acts as a bonus visual index, affording a sweep of Bush’s chronological studio development, an overview of a series or quick retrieval of an image.
Stanners’ thoughtful direction includes useful perspectives on Bush’s studio process with a foreword by David Mirvish, preface by Michael Fried, reprint of Clement Greenberg’s 1980 piece on Jack Bush, and a fresh assessment by Karen Wilkin.
In addition to Stanner’s carefully crafted introduction to research methodology, description of Bush’s series of paintings, guide to catalogue entries, index, bibliography, and exhibition history, she wrote A Life in Painting, a lively, illustrated biography. Her narration supports the stories behind the catalogue entries with sensitivity, elucidating pivotal moments, struggles and triumphs in the studio. Each of the entries might have up to ten sections of data per painting: catalogue number, the basic information on labels (title, date, medium, and dimensions), location, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition, bibliography, notes, commentary, and diary entries.
The detailed data in the catalogue entries often includes information that allows for further insight or raises questions. For example, in the opening biographical chapter in the first volume, Stanner describes Bush’s depression and the treatment for tension that he undertook with Toronto psychiatrist, Dr. J. Allan Walters. In the catalogue section, a photograph of Bush’s handwritten entry in his first record book prefaces the experimental 1947 paintings: “he [Dr. Walters] further suggested starting from scratch on a blank canvas with no preconceived idea, + just let the thing develop in color, form + content.”
The second volume contains Bush’s famous abstractions from the early 1960s. Stanners presents an argument she hopes might aid researchers in the future to solve a mystery around an untitled work that was known to have been owned by critic Clement Greenberg and Lime Centre, (1964) a painting whose whereabouts is currently unknown in the entries for the two paintings.
An inside look at volume two of “Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné” by Sarah Stanners (photo by Barr Gilmore, courtesy of the estate of Jack Bush)
In the third volume, the entry on Tony’s Horse (1965 to 1966), is replete with notes, commentary and a supplementary photograph that sheds light on the relationship between Anthony Caro’s sculpture The Horse (1961) and Bush’s painting. In the fourth volume, small sketches done with pencil and markers support the proposal that the jagged edges of colour in the acrylic paintings Yellow Top Totem and Rocket Totem (both painted in 1973) might be inspired by the material quality of the marker strokes in the quick sketches.
Stanners is the director and author of the Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné project, authorized by the estate of Jack Bush and in affiliation with the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto, where she is currently an adjunct professor. She co-curated the 2014 retrospective, Jack Bush, with Marc Mayer for the National Gallery of Canada. The popular exhibition then travelled to the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. In 2016, she curated a small gem of an exhibition, Jack Bush: In Studio, at the Esker Foundation in Calgary, under the auspices of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. In her curator’s tour, she called the paintings around her a “great colour hug.”
It’s important to remember that a catalogue raisonné is as comprehensive a list of works as possible, but also that there is an author who provides the reasoning. Thanks to Stanners for bringing considerable knowledge, detective skills and care about the paintings of Jack Bush to the process.
Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné marks a high point in Canadian publishing. Stanners and the supporting team that made the publication possible have given Jack Bush’s paintings the attention his significant place in Canadian art history deserves. If it is too much for your shelf space or budget, see if you can enjoy it in a library, and if not, see what you can do to help it get to one near you. ■
Also check out:
A catalogue raisonné is time consuming and expensive to produce. Few have been published in Canada in recent decades. Here are some titles to consider searching out.
- David Milne (the son) and David Silcox set a high standard with the 1998 publication, David Milne: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings.
- The Prints of Betty Goodwin (1923-2008) by Rosemarie Tovell, published in 2002 in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, meticulously details the artist’s prints.
- Yseult Riopelle, the daughter of Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), expects to complete the catalogue raisonné of his art in nine volumes: five are currently available.
- The Catalogue Raisonné of Paul-Emile Borduas (1905-1960) is an on-line, ongoing project developed at Concordia University
- Gary Dufour (editor), Jeff Wall, Catalogue Raisonné (2005-2021) features more than 15 years of new work from Wall.
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