Maritime Paintings

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E.J. Hughes, “Above Saanich Inlet,” 1976

oil on canvas,  33" x 39.5” (William and Mary Everett Collection)

It’s rare for the Vancouver Maritime Museum to organize a major painting show. The museum, on the waterfront just west of False Creek, is best known for its permanent display of the St. Roch, the first vessel to traverse the Northwest Passage from west to east, as well as model boats and other maritime paraphernalia.

But the museum holds more than 300 paintings in its permanent collection and 44 of them – including works by two of British Columbia’s best-known artists, Emily Carr and E.J. Hughes – are on view until Oct. 25 in By the Shore: Maritime B.C. in Paintings.

Featured are two Carr paintings from 1910, shortly before she studied in France and adopted the vibrant colours favoured by Fauve and Post-Impressionist painters. When Carr painted Vancouver Harbour, a watercolour, she was still using the pastel colours of her early training.

However, Carr’s other painting, an oil on canvas titled Coastal Steamer in Vancouver Harbour, does employ moodier colours, including deep blues and greens for the ocean and mountains in the background – hues she would use throughout her life.

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Emily Carr, “Vancouver Harbour,” circa 1910

watercolour on paper, 20” x 24” (William and Mary Everett Collection)

Hughes’ oil on canvas, Above Saanich Inlet, painted in 1976, uses his typical flattened spaces and simplified shapes. The view is from a hillside, the foreground framed by evergreen and arbutus trees, looking out to the water below, and across to green and yellow farm fields dotted by white buildings with red roofs. A distant freighter is painted sparely, in white, blue and red; other boats are denoted by tiny blobs of white and gray. 

This exhibition of paintings from the Western European tradition occupies three rooms and is set up as a visual tour along the province’s coast, says curator Duncan MacLeod. 

A didactic panel explains that the works “represent places that Indigenous people have lived since time immemorial,” and notes the exhibition has allowed the museum “to identify the need to increase the representation of Indigenous art.”

The first room focuses on Vancouver with images of the inner harbour and downtown on one wall, while the opposite side presents paintings of Stanley Park. The second room moves further up the Fraser Valley to Mission and the third room covers Vancouver Island and the north coast.

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John M. Horton, “The old waterfront, 1898,” 1989

oil on canvas, 45.5" x 60.5" (courtesy the Vancouver Maritime Museum)

Notable paintings include a 1981 work by maritime painter John M. Horton, The old waterfront, 1898, remarkable for its historical detail of Vancouver, and G.H. Tovey’s Nanaimo Harbour, 1891, completed when the city was little more than clear-cut land.

Also featured is Walter J. Phillips’ watercolour, Victoria (from the Empress Hotel), 1953; Llewellyn Petley-Jones’ Inner Victoria Harbour, 1934; and Brian Travers-Smith’s watercolour, Western Beach, circa 1970s. It was likely painted in one day, as was his custom, to give more spontaneity, says MacLeod.

Many works in the show are from the Everett Collection of 110 paintings, prints and photographs donated in 2000 by William and Mary Everett to inspire B.C. residents to explore the province’s maritime history. William, raised in Duncan, had been encouraged by his mother to buy paintings of ships for their home, which began his lifelong interest in maritime art. ■ 

By the Shore: Maritime B.C. in Paintings is on view at the Vancouver Maritime Museum from June 11 to Oct. 25, 2020.

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