The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes

Friday March 13 @ 1:30 pm

Documentary / Arts Biography
Not Rated – 1hr 20min

The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes follows the 70-year career of E.J. Hughes, during which he created hundreds of paintings of British Columbia. From coastal villages to the Rocky Mountains, he captured the province in vivid, meticulous detail. Working quietly in his Vancouver Island studio, the paintings he produced evoke shared memories and a dreamlike sense of place, captivating elite collectors, and everyday Canadians alike.

Known as a reclusive, sensitive soul, Hughes’ future as an artist was far from certain when he graduated from Vancouver’s fledgling art school during the Depression. In 1938, Hughes was struggling to make a living from fishing when he sketched the coastal scene before him. Sixty-five years later, Fish Boats, Rivers Inlet—the oil painting inspired by that sketch—would fetch a fortune at auction, setting a new record for a living Canadian artist.

How did a man too shy to attend his own art openings become so acclaimed? Along the way, Hughes crossed paths with artists from the legendary Group of Seven and became one of Canada’s most prolific war artists, chronicling army life during the Second World War and profoundly changing his own artistic voice in the process. Travel through painted landscapes and Canadian art history, tracing the quietly extraordinary life of B.C. painter, E.J. Hughes.

Hughes was born in North Vancouver in 1913 and his early childhood was spent in Nanaimo. His trombone-playing father moved the family around and ended up in Vancouver. Hughes, who wasn’t particularly academically minded but gifted in art, enrolled in the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art (which later became the Emily Carr University of Art + Design), where Frederick Varley, one of the Group of Seven artists, was one of the teachers.

In 1939 Hughes, with two classmates, Paul Goranson and Orville Fisher started a commercial art firm where they sold prints, and hoped to get commissions to make murals, but with people still suffering from the Depression, they didn’t make much money. However, the British Columbia government got them to make some murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939 and that made them well-known.

A Montreal gallery owner named Max Stern came to Vancouver and Varley told him to look up Hughes. It took Stern a while to track him down and when he did, he was so impressed by Hughes’ work that he offered to buy the whole lot and to continue painting for him. This was a godsend for Hughes, who was struggling financially. Stern managed Hughes’ career on the east coast and the Montreal gallery paid Hughes until it closed in 2000, 10 years after Stern died. Now Hughes and his wife were able to finally purchase a second-hand car and drive around and sketch landscapes from his front seat. They did road trips around BC, to places like Kamloops, Penticton, Revelstoke, Okanagan, Nanaimo, and Chilliwack.

Through curators at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian War Museum, and tape-recorded interviews of Hughes with his friend Pat Salmon, author Robert Ramos, and even the staff at the diner he ate at everyday, director Strom is able to sketch out a pretty comprehensive picture of the quiet, thoughtful Hughes that is a fitting tribute to him.

Strom admits the real reason she wanted to make the documentary was that it gave her the opportunity to travel around BC. The hardest part was matching his paintings with the actual spots where he painted. Strom says there was one place where she looked around and saw a house that seemed to block the view. She knocked on the door and asked about the view. “The E.J. Hughes’ view? Let me show you,” the woman replied.