E. J. Hughes: Life at the Lake

By Robert Amos

The latest instalment in the award-winning series on the life and work of E. J. Hughes brings the reader into this very private artist’s home and studio on Shawnigan Lake.

In the most intimate volume yet about prolific Canadian painter E. J. Hughes, the artist’s official biographer Robert Amos brings us Life at the Lake, capturing the years Hughes and his wife Fern spent at their home on Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver Island.

Following Hughes’s service as a war artist, in 1946 he and Fern looked for a place to buy in Victoria. Then, in 1951, they spotted an ad for a property on Shawnigan Lake, about 40 kilometres north of the city. The quiet lakeside existence he and Fern established suited his temperament and artistic needs perfectly. In addition to reproductions of all of his Shawnigan-themed oils and watercolours, the book includes dozens of sketches, colour notes, local news clippings, letters, and illuminating excerpts from recorded interviews with Pat Salmon, Hughes’s longtime friend and assistant.

With a keen appreciation for the quotidian, Amos captures lakeside life at Shawnigan, with Hughes’s observations on birds and trees, and trips to local shops and restaurants. He tells of an unusually snowy winter that slowed the delivery of finished paintings to the post office and, on a more sombre note, the gradual progression of Fern’s muscular dystrophy. The book shares insights into the relationships—with Fern, Pat, and agent Max Stern—that allowed Hughes to achieve great success as an artist while living a quiet existence at Shawnigan Lake.

For the Hughes fan and anyone who enjoys learning about the everyday lives of artists, this latest addition to the Hughes pictorial canon is a must. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Touchwood Editions
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781771514200

Robert Amos

Robert Amos has published eleven books on art—including four bestselling volumes on the life and work of beloved Canadian artist E. J. Hughes—and was the arts columnist for Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper for more than thirty years. Amos was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1995 and is an Honorary Citizen of Victoria. He lives in Oak Bay, British Columbia, with his wife, artist Sarah Amos.

Book preview

Cover: E. J. Hughes: Life at the Lake by Robert Amos.

Detail of Rose Island, Shawnigan Lake (1976).

Rose Island, Shawnigan Lake (1976). Oil on canvas, 24 × 36 (61 × 91.5 cm).

E. J. Hughes

Life at the Lake

Robert Amos

With the Estate of E. J. Hughes

Logo: Touchwood

unique in Canada, factual, literal, almost photographic and at the same time more saturated with the spirit of this coast, its very feel, than anything now being painted.

—

lawren harris

to H. O. McCurry,

Director of the National Gallery of Canada on March 3, 1951,

on the paintings of E. J. Hughes.

a true solitary for whom withdrawal is instinctive, he is ill at ease in the world of urban social or economic exchange and so he lives in a small village community on Vancouver Island with infrequent trips to Victoria only a few miles away.

His private revelation is of a kind to resist the wearing of time. He has created a permanent poetry of Canada’s Pacific coast and reiterated the continuing values of the individual creative spirit.

—

doris shadbolt

, E. J. Hughes, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1967.

Detail of Old Baldy Mountain, Shawnigan Lake (1961). Oil on canvas, 24 × 36 (61.0 × 91.5 cm). Barbeau Foundation.

E. J. Hughes at work in his studio (2003). Photo by Darren Stone.

Foreword

as a child I loved painting and drawing but at art school I was disappointed to find that my teachers were dedicated to abstract painting, and that the art world had moved on from painting to conceptual art. When I came to Vancouver Island, I was enchanted to discover the unique and wonderful art of E. J. Hughes. He opened my eyes to Vancouver Island and showed me that realism was still worthwhile. Moreover, he proved that success was possible even for someone who lived an isolated existence and eschewed self-promotion.

Inspired by him, I too depicted the wonders of my new West Coast home in a realist style. To support my art career, I wrote newspaper reviews and always included Hughes’s work wherever I found it. Though his success grew and grew, he always avoided becoming a public figure and out of respect for his privacy I never tried to interview him.

Then, in 1993, Pat Salmon telephoned and invited my wife Sarah and me to join the artist for lunch. As it turned out, Hughes was charming and voluble, and happy to discuss art. A few more meetings followed.

In 2010, three years after the artist’s death, Pat Salmon again called. She asked if I would take over her self-appointed task as Hughes’s biographer, which age and health made it impossible for her to complete. I agreed at once. It was clear to me that there could be no greater gift for someone of my abilities. Here was a story of compelling interest which had never been told.

In my previous books on Hughes I concentrated on his professional career—his paintings of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, all manner of boats, and his war art. In this book I consider his quiet life at Shawnigan Lake and Duncan, and the peacefulness which was essential to his success. The story includes his relations with the people who helped him achieve it—his wife Fern, his agent Max Stern, and his friend and biographer Pat Salmon.

The text relies on comments from the artist and those who knew him, but of course it is the pictures which tell the story. Come and join E. J. Hughes and enjoy his life at the lake.

Robert Amos

Kay Hughes (ca. 1936). Pencil, 5¾ × 8¾ (17 × 14.5 cm).

to his family, E. J. Hughes was always the special one. The first of four children of Kay and Edward S. Hughes, Eddie grew up in Nanaimo. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle. He didn’t join sports teams or go to church, but from an early age he loved to draw and paint. His mother recalled that Eddie could draw almost before he could speak. I remember his drawing a small picture of a boat on pointy waves with smoke coming out of the funnel (Pat Salmon, Raincoast Chronicles Ten, p. 44).

While living in Vancouver during his teens, Hughes became a cadet with the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and excelled at marching, precision drills, and target practice. After finishing high school in 1929, he then enrolled in the Vancouver School of Art, where he was recognized as an outstanding student.