The early 1960s were a time of breakthrough for Gordon Smith in the recognition of his work. In 1960, he was chosen to represent Canada at the São Paulo Bienal, and the work selected included some of his most experimental up to that time. A Canada Council fellowship allowed him to take a year off from teaching at the University of British Columbia to travel and paint, and his first show at a commercial gallery, the ground-breaking New Design Gallery in Vancouver, took place in 1961. This work, which appears to be an abstracted harbour, is dominated by deep tonalities of blue, its planes of cobalt and turquoise shifting moodily like weather. The central, horizontal congregation of shapes floats in these blue tonalities, suggesting buildings and a freighter, and drawing our eye with their bright white, red and yellow accents. Smith’s treatment of brushwork is fluid and expressionist, and his rich surface makes the viewer delight in the sheer physicality of paint.

J. Ron Longstaffe, who gave this work as a gift to an earlier collector, was a prominent and discriminating Vancouver collector and philanthropist, who donated over 800 works of art to the Vancouver Art Gallery.