The inscription on the front label reads:

"To Jacques Barbeau,
Just two prints made from this linoleum block, probably just before W.W. II. I had hoped to make more prints but enlisted in the coast artillery. I don't have the block anymore. Thanks again for the lunch at the Empress.
-E.J. Hughes"

Indian Church (study) is the last of six linocut prints which Hughes made in 1938 and 1939. This proof is from the “key block”, a black line image printed before the colour blocks were carved. Naturally, the image is reversed from the earlier gridded drawing of the subject which was reproduced in Doris Shadbolt’s catalogue of the first Hughes retrospective. [1]

“Remarkable though the image is, as a print it was a failure,” Ian Thom wrote, “ because, as Hughes no doubt realized, the amount of detail in the key block made the printing of other colours extremely difficult, if not impossible. In the event, Hughes did not print any other colour blocks, and the two impressions are only black and white.”[2]. The other impression belongs to the National Gallery of Canada.

The image stayed in Hughes’s mind and, shortly after his war service, he developed from it the magnificent oil painting Indian Church, North Vancouver (1947) (private collection). Hughes retained this proof until he gave it to Jacques Barbeau in 1995.

We thank Robert Amos, artist and writer from Victoria, BC, for contributing the above essay. Amos is the official biographer of Hughes and has so far published five books on his work. Building on the archives of Hughes’s friend Pat Salmon, Amos is at work on a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.

1. Doris Shadbolt E. J. Hughes (Vancouver Art Gallery 1967) [not paginated].

2. Ian Thom E. J. Hughes (Vancouver Art Gallery 2003) p. 44

For the biography on Jacques Barbeau and Margaret Owen Barbeau in PDF format, please click here.