Review: The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes

Hughes was a reclusive painter who loved being in BC

I didn't know much about the artist E.J. Hughes until his paintings were fiercely bid on at auction and record prices were recorded by the media. He painted colourful sceneries of British Columbia, overlooking a lake, fishing, and whimsical houses. Hughes died in 2007 and it turns out he left behind a treasure trove of letters, sketches, and paintings that have been carefully archived or collected by trusted people.

Director Jenn Strom was interested in doing short films about BC artists, and Hughes was one of them. But when she started researching him, she found there was so much material about the artist that it made sense to do a feature-length documentary about him, The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes that made its world premiere at the Vancouver Film Festival.

Hughes depicted small town life in his art

It took her five years (delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic), but the end result is a beautiful, comprehensive tribute to the reclusive artist who would rather his paintings speak for him.

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.

Varley's style was to go out into nature and sketch or paint quickly; this wasn't Hughes' style, which where he was more meticulous and detailed, but Varley encouraged Hughes to keep going anyway.

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.

Hughes died in 2007 at the age of 93

During World War II Hughes enlisted and became a war artist. He loved this job because he was paid to make art everyday. The conditions were so cold in the winter, that this changed Hughes' detailed work into something more simplified, but still bold strokes.

The curators in the documentary explained how war artists must record history with a capital H with art with a capital A. So the soldiers must be depicted correctly in terms of their uniforms and machinery, and recording their contribution to the war for historical purposes. 

The curators -- mostly women -- observed how Hughes' work not only covered the war, but mostly their daily lives, like in the canteen which showed plates of food and bottles of Tabasco sauce on the shelf, or how the soldiers trained jumping over each other like leap frog in a circle.

It was around this time he met Fern who became his wife. They tried to have children and the first baby died at childbirth, the second died six months after the baby was born. Fern was later diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.

After the war, Hughes and Fern settled in Shawnigan Lake and he painted in his studio overlooking the lake. 

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.

Fish Boats, River Inlet fetched $2M at auction

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. 

She also admits the real reason she wanted to do 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.

The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes

Director Jenn Strom

82 mins