Artwork by Walter Joseph Phillips,  Johnson Creek

W.J. Phillips
Johnson Creek

watercolour
signed lower right
8.75 x 10 ins ( 22.2 x 25.4 cms )

Auction Estimate: $10,000.00$8,000.00 - $10,000.00

Price Realized $10,350.00
Sale date: November 22nd 2016

Provenance:
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection, Calgary
Literature:
Roger Boulet, “The Tranquility and the Turbulence,” Markham, 1981, pages 201-203
Nancy E. Green, Kate Rutherford and Toni Tomlinson, “Walter J. Phillips,” Portland, 2013, pages 21, 25-27 and 96
Though Phillips is best known for his precise colour woodblock prints and engravings, the artist began his training as a watercolourist. Trained in England before immigrating to Winnipeg, Phillips took lead from traditional British watercolourists of his time by depicting picturesque landscapes in watercolour rather than opt for the looser, rugged oil painting that was taking hold of the Canadian art historical dialogue. From his position in Winnipeg, Phillips could take advantage of the surrounding areas from Lake of the Woods and Muskoka to the East and Banff and the Rocky Mountains to the West. Eventually, the Phillips family moved to Banff where he became an instructor at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art while also teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts in the summer months.

Phillips often returned to a favourite spot, Johnson Creek near Banff, in a number of watercolour and woodblock works. The artist relished in completing watercolour works on site as it afforded the immediacy and spontaneity of capturing the natural time and place that could not necessarily be replicated in the artist studio. Phillips is quoted in his unpublished manuscript with regard to this creek: “On a sunny day I enjoy nothing better than to walk beside a mountain creek... Johnson Creek, fifteen miles from Banff, along the West Road, provides a very proper setting. It is a stream – to my mind- of perfect dimensions, of varying width, average three or four yards. Here and there the trail clings to the walls of the gorge...”

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Walter Joseph Phillips
(1884 - 1963) RCA

W.J. Phillips was born in Lincolnshire, England in 1884. Trained at the Birmingham School of Art, he was a successful watercolour artist in England before he and his wife, Gladys, emigrated to Winnipeg in 1913. Although watercolour remained his primary medium, the woodblock print was an enduring interest which brought his work to a wider audience. Among W.J. Phillips’ best-known and loved images in watercolour and woodblock print are those which depict family holidays on Lake of the Woods from the teens until 1925. In 1940, Walter Phillips was asked to be artist in residence at the Banff School of Fine Arts. He moved to Calgary in 1941 where he taught at the provincial Institute of Technology and Art.

W.J. Phillips’ works are housed in galleries across Canada including The National Gallery of Canada, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies as well as collections abroad in London, Washington D.C., New Jersey, Japan, and private collections the world over. The most extensive private collection of work by Phillips was gifted to the city of Winnipeg. Permanently housed in the Pavilion Gallery Museum in Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park, the Crabb collection is available for public viewing year round.