Johnson Creek by Walter Joseph Phillips

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 Phillips is quoted in his unpublished manuscript with regard to this creek: “On a sunny day I enjoy nothing better than to walk beside a mountain creek...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...”