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Sea Edge 5 by Jack Leonard Shadbolt

Artwork by Jack Leonard Shadbolt, Sea Edge 5

Jack Shadbolt
Sea Edge 5

acrylic on canvas
signed and dated 1978 lower left; titled on a gallery label on the reverse
48.5 x 61.5 ins ( 123.2 x 156.2 cms )

Auction Estimate: $20,000.00$15,000.00 - $20,000.00

Price Realized $13,500.00
Sale date: June 2nd 2020

Provenance:
Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver
Private Collection, Calgary
Literature:
Bau-Xi Gallery, “Jack Shadbolt: Recent Paintings”, Exhibition held concurrently at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver and Toronto, 1988, page 52
“Sea Edge 5” is exemplary of Jack Shadbolt's work of the late seventies, which has been considered “some of the most ambitious of his entire career, not just in their scale but in their attempt to sustain a creative momentum through a period of time.” In 1975, the artist travelled to Iran, Afghanistan and India, which inspired him to work in large-scale colourful works in serial form. Shadbolt's preference for working in sequences and series in the late 70s was “compared with pop aesthetics, but he associated repetition with myth, ritual and sexuality.” “Sea Edge 5” serves as part of a series on the theme of abstracted seascapes. Bau-Xi's exhibition catalogue on Shadbolt's work of the late 70s and early 80s remarks that, “in a philosophical sense, Shadbolt's paintings have always argued, over-strenuously at times, against emptiness. He has a horror of the void, which he equates with a numbing and incapacitating meaninglessness.” This statement holds true in the compact faceted forms in “Sea Edge 5” that fill the colourful canvas.

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Jack Leonard Shadbolt
(1909 - 1998) RCA

Current SalesHighlightsWatch Artist

Jack Shadbolt was a dominant figure in the Vancouver art scene beginning in the 1940s, alongside B.C. Binning. Shadbolt drew from many sources of inspiration, including Cubism, Surrealism, American Regionalism and Northwest Coast Native American art. He drew on these various sources to help him express his deep affinity for nature and its cultural representation.

Shadbolt emigrated from England in 1912 and moved first to the BC interior before settling in Victoria in 1914. He met Emily Carr in 1930 while attending Victoria College, who left a strong impression on his life and work. Although their artistic styles varied considerably from one another, they were both inspired by the spiritual unity with nature apparent in Northwest Coast Native American art. Shadbolt was an official war artist in the Canadian Army during World War II. After the war, he resumed his post as a faculty member at the Vancouver School of Art, and in 1987 founded the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts with his wife Doris (now The Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts). Shadbolt studied at the Art Students' League in New York, London, and Paris, and with Group of Seven member Frederick Varley at the Vancouver School of Art. He received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including Officer of the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.