Lovers by Jack Hamilton Bush
Jack Bush
Lovers
oil on board
signed and dated 1949 lower right; titled on a label on the reverse
26 x 20 ins ( 66 x 50.8 cms )
Auction Estimate: $18,000.00 - $22,000.00
Price Realized $17,700.00
Sale date: November 19th 2019
Jack Bush Art Estate
Private Collection, Toronto
New Paintings by Jack Bush, Gavin Henderson Gallery, Toronto, 1949, cat. no. 12
Jack Bush: Hymn to the Sun, Early Work, Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, 1997 (travelling exhibition)
Michael Burtch, Jack Bush: Hymn to the Sun, Early Work [Exhibition Catalogue], Art Gallery of Algoma, 1997, reproduced page 50
Jack Bush was raised High Anglican, and brought up his own children with some exposure to the Church, though not as strictly as he himself had experienced growing up. Bush’s increasing interest in spiritual, and specifically biblical topics in the late 1940s coincided with his decision to begin psychological therapy in 1947.
While Bush’s psyche may have been under stress, love was a constant in his life. He married Mabel Teakle in 1934 and remained a committed husband, despite the challenges of an international career in art that neither spouse imagined would be so successful. Since his life demonstrated a respect for companionship and Christianity, it is doubtless that Bush valued the Song of Songs. Within the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Song of Songs is entirely unique for its focus on sexual love and lack of teachings in the usual biblical subjects of God, law and covenant. Lovers are vividly evoked in 1:7 of the Song of Songs:
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? (King James Bible)
While there is no evidence to say what exactly inspired this painting, a spiritual connection is certainly signaled by the artist’s inclusion of a red sun. Many of Bush’s paintings from the late 1940s through the early 1950s include a red sun, recurring like an ever-present spirit.
A Christian hymn called “Every Morning the Red Sun” may have served to inspire this warm symbol:
Every morning the red sun
Rises warm and bright;
But the evening cometh on,
And the dark, cold night.
There’s a bright land far away,
Where ‘tis never-ending day.
As we see in the bisected background of “The Lovers” painting, dark nights are followed by bright days, like sorrow may be followed by joy and love.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné.
We extend our thanks to Dr. Sarah Stanners for contributing the preceding essay. Sarah currently holds a Status Only appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Art History while writing the forthcoming Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné. From 2015 to 2018 she was the Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Co-Curator of the 2014/2015 national travelling exhibition, Jack Bush, Co-Author of the resulting 2014 exhibition catalogue (Jack Bush) and guest curator and author for Jack Bush: In Studio, organized by the Esker Foundation in Calgary.
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Jack Hamilton Bush
(1909 - 1977) Painters Eleven, OSA, ARCA
A founding member of the Painters Eleven group and the subject of major retrospectives at the Art Gallery of Ontario (1976) and the National Gallery of Canada (2014), Jack Bush (born March 20, 1909 in Toronto; died January 24, 1977 in Toronto) was one of Canada’s most influential artists. Among the first Canadian painters of his generation to achieve international success in his lifetime, Bush was a masterful draftsman and colourist whose works are coveted by major institutions and private collectors throughout the world. Born in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto in 1909, Bush spent his childhood in London, Ontario, and Montréal, Québec, where he studied at the Royal Canadian Academy and apprenticed as a commercial artist in his father’s business, Rapid Electro Type Company. After relocating in 1928 to work in the firm’s Toronto offices, his interest in fine art grew through contact with members of the Group of Seven, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Canadian Group of Painters. Working as a commercial artist by day, Bush painted and took night classes at the Ontario College of Art (now the Ontario College of Art and Design University) throughout the 1930s, studying under Frederick Challener, John Alfsen, George Pepper, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Charles Comfort. After forming the commercial design firm Wookey, Bush and Winter in 1942 with partners Leslie Wookey and William Winter, Bush remained engaged in the graphic art world until his retirement in 1968.
Like many of his contemporaries in Toronto, Bush had little exposure to international trends of modernism during his formative years as a painter. For nearly two decades, he drew inspiration for his landscape and figural paintings from works by members of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Group of Painters. Though he began to incorporate non-representational elements in his work in the late 1940s, Bush’s more focused experimentations with formal abstraction in the early 1950s reveal the conspicuous influence of his eventual encounters with modern artwork in Toronto and New York City. In 1953, Bush joined the newly-founded Toronto artist group Painters Eleven. Through his involvement in the group’s efforts to promote abstract painting in Canada, Bush met the influential New York City art critic Clement Greenberg. Their resulting friendship would influence Bush’s early development as an abstract painter, with Greenberg serving as an occasional mentor to the artist, encouraging him to abandon his Abstract Expressionist style in favour of a brighter, more refined palette and technique. Through his association with Painters Eleven, Bush became closely tied to Colour Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction—two movements that had evolved from Abstract Expressionism. After the group disbanded in 1959, Bush’s distinguished career was marked by numerous achievements, including the opportunity to represent Canada at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1967, after which his art found considerable commercial success in the United States (Bush had already been showing his work in New York City since 1962). In 1963, Hugo McPherson in his review of Bush’s showing at the Gallery Moos, Toronto, linked Bush with Matisse as follows, “...he reminds us of the classical joy and simplicity of the later Matisse. This is his richest vein. His comments on France, Italy, and Spain, and his observations titled ‘Red on Pink’ and ‘Growing Plant’ are at once spare and bright and probing.â€
In 1972, Bush was the subject of the inaugural survey exhibition in the modern wing of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Four years later, the Art Gallery of Ontario organized a major touring retrospective of his work. Bush as a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, 1942 (former President); Ontario Society of Artists (former Vice-President) 1943; Associate Royal Canadian Academician, 1946; Canadian Group of Painters’, 1948, and the Art Directors’ Club of Toronto. In 2014, the National Gallery of Canada hosted a major retrospective exhibition of Jack Bush’s work. A comprehensive catalogue raisonné of Bush’s work is set to be released in the coming years.
Jack Bush died at the age of 68 in 1977, one year after he received the honour of Officer of the Order of Canada.
