Provenance
Collection of the artist (October 1949-1974)
Estate of the artist
Sotheby’s Canada, auction, Toronto, November 23, 2010, Lot 133
Private Collection, Ontario
Exhibited
Jack Bush, Roberts Gallery, Toronto, 1952, no. 11
Literature
“Jack Bush Exhibit,” Saturday Night 67, March 29, 1952, page 20
“The Lesson From Jack Bush Exhibit,” The Globe and Mail, February 16, 1952
Jack Bush was forty years old when he painted “Girl with Red Hair”. He was, by 1949, recovering from a midlife crisis, but medical guidance, faith, and painting ushered in a more positive and modern path for the artist. While he had started to experiment with abstraction, paintings such as “Girl with Red Hair” point to his lingering affinity to representational art, and – as may well be the case here – religious topics.
There is no way to know for sure what, or who, Bush was thinking of when he painted “Girl with Red Hair”, but there were common themes in his work at this time, which may reveal his intentions. In 1949, Bush remained firmly rooted in his High Anglican upbringing. It is possible that the redhead in this painting – who also appears to be veiled – may represent Mary Magdalene. Throughout art history, Mary Magdalene has often been represented with red hair. If this subject is a biblical figure, it is not the only one in the artist’s work from the same year. Bush also painted “The Virgin” (including a white veil) and “Job” in 1949.
There is, however, a distinct sense of modernity about the girl in this painting. Her bobbed haircut with micro-bangs is a style found to be surging back today, many thanks to the popularity of the redhead Beth Harmon’s style in the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit”. While this television series was set in the 60s, Bush’s “Girl with Red Hair” is from the late 1940s, so if his subject was inspired by the likes of a modern woman, it would have been from a more contemporary source, such as the 1948 film “Good-Time Girl” featuring the redheaded actress Jean Kent. Or, in terms of exact timing, it is entirely possible that this black-hooded girl with red hair may have simply been in keeping with a Halloween theme, perhaps representing a witch, since it was painted in the month of October.
“Girl with Red Hair” was included in the artist’s first solo show with Roberts Gallery, notably Canada’s longest-running commercial art gallery. The popular magazine” Saturday Night” hailed the paintings in this show as possessing a “highly personal integration of mood
and form” and concluded that “Jack Bush has opened a new vein which might lead him to some rich future discoveries in paint.” Pearl McCarthy, who was known for her biting art criticism in the pages of “The Globe and Mail”, also celebrated Bush’s “very real appeal” with this exhibition. Bush was on his way as a modern painter and – at midlife – it would prove to be just the beginning.
“Girl with Red Hair” will be included in the forthcoming “Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné”.
We extend our thanks to Dr. Sarah Stanners for contributing the preceding essay. Sarah is currently an Adjunct 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.
