signed and dated 1953 lower left; signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Toronto" on the reverse; titled and dated to the estate of the artist label on the reverse; catalogue raisonné no. 1.189.1953.186
40 × 59.5 in (101.6 × 151.1 cm)
The Artist
Estate of the Artist, 1974
Jack Bush Heritage Corporation
Private Collection, Ontario
Jack Bush: Hymn to the Sun, Early Work, Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault St. Marie; travelling to Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax; The Art Gallery of Newfoundland, St. John’s; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Winnipeg Art Gallery; Hart House, University of Toronto; Laurentian University, Museum and Art Gallery, Sudbury; MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie and the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Art, Calgary, 1 May 1977–1979 as Repose
Michael Burtch, Jack Bush: Hymn to the Sun, Early Work, Sault Ste. Marie, 1997, reproduced page 89
Sarah Stanners, Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, 1920-1954, Toronto, 2024, page 436, reproduced page 437, no. 1.189.1953.186
Jack Bush worked as a commercial artist in his father’s business, Rapid Electro Type Company, in Montreal before relocating to work at the Toronto office in 1928. 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. Bush painted and took night classes at the Ontario College of Art throughout the 1930s. Like many Toronto artists of his generation, he had limited exposure to international modernism in his early career. For nearly two decades, his landscape and figural work was shaped largely by artists associated with the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Group of Painters.
In early 1953, Bush created this alluring painting entitled Repose, depicting a reclining figure in an ambiguous landscape with a single geometric tree. The structure of the composition, including a circle surrounded by a patchwork of multicoloured sky, foreshadows his impending move into abstraction less than a year later. Toward the end of 1953, Bush joined the newly founded Toronto artist group that would exhibit as Painters Eleven the following year. By 1954 he had adopted a fully non-representational style and never looked back.
Jack Bush created approximately 250 paintings during his Painters Eleven period (October 1953 to 1960), best known for their bold, often audacious abstractions. According to Dr. Sarah Stanners, Bush's "diary reveals the influence of Fauvism on this painting. In the artist's first record book, the painting is titled Young Man-Old Problem. In the artist's fourth record, which he made when establishing his Estate in 1974, it is titled Repose."
