Hastings Wharf, Vancouver, a watercolour by Thomas Mower Martin, RCA. From the book Canada, described by Wilfred Campbell LL.D. and published by A&C Black Ltd. London. 1907, still publishing today! Print (page from the book) offered for sale on ebay. T. Mower Martin lived from 1838-1934; a listing of 134 of his paintings that sold at auction Saturday, October 27, 1883 is available at archive.org. The portrait of him at his desk is from the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, AB, where they have a complete fonds dedicated to him. It looks like this fonds was acquired as a gift of John Harbert in 2003, with thanks to the Michael H. Dunn Trust, 2011. Here’s an excerpt from the biography they have posted:

Thomas Mower Martin, 1838-1934, was born in London, England and received art training at a number of institutions. He and his wife, Emma Nichols, 1842-1911 moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1862. He painted mostly landscapes, animals in action, still lifes and some portraits and traveled widely throughout North America. In 1887 he made his first trip to Western Canada under the sponsorship of the Canadian Pacific Railway and returned approximately ten times. A collection of articles entitled “Canada from an Artist’s Point of View” (1895) details some of his activities in the west. Martin was a founding member of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1872 and was director of the Ontario Government Art school from 1877 to 1879. He was also a founder of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1880…

Empress of Japan II leaving Vancouver by Ronald Threlkeld Jackson (1902 - 1992), an oil painting from 1935. As I mentioned before, Ron Jackson also did commercial illustration work for the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Tourist Association. This painting was sold by Heffel Fine Art Auction House on May 10, 2000 for $10,925, well over the estimate of $6,000 - 8,000 CAD, showing romantic steamships and cityscapes can come at a premium!

Another Vancouver harbour scene by artist Walter J. Phillips, this time in colour, and from 1933, showing a mountainous background, cargo ship docked at grain elevator, and workers on the dock. The above watercolour sold at auction for $38,000, according to this Winnipeg auction house website (image is slightly cropped, and colours may be a bit off; the tweaked image comes from the aforementioned webpage). 

A Vancouver harbour scene from 1941 by W. J. Phillips, showing workers loading / unloading ships on the Vancouver dock. This watercolour is printed on page 187 of the book Canada, The Foundations of its Future by Stephen Leacock. It would be nice to see this in colour, so if anyone knows where this painting is, let me know!

Walter J. Phillips (Walter Joseph, ASA, RCA, CSPWC - 1884-1963) was a celebrated Manitoba artist who on occasion, painted in British Columbia.

Vancouver Cranes by Crystal Lee. From next year’s excellent Capilano Reflections Calendar, which I’ve blogged about previously. And once again, I can’t help but see more anthropomorphism in those cranes. From the website description:

The bright cranes are a distinguishing feature of Vancouver’s harbour. Their lumbering shapes dot the landscape like curious dinosaurs.

Like all the Capilano Reflections paintings, the original work is available for $950. From the website homepage: 

Reflections Vancouver 2012 is a collection of Vancouver scenic paintings created by second year students in the IDEA program at Capilano University. The spirit and colour of our west coast community inspired the original work featured on high quality art calendars and cards. We as students manage the entire initiative from exhibiting our unique paintings, to the design, production and marketing of our art products. Our goal is to raise funds to support our learning and continued cultural enrichment.

Industry, a two-part mural painted for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Painted by Paul Goranson, E.J. Hughes, and Orville Fisher, the three “were known as The Three Musketeers of Art’ in reference to the fact that they were artists who had enlisted.” (source) The trio also called themselves the West Coast Brotherhood, echoing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (source)

A total of 15 make that 12 murals in this series were painted, part of a project called “Art in Action”, which featured the murals painted on the walls of the exhibition hall. WWII caused the Expo to close early, but smaller versions of the murals survive in the BC Archives in Victoria. (source) These two murals are also seen in the book Free Spirit: Stories of You, Me and BC by Gerald Truscott.

E.J. Hughes, described by Jack Shadbolt as “the most engaging intuitive painter of the BC landscape since Emily Carr”, he is truly an icon of modern day Canadian art. (source)

“Orville Fisher’s paintings of the Second World War constitute one of the most complete records of Canada’s day-to-day role in that conflict. Perhaps his chief claim to fame is that he was the only Allied war artist to land in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944. This achievement is all the more extraordinary given the fact that he almost never made it overseas in the first place.” More

Orville Fisher’s mural featuring the figure of Mercury, god of messages and glad tidings, appears inside the post office building at 349 West Georgia Street, by the Homer Street entrance. He also assisted with the 1951 mural “B.C. Pageant” with Charles Comfort and 2 students.

“After the war, Goranson remained for two years with the RCAF in Ottawa, working up his pencil, charcoal and watercolour sketches into canvases. Then, finding no work in Toronto, he went to New York” (source) where “he became a display designer and then a scenic artist, joining the Metropolitan Opera in 1965. Here he worked under artists and designers such as Franco Zefferelli, Sir Cecil Beaton, and Marc Chagall. But he remained a Canadian citizen and, upon retirement in 1986 at the age of 75, returned to Vancouver.” (source)

Goranson is, without a doubt, one of my all time favourites.

Low resolution images PDP02285 and PDP02286 shown here are courtesy of the Royal BC Museum, BC Archives. Cross-posted to Vancouver Is Awesome.

Hy’s Prime Rib, magazine advertisement circa 1975. When prime rib dinners were only $4.95. Overlooking the harbour at Hastings & Bute, Board of Trade Tower, Columbia Centre. From the VPL picture file, Vancouver, BC, Restaurants. (possibly signed by artist “M Homsy”) Hy’s Steakhouse is named after Hy Aisenstat, Calgary restauranteur. 

More about Hy’s from vancouverhistory.ca:

Aisenstat, writes Constance Brissenden, “was the son of a Russian emigre wholesale grocer in Calgary. Hy worked in sales, then owned a small oil company. In 1955, with his wife Barbara (born March 20, 1934 in Kirkland Lake, Ont.), he opened Hy’s Steak House in Calgary with a $3,000 loan. They moved to Vancouver (1960) and he opened Hy’s at The Sands, The Mansion (1979) and Hy’s Encore. By 1968, Hy’s of Canada united 12 companies, with restaurants across Canada, and in Chicago, Honolulu, Palm Springs and Beverly Hills. He called his restaurants ‘saloons’ and was noted for smoking 10 Havana cigars daily.”

Hy’s son David Aisenstat now acts as President & CEO of the Keg Restaurants. Ltd, and he among the many restaurants he owns now owns (Hy’s steakhouse chain, Ki Modern Japanese, The Shore Club, and Gotham Steakhouse & Cocktail Bar) word is he has also purchased the Rogers sugar magnate’s mansion Gabriola, and perhaps one day we will see the now empty home transform into a Keg, or maybe even return to a Hy’s restaurant.

A Canadian Sunset, Vancouver Harbour, 12x36”, synthetic oil on canvas, 2006 (sold), by Greg Freedman.

J L Dean collage of the Vancouver harbour, believed to be from the 1960s, seen via ebay.