Vancouver from Dead Man's Island, 1919
Another nautical watercolour by S.P. Judge, this one of a side-wheeler named SH 91. The painting is dated 1903 which is significant, as that was perhaps the earliest date he exhibited his work in Vancouver, when he was part of a group exhibition with T.W. Fripp and stained glass artist James Blomfield. As Gary Sim has noted in Art & Artists in Exhibition: Vancouver 1890 - 1950, SP Judge was a founding member of the Vancouver Studio Club where he was one of its art teachers, and he remained an important leader in the city’s artistic community for many years.
This painting is currently offered for sale on ebay. It looks as though it was recently acquired from Birmingham, UK on ebay.co.uk, and it has since been reframed.
As you may recall, SP Judge painted a series of watercolours that once hung in the Union Steamship boardroom. I managed to track down some or all of these paintings, appropriately in the Maritime Museum in Vancouver. Their paintings include the following Union Steamships:
- Capilano
- Coquitlam
- Camosun
- Cassiar
- Comox
- Coulti
- Senator
- Moonlight
I’ve included an ad that SP Judge placed in the 1907 Westward Ho magazine, offering lessons in drawing, painting, and design from the Hadden Block at the northeast corner of Granville & Hastings Street.
You may also recall this 1906 watercolour which surfaced a year or so ago, but sadly it has not fared as well (I had to digitally restore it to imagine what it may have looked like). Another one of his paintings that I’d really like to see close up is this one from 1919, which sold for $5,500 CAD at Heffel in 2000. I trust whomever acquired it is taking good care of it, perhaps waiting to repatriate it with another work from SP Judge’s portfolio.