DIPPER HARBOUR, SOUTHERN NEW BRUNSWICK, undated
watercolour and ink
15.25 x 22.25 in.
framed
$2,700

Jack Weldon Humphrey was born in Saint John, in 1901. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Phillip Hale and painting at the National Academy of Design, the Arts Students League, New York, and Charles Hawthorn's Cape Cod School. He was a Tiffany Foundation student at Oyster Bay, Long Island, 1927. In 1929 he studied in Paris with Andre Lhote, and at the Grande Chaumiere Academy and in Munich at the Hans Hofmann School until 1930. He also travelled in Italy, Holland, Belgium, and England. Jack was the founding member of the C.G.P in 1933. A visit to Mexico in 1938 resulted in a collection of important paintings. He was awarded a government fellowship to study in Paris from 1952-1954.The majority of his life was spent in Saint John where he was a full-time painter. In 1966, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery organized a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work which was circulated across the country by the National Gallery of Canada.

From his obituary in 1967 -
A shy, retiring man who began drawing critics' praise in the 1930's... Critics on an international level praised his 'nostalgic still life', his fusing of the figurative with the abstract in black sky landscapes', his master watercolour and portrait techniques' And from renowned critic Robert Ayre came this summary:"He does not play games with physics but he is absorbed in what the eye sees and the pleasure in it... he is single-minded in his explorations and he has a lonely and uncompromising distinction".