Artist Walter Joseph Phillips
Title Untitled - To the Hunt
Media watercolour on paper
Size 14 x 21 in. / 35.6 x 53.3 cm.
Frame Size 24.5 x 31 x 2 in.
Sold $7,000 Estimate $8,000 - $10,000

Notes
unsigned; framed with archival mat

Reference
bears inscription 'W.J. Phillips - My father, Thomas Matheson, was a friend of Walter and Gladys Phillips over a period of about 50 years. He first met Mr. Phillips in the late 20's when my father was a student at Banff School of Fine Arts. As my father was a salesman for a drug company during the Depression, he travelled extensively across Canada, visiting Walt and Gladys whenever he was in Winnipeg. Through the Phillips he met several other members of the Canadian artist community including Frederick Varley, Franklin Carmichael and Lauren Harris. Our families remained good friends and my parents visited often first in Winnipeg, then later in Calgary and in Banff. In 1936, in London, my parents visited Y. Urushibara, the Japanese artist whom Mr. Phillips credited with teaching him the technique of the colour woodcut. Throughout the time that my father knew Mr. Phillips, he bought a great number of watercolours and woodcuts from him. The Phillips often stayed with our family when they visited Vancouver. In 1964, the year after Mr. Phillips died, I wrote an essay on him for a Fine Arts course I was taking at the University of British Columbia. I sent a copy of the essay to Mrs. Phillips and in recognition of this she gave me a print of Summer Idyll which I still have. My husband and I last visited Mrs. Phillips in the mid-seventies at her home in Victoria. - Lee Matheson Gary' verso

Provenance
purchased directly from the artist; corporate collection, Calgary