Canadian Artist of the Day

Granville Street at Night

Jack Shadbolt 1946

Jack Shadbolt was born in Shoeburyness, England, in 1909. When he was three his family immigrated to Canada, finally settling in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1914. Exposure to the art of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, combined with a burgeoning interest in outdoor sketching, led to his decision to become an artist. He later studied in New York, London, and Paris, and in 1938 began teaching at the Vancouver School of Art.

He enlisted in the army as a signalman on 28 October 1942. Preferring to paint, he devoted time during training to recording the setting and activities of Little Mountain Camp, B.C. In May 1944 the Canadian War Artists' Committee identified him as one of a number of suitable candidates for commission as an official war artist, but there were no vacancies in the army. Instead, he became a "narrator," with the rank of major, on the staff of the Director of Historical Services, Ottawa, pending a vacancy in the war artist establishment.

Beginning on 23 October 1944, he spent three weeks painting and sketching at the German prisoner of war camp at Petawawa, Ontario. The 32 works on paper he produced there form the main body of his art at the Canadian War Museum. Executed in watercolour and pencil, Shadbolt's subjects include portraits of the Veterans Guard of Canada, the German prisoners, work parties, and several detailed portrayals of the bleak camp itself. In these camp studies, the barbed wire fences, the watchtowers, and the ramshackle wooden huts document with chilling thoroughness one aspect of Canada's war on the home front.