Modern Colours

Randolph Stanley Hewton’s place in 20th-century Canadian painting is secure enough to merit a mention in survey texts on Canadian art history and an entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia, but it is fair to say that he is unknown to the general public, in spite of links to the Group of Seven via the friendship and influence of A.Y. Jackson, and the impressionism that characterized his early work in Montreal. This exhibition catalogue, which focuses on Hewton’s work from 1910 to the 1940s, suggests some causes for this undeserved relative obscurity. Forty-two years after his death, curator Victoria Baker’s reassessment of Hewton’s work in the artistic context of the interwar years is long overdue. At only 56 pages, but with 14 full-page reproductions (half of them in colour), this catalogue is by far the most substantial publication on Hewton to date, and should be in all serious collections on Canadian art.