BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP
Art at the Union Club
Art has long adorned the walls of the Union Club since the members acquired their first Clubhouse on Douglas Street in 1885.
The collection reflected the tastes and interests of its members. The first roster included circuit court judges, lawyers, land surveyors, mining engineers and military personnel. They delighted in the scenic splendours of the Province. Unsurprisingly, their taste coincided with the opportunities for sports fishing and big game hunting which this vast landscape offered in abundance. The Union Club was noted for its outstanding collection of mounted trophy heads. In 1910 the Union Club loaned this collection of “taxidermy art” to the Dominion Government for exhibition at the Viennese World Exhibition. The picture collection of paintings and prints also celebrated these wild-life “sports”, and the dramatic landscapes in which they were played, in the grand Romantic tradition. A significant portion of the membership, some in active service with Royal Navy and others retired officers from the British colonial armies, appreciated engraved prints of heroic battle scenes or ships clustered in exotic ports.
Over time this was to change. Architects such as club members William Ridgway Wilson, Francis Mawson Rattenbury and Samuel Maclure, along with collectors and connoisseurs like member John Shallcross, were active in founding the Victoria Arts and Crafts Institute for the education of artists, and the Arts and Crafts Society to organize local art exhibitions. They both participated in and supported the North-West tradition of plein-air water-colour painting.
More recently acquisitions feature the work of member artists such as Len Gibbs, Arthur Vickers, Judith Saunders and Stephen Lowe. The Union Club has recently rededicated itself to further developing the art collection to reflect its own history of engagement in British Columbia culture and the interests of its members in current arts practice.
Circa 1922
Signed: monogram
2024.10.01
This image depicts the Olympic Mountains through Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park, officially opened in 1882. By the time Maclure painted this work ca. 1922, he was in his sixties and had evolved his style from his earlier Victorian-era Picturesque to embrace the subtleties of Post-Impressionism.
Born in Sapperton, New Westminster, British Columbia, Samuel Maclure was a successful and influential Canadian architect and artist. He studied painting in Philadelphia from 1884 to 1885. He and his wife, Margaret Catherine (Daisy), a pianist and portrait painter, were founding members of the Vancouver Island Arts and Crafts Society in 1909 and he exhibited work with the group. He was an early member of the Union Club of British Columbia.
