Portrait of Vera Weatherbie

Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Charles C. Hill, John Vanderpant: Photographs, National Gallery of Canada, 1976, a similar photograph entitled Vera reproduced on the cover and plate 21, page 53

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Sheryl Salloum, Underlying Vibrations: The Photography and Life of John Vanderpant, 1995, a similar photograph entitled Vera reproduced plate 17, unpaginated
Notes:
John Vanderpant was one of Canada’s leading modernist photographers in the 1920s up until his death in 1939. Vanderpant was an influential figure in the Vancouver arts scene; he was friends with Jock Macdonald and Frederick Varley, to name a few. Though working in a different medium, Vanderpant, like his friend Varley, was known for his skill in portraiture. This small-format photograph is a strong example of the soft-focused pictorial aesthetic employed in his earlier works. In this sensual and ethereal portrait of Vera Weatherbie, we find a strong example of the artist’s innovative lighting techniques and his sensitive capture of the sitter. The combination of the lighting and the use of soft focus serves to highlight Weatherbie’s striking features, and it becomes clear how the young art student became a muse for both Varley and Vanderpant in the 1930s. This sensitive portrait has an enduring quality and adds to the eternal mystery of the muse.

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Please note: the dimensions of the card are 7 x 9 1/2 inches.