.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Born in the Netherlands in 1884, John Vanderpant moved to Alberta in 1913 and then to New Westminster, British Columbia in 1919. As a major influence in Canadian photography during the 1920s and 1930s, he established himself as a significant artist not only in his homeland but across the United States and throughout Europe. In addition to promoting his own work, Vanderpant was, throughout his life, a champion for the education and appreciation of photography and the fine arts in Canada.
A Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Vanderpant exhibited with such contemporaries as Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, while at the same time struggling to support his art through his work as a portrait photographer. In 1926 he opened the Vanderpant Galleries in Vancouver where he showed the work of both Canadian and American photographers and where in the following year he held an International Photographic Salon. Included among his many solo exhibitions are a touring exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society in London in 1925 and a 1934 one-man-show at the Seattle Art Museum. In 1927 American Photographer magazine included Vanderpant as part of a series on the "World's Greatest Photographers".
Vanderpant described photography as "entirely a process of gradation between white and black; pictorially it is more a balancing of contrasting or blending spaces". He often sought a spiritual meaning in his works, conveying a feeling, mood or thought through a simple form. (Salloum, Underlying Vibrations, x-xi.)
A Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Vanderpant exhibited with such contemporaries as Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, while at the same time struggling to support his art through his work as a portrait photographer. In 1926 he opened the Vanderpant Galleries in Vancouver where he showed the work of both Canadian and American photographers and where in the following year he held an International Photographic Salon. Included among his many solo exhibitions are a touring exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society in London in 1925 and a 1934 one-man-show at the Seattle Art Museum. In 1927 American Photographer magazine included Vanderpant as part of a series on the "World's Greatest Photographers".
Vanderpant described photography as "entirely a process of gradation between white and black; pictorially it is more a balancing of contrasting or blending spaces". He often sought a spiritual meaning in his works, conveying a feeling, mood or thought through a simple form. (Salloum, Underlying Vibrations, x-xi.)