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An Artist’s Abode
Jack Bush, of Painters Eleven fame, slept here By Bert Archer
Striped Column (1964) appears on a postage stamp this year
Image credit: courtesy of Archives of Ontario
In the upscale North York neighbourhood known as Cricket Club, teardowns and oversized rebuilds are nothing unusual. Neither is a house on the market for $1.15 million. But 1 Eastview Crescent has some history: it’s the former home of Jack Bush, the abstract artist and Painters Eleven member. He and his wife, Mabel, bought it in 1943, when the neighbourhood was a middle-class development.
Bush lived there for most of his adult life, raising three sons and launching a late-blooming career out of a small studio above the garage. (His paintings can sell for $100,000 apiece at Sotheby’s.) The house was also the epicentre of Toronto’s ebullient mid-century arts scene. Gatherings with his fellow artists and the New York art critic Clement Greenberg, a friend, were legendary. “That was a raucous bunch,” Bush’s youngest son, Terry, remembers.
Bush died in 1977, and his wife sold the house for $259,000 in 1984. The new owner wanted a heritage designation, but in this unsentimental city, it didn’t pan out. Agents predict that the modest house—on a coveted 210-foot-deep lot—will be bulldozed by the next buyer.
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