작품 상세

JOHN WILLIAM BEATTY, O.S.A., R.C.A.WINTER LANDSCAPEoil on canvas 18 ins x 22 ins; 45.7 cms x 55.9 cms Provenance:Private Collection, OntarioLiterature:David Silcox, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, 2003, page 22.Note:Beatty's early paintings were heavily influenced by the Dutch school, like many of his Canadian colleagues in the first decade of the twentieth century. However, by the mid-teens and into the following decades, Beatty began to employ the characteristically brighter palette of the circle of painters who orbited, or were to become, the Group of Seven. This was, perhaps, inevitable as Beatty was intimately involved in the discourse that gave birth to the emerging nationalistic school of art and had, prior to the Group's formation, been "staking claims that were similar to the Group's," according to David Silcox.Beatty was very much part of the milieu of the most forward thinking painters of the day. He knew Lawren Harris as early as 1911 and it was he who helped Harris get elected as a member of the O.S.A. When the Studio Building was erected in 1913, he was among its first tenants. In cooperation with MacDonald, Beatty helped raise the cairn to Thomson after he drowned in Canoe Lake. And it was Beatty who nominated J.E.H. MacDonald for membership in the R.C.A. in 1931.   The overlapping membership in both art societies as well as the Arts & Letters Club meant Beatty could not help but contribute to the emerging state of mind as it related to a new national school of art and certainly by 1913 he was a "convert from Dutch to Canadian Art, a born again prophet of the new nationalism.” Furthermore, just as the O.S.A. had acquired works by MacDonald, Lismer and Jackson for the province of Ontario from 1911-1913, so Beatty had paintings selected for the Ontario Collection every year from 1909-1913 (that is, until he resigned from the O.S.A.).  Therefore, it is somewhat puzzling that Beatty's star did not rise in parallel with the fortunes of the Group, although increasingly he has come to the attention of observant collectors. It is possible that his assertive mien did not easily accommodate itself to the gentler personalities of Harris, MacDonald, Lismer and perhaps even collectors, too. In Winter Landscape, Beatty demonstrates particularly beautiful handling of colour harmonies, and his controlled though vigorous brushwork teases out a timeless georgic energy, remarkable given the season, that makes an otherwise placid prospect - a farm asleep under a blanket of snow - intensely alive. The snow is melting; spring is imminent.According to the owner, a note attached to this work when purchased stated that it once hung at Parkwood Estate in the Collection of Colonel Robert Samuel McLaughlin.