From the Collection: J.W. Beatty

Today we’re exploring the work of John William Beatty (1869-1941) from the Permanent Collection.

J.W. Beatty was a prominent Canadian artist and educator who lived and worked in Toronto at the turn of the nineteenth century. A contemporary of the Group of Seven, Beatty was also interested in exploring the landscape as a uniquely Canadian identity. Though never formally a part of the Group, over the years Beatty befriended and went on several sketching trips with prominent members Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson.

This piece, titled “Easter Time, Kearney Ontario,” is representative of the en plein air sketches that the artist would produce on such trips. You can imagine the artist sitting at this site, blocking out the light and colour as he sees it before him, capturing the serenely curving lines of the shoreline; the artist’s hand clear in the marks of the water’s surface.

His contributions and influences on the Ontario art scene were numerous. Beatty was a longstanding member of the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto, an important early meeting place for artists, and was elected president in 1912. He began teaching at the Ontario College of Art (now the Ontario College of Art and Design University) that same year and continued to teach there up until his death in 1941. As such, Beatty taught and influenced many celebrated Canadian artists, such as A.J. Casson and Doris McCarthy. It was a former student and local artist, Rev. Ernest Gilmour Smith, who donated this piece to the Art Gallery of Peterborough’s Permanent Collection in 1980.