Winter Field (Shingled House & Meadow)

Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, Ontario

Mark Abley, “The Painted Bird”, “Saturday Night Magazine”, Toronto, June 1984, page 61

This unique painting was a private commission by a collector who knew Robert Bateman when his studio was still in Burlington, Ontario and he was teaching art at Nelson High school. The setting is the Niagara escarpment, a favourite place of the collector's and Mr. Bateman's. At this early moment in the artist's career, in addition to his daytime teaching job with high school students, he was also offering evening art classes which the collector's spouse attended. She was so taken with his vision that she introduced his work to her family. Mr. Bateman personally framed this painting using barn board that complements this classic scene of an abandoned Ontario barn, the only human presence on a winter landscape. Discussing “Haliburton House”, one of Bateman's “finest” works, which shares similar compositional elements to “Winter Field”, Mark Abley explains that the work “provides a kind of emblem for all his paintings, no matter whether the subject is an Ontario farmhouse, a bald eagle, or an African elephant. Weary-eyed, we are confronted by the calm, impersonal power of the natural world; the way out of human decay is a way forward into nature. Bateman feeds a longing for what lies beyond.”