Kaspar Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario
A rural depiction of a village scene, Beatty creates moody atmosphere with the rich earth tones of the landscape. Inspired by his time travelling Europe between 1906 and 1909, “Small Village in Countryside” evokes the tone of European country landscape painting, akin to John Constable, while maintaining similar trends of more monochrome palettes of the Canadian Art Club of the period. Returning to Toronto after his travels, Canadian subjects, first and foremost, was the goal of Beatty's practice as a way of expressing not only personal emotion but also sharing a commonality between fellow painters and viewers. Landscape painting was not simply a vehicle of representation, but a conduit for building national identity.
