Kastel Gallery, Montreal
Private collection, Montreal
Literature
Dorothy M. Farr, “J.W. Beatty, 1869-1941”, Kingston, 1981, page 38
J.W. Beatty chose an atypical vantage point for “Forest Interior”, with a view through a forest at eye level. We do not see the treetops, but rather a zoomed-in view of four large trunks and their lower branches. The illuminated ground in the middle of the trees suggests a sunny sky above. “Forest Interior” demonstrates the increasingly lighter and more decorative palette of Beatty’s paintings throughout his career, which was likely influenced by his many sketching trips with Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald and A.Y. Jackson. The artist gradually abandoned his dark and moody colour scheme of the traditional French and Dutch schools, which he had studied at the Academie Julian in Paris.
Following Beatty’s death in 1941, Helen Bannerman remarks on the artist’s pleasing and patriotic artistic oeuvre, stating: “There is a cheerful zest about Beatty’s work that is most refreshing in these jaded times, when most artists, particularly young ones, are obsessed with a ‘message’. Beatty bothers with no message except perhaps an unconscious one urging us to glory in the beauties of Canadian landscape as he does.”
