Algonquin Park, Early September, circa 1922

Collection of Albert Schnaufer By descent to a Private Collection, Ontario Heffel Fine Art, auction, 30 November 2013, lot 309 Private Collection, Ontario

J.W. Beatty moved into the newly constructed Studio Building in 1914 and went on a sketching trip that year to Algonquin Park with J.E.H. MacDonald. There, he met A.Y. Jackson; the two men would embark on more sketching trips together, including to Western Canada. Rural Ontario remained Beatty’s most popular subject throughout his career, with many works of Algonquin Park exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. A forerunner to the Group of Seven, Beatty demonstrates in this 1922 oil sketch the nationalist pride he took in painting the vast Algonquin Park and other areas of rural Ontario. The subtle changing of the leaves in fall is a quintessential element of the Canadian wilderness, reinforcing Beatty’s theme of the ‘uniquely Canadian landscape’.