Biographies

John William Beatty (1869 – 1941)

This Canadian artist studied at Central Ontario School of Art under J. W. L. Forster. Beatty also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. He was a teacher at Ontario College of Art 1912-1941. He went west to the Rockies from his home in Toronto only once, to paint scenes along the Canadian Northern Railway line with A.Y. Jackson in the summer of 1914. Beatty’s circle included Tom Thomson and the painters who would eventually become the Group of Seven, and their influence on his work can be seen in increasingly vivid colour and brushwork. His work is more romantic in style than the modernist approach of The Group.