John William Beatty RCA, OSA (1861 - 1941)
J. W. Beatty’s Mountains Near Jasper is a recent and
significant addition to the fine art holdings of the Whyte Museum of the
Canadian Rockies. This charming, small panel depicts a scene somewhere in
the Yellowhead or Jasper region of the Canadian Rockies. Beatty’s mountain
landscapes are rare. He came 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. Jackson recalls: “Bill Beatty got a
commission for himself and me to paint in the construction camps of the
Canadian Northern Railway which was laying track through the Rocky
Mountains.” 1
The two had an adventurous time, sketching the scenery in both pencil
and in the format of Mountains Near Jasper, a small, easily
transported wooden panel. They explored this newly accessible backcountry
on foot and with an eye for the glaciated regions that the railway put
within reach: “We had good times in the mountains, exciting ones. We
took too many chances, sliding down snow slopes with only a stick for a
brake, climbing over glaciers without ropes, crossing rivers too swift to
wade by felling trees across them.” 2
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. Beatty’s work
is more romantic in style than the modernist approach, and the bold
experiments of form and colour that would become definitive of The Group.
To some extent, his work has been overlooked due to the eclipsing stature
of the Group of Seven in Canadian art.
The Whyte Museum already owns a small collection of pencil studies of
the Canadian Rockies by A.Y. Jackson, and a number of these are from the
1914 trip with Beatty. The acquisition of Mountains Near Jasper allows us
to further explore the art history of the Canadian Rockies by filling out
our picture of this unique trip.
– Lisa Christensen, Curator Of Art
1. Jackson, A.Y. A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of
A.Y. Jackson (Toronto: Clark, Irwin and Company Ltd., 1968),
35-36.
2. A.Y. Jackson to Dr. James McCallum by
letter, 1914. National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, A.Y. Jackson
manuscripts (MG 30 D 259).
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