Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature

Patricia Morley is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University, an associate fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, and author of Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

The prominence of wildlife painting and photography in the last 20 years
has grown together with the environmental movement. Wildlife artist
Bateman is both painter and environmentalist; each devotion nurtures the
other.

This is the third volume that reproduces his paintings. Archbold’s
large-print text—biographical and critical, substantial and
significant—occupies one-quarter of the volume. Archbold is a Canadian
writer and editor who shares Bateman’s love of nature and his concern
for our threatened world.

Bateman grew up in Toronto in the 1930s and 1940s, when the city’s
ravines, still relatively intact, teemed with bird and animal life. He
was thus able to share something of the experience of Ernest Thomson
Seton, the nineteenth-century naturalist whose writing Bateman knew and
admired. For 20 years, Bateman taught geography and art in high school,
opening his students’ eyes to the connections between beauty and
nature while his own vision and technique were maturing. International
travel exposed him to the world’s major ecosystems, and his wild-life
paintings of East Africa began to establish his reputation as an artist.
International prominence meant financial independence.

Archbold’s sensitive text shows us the young boy “hooked on
nature,” and the enquiring mind that Gerald Durrell sees as essential
for a naturalist. Bateman seems to agree: “The naturalist is
fascinated by both individuality and interrelationships, and that’s
what ecology is all about.”

The bulk of the book consists of more than 100 stunning color
reproductions of Bateman’s wildlife paintings, along with his
commentaries on them, and black-and-white photographs of his life.
Andrew Wyeth’s influence can be seen in paintings such as Barn
Swallows in August and Barn Swallows and Horse Collar. Bateman’s
passionate engagement in the fight for environmental survival can be
seen in paintings such as Carmanah Constrasts which sets the valley’s
natural beauty against a clear-cut barren hillside.

This volume is beautifully designed and executed. Bateman and Archbold
make a fine team.