Robert McLellan Bateman (1930- )

• painter
• born on May 24 1930 in Toronto, Ontario
• received early training as a naturalist at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum
• studied painting and drawing with Gordon Payne and Carl Schaefer
• work relates both to traditional wildlife illustrators (Fuertes, Allen Brooks), the Group of Seven, and contemporary realist artists
• taught high-school geography and art for about 20 years in Toronto and Burlington, Ontario
• in the 1950's and early 1960's he painted in abstract and semi-abstract styles, though he continued to sketch wildlife
• after seeing an Andrew Wyeth exhibition in 1963, he began producing realistic paintings with wildlife as the subject
• these works achieved international success
• there have been major showings of his work in Canada and abroad
• further reading:
  • The Art of Robert Bateman (1981) by Ramsay Derry
  • The World of Robert Bateman (1985) by Ramsay Derry
  • Portraits of Nature: Paintings of Robert Bateman (1987) by S.G. Shetler

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