Tom Forrestall, beloved Nova Scotia artist and Atlantic realism pioneer, dies at 88

CITYnews halifax / By Cassidy McMackon, The Canadian Press

HALIFAX — Tom Forrestall, a celebrated Nova Scotia artist remembered for pioneering the Atlantic realism tradition, died at the age of 88 on Friday.

Forrestall’s art won critical acclaim in the 1960s for inspiring a renewed interest in realist painting, and he was known as a pioneer of the Atlantic realism movement along with Mary and Christopher Pratt.

Ray Cronin, writer and art curator at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, says Forrestall was a “prolific painter,” a man who was very generous with his time and encouraging to younger artists.

“Tom was someone who was a very humble artist, but a very good one and very committed,” Cronin said of Forrestall in a Saturday interview. He first met Forrestall in 2001 when they worked together at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Forrestall was a lifelong painter and had been making his living from his paintings since the 1960s. While this is a difficult feat for anyone in the art world, Cronin said it was especially impressive for an artist in Atlantic Canada, where there’s an even smaller market of art buyers.

“Tom was always very focused on the fact … that painting is a job like any other and you have to treat it like a job,” Cronin said in an interview Saturday.

“Art at the highest levels where Tom was working is a profession and he was very serious about that.”

Born in Middleton, N.S., in 1936, Forrestall attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., graduating in 1958. He was taught by Alex Colville, the iconic Canadian painter known for his realist paintings

Cronin said when Forrestall was attending school, the painting style admired most was abstract painting, a preference that was especially influenced by art in New York City and Paris, as well as Canadian painters Jack Bush and Alexander Luke.

But it was Colville’s focus on realistic representation that inspired Forrestall’s and the Pratts’ pioneering of the Atlantic realist style.

“From the ’60s to the ’90s it was the best known form of artmaking in Atlantic Canada and it was how the rest of the Canadian art world saw what was important and interesting coming out of Atlantic Canada,” Cronin said. He added that the realist works of Forrestall and his contemporaries were especially well-known because they spoke to more of the general interests of the average art consumer, which more Maritimers could appreciate.

“I think artists, in order to be successful, had to really appeal to a broad spectrum of their fellow Atlantic Canadians as possible. Maybe that’s why realism was able to take root here so strongly.”

Along with his realist style, Forrestall is remembered for his egg tempura paintings, made with powdered pigment and egg yolks, which dry clear. It was Forrestall’s preferred way of painting, according to Cronin, who said the method is a slow, meticulous style that began in the Middle Ages.

One of Forrestall’s best-known works, “Island in the Ice,” hangs permanently on display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which houses more than 100 of his works in its permanent collection.

Other Forrestall works hang on display in galleries across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 16, 2024.

Cassidy McMackon, The Canadian Press