NATURAL WOODS

Remarkably gifted as a painter and naturalist, Robert Bateman is undoubtedly the most celebrated wildlife artist working today. With quiet beauty and startling drama, this volume presents the painter at the peak of his career. Featuring more than 130 dazzling new works of art, Natural Worlds shows us how Bateman's evocative depictions of birds and animals within finely observed landscapes have redefined wildlife painting and won him the acclaim of art lovers, critics, and fellow artists alike.
Complementing these marvelous new paintings are handsome lithographs, many reproduced here for the first time, as well as evocative color sketches created specially for this book. In the fascinating text that accompanies the art, Bateman also offers reflections on his work and eloquently expresses his concern for the world's threatened ecosystems. If we intend to pass this planet on to our grandchildren, he argues, it is essential to find a balance between progress and preservation.
Thoughtful and breathtaking, this marvelous celebration of the beauty and diversity of life on our planet is a treasure as rich and varied as nature itself.

Canadian artist and naturalist Bateman travels the world observing birds and animals in their natural habitats, and this stunning collection of his paintings, lithographs and sketches?beautifully reproduced in full color?is a tribute to his awareness of the interconnectedness of living things as well as his skill as an artist. The amazingly detailed works are elegant and haunting?a snow-white egret silhouetted against the dark waters of a mangrove swamp, a giant panda peering through a filigree of ice-laden branches, a tiny frog almost hidden in a clump of beach grass, timber wolves emerging from the shadows of a snowy forest. There are also sensitive depictions of a deserted Indian village off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, a stableyard in a remote village in northeastern Poland and the winter barnyard of his grandfather's farm in eastern Ontario, places the artist holds dear because humans have lived there in harmony with nature. Archbold's (Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature) lucid text aptly describes Bateman's travels, his reverence for wilderness and his concern for the preservation of biological diversity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From George Stubbs to J. J. Audubon to Edwin Landseer to Beatrix Potter, specialists in realistic animal portraiture are among the most enduringly popular artists. The current dean of such artists is the Canadian Robert Bateman. This is the fourth lavish album displaying his art in ravishing color and at gratifyingly large scale: several reproductions completely fill one or two pages, and many more nearly do so. The pictures are grouped geographically according to where the creatures depicted live: "The Western Shore" (of Canada), "The Arctic," "The Tropics," etc. The accompanying text, for which professional writer Archbold is given credit, is cast in Bateman's voice and relays his ecologically conscious thoughts and a few experiences as an artist in the field. The former tend to be--however true or good--conservationist commonplaces. The latter include the occasional piquant revelation, such as Bateman's discovery as a teenager that painting outdoors entailed the suicides of "hundreds, possibly thousands, of mosquitoes" on his canvases' "still-gooey surfaces." Ray Olson