Thomas DeVany Forrestall

Thomas DeVany Forrestall (11 March 1936 – 15 November 2024) was a Canadian realist painter. Forrestall was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia and studied with Alex Colville at Mount Allison University. He became a fulltime professional artist in 1960. His works, chiefly painted in watercolour or egg tempera, are held by major galleries throughout Canada.

Early life and education Forrestall was born in Annapolis Valley, now known as Middleton, Nova Scotia on 11 March 1936. He was one of four children in a Roman Catholic family. As a child he developed epilepsy and began having seizures at the age of seven. From 1942 until 1951 the family lived in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, where Forrestall's father, a carpenter, was employed in the construction of a new hospital. During this period he participated in art classes given by Nova Scotia College of Art students. Forrestall attended high school in Middleton, where he continued drawing and painting.

Forrestall entered Mount Allison University in 1954, having been awarded a scholarship to study art. His studio teachers were Lawren P. Harris, the Fine Arts department head, Ted Pulford, who taught watercolour painting, and Alex Colville. Colville described Forrestall as "the most promising artist our school has produced in a decade." After graduating in 1958 Forrestall was awarded a Canada Council grant which allowed him to travel in Europe.

Forrestall was a fulltime artist from 1960 onwards. In that year the New Brunswick government commissioned a painting by him as a wedding present for Princess Margaret. He was one of six artists commissioned to provide murals representing aspects of New Brunswick culture for the Centennial Building, the new provincial office building in Fredericton which opened in 1967. Forrestall's work was a sheet metal construction depicting farming.

Forrestall created the mural for the fly tower which was added to the Fredericton Playhouse in 1972. The mural, which resembles "an enormous colourful box resting atop a Georgian-style theatre", made the Playhouse "one of the most recognizable [buildings] in Atlantic Canada".

Forrestall was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1973. In 1974 he collaborated with the poet Alden Nowlan on a book entitled Shaped by This Land, in which 54 poems were juxtaposed with 76 paintings and sketches.

In 1986 Forrestall's portrait of Pierre Trudeau's three sons, which had been commissioned by the Canadian government, was presented to the former prime minister as a gift from the nation.

A major retrospective of Forrestall's work at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2008 included work from the 1950s to 2007. The exhibition subsequently travelled to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, and the Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University, Forrestall's alma mater.

Forrestall's works are held in many Canadian and international galleries and collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery received a "generous and momentous gift of 270 sketchbooks" from the artist.

Style and artistic media Forrestall's work is in the realist tradition. His main media were egg tempera and watercolour painting. He often made his tempera paintings in shapes that differ from the traditional rectangles and squares.

Forrestall's over 400 sketchbooks, which he began when still in his teens, contain "drawings, small wash paintings, and writings on his art and life". Member of the Order of Canada (1986) 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal (1992)