FORREST
Haughton
“There was a time, not so long ago, when nearly every other well-to-do home in Tasmania had an oil by Forrest hanging in the hallway or above the mantlepiece.”
Haughton Forrest emigrated to Tasmania in 1876 and slowly established himself as a painter. He lived under the mountain at 'Heathville' on Cascade Road in South Hobart and painted into his ninth decade. A particular subject for Forrest was Tasmania’s mountainous scenery and the mountain was the one he painted and repainted, perhaps, fifty times. There is a plethora of detail in almost all his work, but he was a fast worker and his long career permitted an enormous output, satiating the tremendous demand for his work. His paintings, including one of the mountain with Mountain Lake in the foreground, were chosen for the first Tasmanian pictorial stamp series. Art critics deprecated his work with such effect—because of its photographic qualities—that up until the 1970s prices rarely exceed £20 even for his large oils in superb gilt frames. That has changed.