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. As well as many seascapes, a particular subject of his was Tasmania’s mountainous scenery and the mountain he painted or repainted, perhaps, 50 times. He lived under the mountain at 'Heathville' on Cascade Road in South Hobart and painted into his ninth decade.
His enormous output over a period of nearly fifty years enabled him to satiate this tremendous demand for his work. There is a plethora of detail in almost all his work and art critics deprecated his work because of its photographic qualities with such effect that until the 1970s prices rarely exceed £20 even for his large oils in superb gilt frames.’
His paintings, including one of the mountain with Mountain Lake in the foreground, were chosen for the first Tasmanian pictorial stamp series.