Ross Butler Collection of livestock paintings to be dispersed

Ontario artist Ross Butler’s paintings and sculptures have been garnering interest within the livestock world since the 1930s.

Now, as the collection of Butler’s work is set to be dispersed, sold and donated, interest remains in his honest and precise depictions of Canadian farm breeds.

Why it matters: Butler’s honest and well-researched art, which has defined Canadian agricultural life for almost a century, could end up in various hands now that the collection is being dispersed.

Butler was a pioneer in Canadian agricultural art, and undertook methodical research to properly depict animals. He was also the first Canadian to sculpt in butter at the Canadian National Exhibition.

Butler’s son David, who oversees the Ross Butler collection said the gallery will be winding down and dispersing over the course of the next two or three years, not all at once.

David thinks it is important that the art end up in public institutions.

“It would be preferable if most or large portions of the collection could stay intact,” he said via e-mail.

“Public institutions like art galleries and museums are in the business of collections management, conservation, education and research.

“I feel Ross’ work should be available and accessible to the public in these kinds of settings.”

Butler said his father’s work represents a sort of ideal for contemporary agriculture.

“His artwork set a benchmark for Canadian agriculture with the notion that the ideals of breed improvement should be a target to aim for. And if living animals attained or surpassed those standards, then new ideals should be conceived.”

Butler said his father’s pictures were distributed as prints through the Ontario school system and across Canada, reaching many young Canadians in the process.

Russell Gammon, who has worked with several cattle associations in Canada and met Butler before his passing in 1995, said meticulousness was part of the artist’s appeal.

“As much as he was an artist, he obviously had a little bit of the kind of mathematician scientist bent to him as well.”

Butler had a cow named Major’s Sea Girl that he used to gather precise measurements for reference in his art, said Gammon.

“He did a lot of measuring of that cow in terms of proportions. He even, I think, went to the extent of her pupil in her eye or something. He was a very, very precise man.”

Gammon said the meticulous depictions could be appreciated by those familiar with livestock and farm life.

“We’ve all seen cases where people do paintings and you think, well, that’s a nice painting. But if you were going for the proportions of a real animal, you know, you’re a little off.”

Gammon said Butler’s work still draws interest, often from younger generations who weren’t around to appreciate the work during his lifetime.

“I was shuffling … through some paperwork, and came upon a print of his depiction of the true type Jersey cow that he probably did in the 40s or 50s,” Gammon said. He posted it on the Canadian Guernsey Association Facebook page.

“That was a page that runs 35 or 36,000 followers. There were over 34,000 reactions to that picture, through sharing and so on … For a Facebook page of that size, it was going viral. We would be happy with 100 reactions to something we post.

“That told me there’s still an appreciation for what he was doing. My summation is, it’s wonderful that after 28, almost 30 years after his passing as an elderly man, that people are still fascinated by what he’s doing,” said Gammon.

“And not just people who would have had the chance of meeting him … It’s a younger generation as well, because it’s art, you know, and it’s really, for livestock people, really, really relevant art.”

Butler said he appreciates the ongoing enthusiasm for his father’s art.

“It is gratifying to know that folks still appreciate his work not just in the agricultural community but also in a broader sense of aesthetic appeal,” he wrote. “It speaks to the notion that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty.’”

Gammon also said an element of Butler’s lasting appeal is the way it speaks to the Canadian agricultural identity.

“It’s a little more than nostalgia. It’s wanting to hold on to or celebrate something which was part of Canada’s contribution to the livestock world.”