A Life of Portraiture and Service
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Kenneth Forbes was a portrait and landscape painter. He was the son of John Colin Forbes, R.C.A., a distinguished portraitist. Forbes studied at the Newlyn School in Cornwall with Stanhope Forbes and later attended the Hospitalfield House school in Arbroath, Scotland. His education also included time at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was a successful amateur boxer. At nineteen, his portrait work was accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy, and in total, twelve of his portraits were exhibited there.
During the First World War, Forbes enlisted in the 10th "Pals" Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. He was wounded in action and gassed, eventually serving as second in command of the 32nd Battalion, Machine Gun Corps. In 1918, he became an official Canadian war artist after being transferred to Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund.
Artistic Principles and Recognition
Forbes was a recipient of the Thomas R. Proctor Prize for portraiture from the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1932 and 1939. In 1967, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to the arts as a landscape and portrait painter.
A proponent of traditional realism, Forbes resigned from the Ontario Society of Artists in 1953 and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1958 due to his opposition to abstract and modern art. He helped establish the Ontario Institute of Painters in 1958 for traditional artists. In 1972, he published a book titled Great Art to the Grotesque.
