Robert Bateman was born May 24, 1930 in North Toronto, Ontario. Bob is the eldest of three boys born to Joseph and Annie Bateman. His father was originally from Eastern Ontario, his mother from Nova Scotia. Their family home in Toronto was built beside the affluent Forest Hill Village district and on the edge of the countryside which provided a perfect environment for a young artist and naturalist to develop.

Bob's interest in art and nature seemed always to be a part of his life. As a child he had a natural love of drawing and he never lost that urge. He knew "by the time he was twelve he was going to spend a lot of his life doing art and a lot of it looking at birds" He attended elementary and secondary school in Toronto and graduated from Forest Hill Collegiate in 1948. Early influences on Robert Bateman were Ernest Thompson-Seton, Roger Tory Peterson and of course the great naturalist painter John James Audubon.

During the summers of 1947-49 Bob was fortunate to have a job in a wildlife research camp in Algonquin Park where he reinforced his love of the wilderness, naturalist study and more importantly, lived in the landscape that dominated much of the Group of Seven artist's work some twenty years before. By this time Bob had studied and known about these Canadian painters by attending classes at the Arts and Letters club and developing his painting skills with the well respected Ontario artist Gordon Payne.

In 1950, Bob enrolled in the University of Toronto as a geography student and continued to develop his art extra-curricularly. He attended evening drawing classes for five years with the major Canadian artist Carl Schaefer who was associated with the Group of Seven. Bob graduated from the University of Toronto in 1954 and enrolled in the Ontario College of Education where he completed his studies in 1955. Robert Bateman then embarked upon a twenty year career as a secondary school teacher of Art and Geography. 1963 was a pivotal year in Bob's career as an artist. This was when he first saw the work of the great American realist painter Andrew Wyeth in Buffalo, New York. The inspiration of this single show shocked Bob into the realization that realist art had not only merit but that it could capture the spirit and life of a subject in ways that he thought only possible by very expressive and impressionistic means.

Since that time, Robert Bateman began to paint more prolifically as a realist. This way of working provided Bob with the opportunity to include his love of nature much more directly in his art. He could carefully delineate the subject of living things with his love of the land. He continued to paint and teach art until 1975. Since then, Robert Bateman has painted full time and he has not looked back. He has travelled extensively throughout the world and has had numerous one man exhibitions in Canada and the United States. Bob has also had three major books published chronicling his life and his art. He now resides with his wife, Birgit, on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.

As an outstanding contributor to Canadian culture, Bob was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1984. That same year the C.B.C. produced a one hour program documenting his life and his art. In 1985 Robert Bateman was presented with the World Wildlife Funds Medal of Honour by His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1987 he received the Governor General's Award in Quebec City for his contribution to conservation in Canada. Robert Bateman remains one of Canada's finest artists and his contributions to conservation of the environment and to Canadian art will be a lasting legacy.