Stanley Morel Cosgrove (1911–2002) was a Canadian painter, draughtsman, and muralist born in Montreal, Quebec. Quiet Path, painted around 1970, depicts a wooded interior seen from within the forest, with slender tree trunks forming a vertical rhythm across the canvas. The palette is restrained, with greys, blue-greens, and muted ochres defining the trees and ground, while pale broken strokes suggest light filtering through the canopy rather than a clearly defined path. The composition compresses space into a patterned screen of trunks and foliage, reflecting Cosgrove’s long-standing interest in forests as a subject for structure and quiet reflection.

Cosgrove pursued formal artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal from 1929 to 1935, studying under Henri Charpentier, Joseph Saint-Charles, and Charles Maillard. He later studied drawing with Edwin Holgate at the Art Association of Montreal, who became a lifelong mentor and friend. In 1940, Cosgrove traveled to Mexico City on a redirected study grant, studying at the Academia de San Carlos under Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and apprenticing with muralist José Clemente Orozco, whose fresco techniques and compositional methods influenced his later work. Cosgrove was also influenced by modernist painters including Georges Braque and Georges Rouault. He taught at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal after returning to Canada in 1944 and later taught briefly at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Throughout his career, Cosgrove focused almost exclusively on three subjects: landscapes, still lifes, and the female figure. His approach blended modernist simplification with careful observation, using a limited palette and controlled tonal shifts to create depth and structure. He worked alongside and exhibited with artists such as Jean Paul Lemieux, Jori Smith, Jean Palardy, and Goodridge Roberts, and assisted Edwin Holgate on the Canadian Pavilion mural for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Cosgrove became a member of the Canadian Group of Painters and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He was represented exclusively by the Dominion Gallery in Montreal for much of his career, which supported his full-time painting practice from the late 1950s onward.

Cosgrove exhibited widely, including his first solo exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts de Québec in 1939 and later exhibitions at the Dominion Gallery and a major retrospective at the Centre d’exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul in 1995–1996. His works are held in major public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Collectors value Cosgrove’s forest compositions for their modernist structure, tonal restraint, and sustained exploration of quiet, introspective subject matter across a career spanning more than seventy years. Quiet Path measures 16 × 20 inches and is an oil on canvas, signed bottom right.