Lee Gatch was born outside Baltimore, Maryland in 1902. He enrolled in the Maryland Institute of Art where he began his formal artistic training. While enrolled he had the opportunity to study under Leon Kroll and John Sloan. After graduation and armed with a traveling scholarship Gatch enrolled in the American School at Fontainebleau, France. However, he became dissatisfied with the classes there, and so in 1924 he moved to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Modern with Moise Kisling and André Lhote, a cubist academician. While in France, Gatch came in contact with the paintings of Andre Derain, Edouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard. He greatly admired their application of color to create a sense of space. Gatch returned to the United States in 1925. He had his first one-man show in 1932 in New York. He spent the summer of 1935 in Yaddo, an artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with the Precisionist artist Elsie Driggs, whom he later married. The couple moved to Lambertville, N.J., where he lived the rest of his life on a secluded farm. The landscape of western New Jersey provided his source of subject matter during most of his career. Like his contemporaries such as Avery, Dove, and Knaths, Gatch attempted to create a personal individual style which was drawn on the American representational tradition but which transcended this tradition in order to find meaning through design and color.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Gatch's work was widely exhibited, including representation in the Venice Biennales of 1950 and 1956. His paintings were popular, and the artist received many awards from American museums. In 1965 he received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the Academy the following year. He continued to work steadily until his death in 1968.
The Beast presents a mysterious, dreamlike vision of an animal form tethered within a space that seems to shift between interior and exterior. The setting evokes both a stage-like backdrop and an open landscape, its ambiguity deepened by a field of white that silhouettes the creature and isolates it from its surroundings. The animal itself remains indistinct, as if summoned from the subconscious, while flame-like radiations halo its form, suggesting an aura of energy. Above, celestial motifs, a cross within a full moon to the right and a crescent moon to the left, introduce mythological or spiritual overtones. At once symbolic and enigmatic, the work reflects Gatch’s gift for uniting abstraction, representation, and poetic mystery.