Anne Savage’s family owned land at Lake Wonish in the Laurentians in Quebec, and nearly every year on her Summer and Easter breaks from teaching, she would spend time in a small studio she built on their property. The flowing composition is characteristic of Savage, who captures the windy fall day with rhythm. The lake was a place of great inspiration for the artist, and she painted in nature here for nearly fifty years, capturing the changes of the season with sensitivity.
1896-1971 A founding member of the Beaver Hall Group, Anne “Annie” Douglas Savage often painted the Quebec landscape. Although influenced by the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson, with whom she was close friends, Savage’s works reflect a land inhabited by a harmonious human presence, rather than a deserted wilderness. In…
1896-1971
A founding member of the Beaver Hall Group, Anne “Annie” Douglas Savage often painted the Quebec landscape. Although influenced by the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson, with whom she was close friends, Savage’s works reflect a land inhabited by a harmonious human presence, rather than a deserted wilderness. In her later years, she began to venture towards abstraction, simplifying form and employing patches of colour. Member of a large and closely-knit family, Savage grew up in then-rural Dorval, Quebec, and spent her summers in the Laurentians, which instilled in her a love of the country. After studying at the Art Association of Montreal and the Minneapolis School of Art, Savage opted for a teaching career rather than becoming a professional artist in order to fulfill her familial responsibilities following the 1916 death of her twin brother, Donaldson, in action. Despite these overtones of obligation, however, Savage was admired for her dedication and ability to inspire her students at Baron Byng High School in Montreal, where she taught from 1922-1947. Subsequently, Savage became supervisor of art for the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal (1947-52) and also organized children’s art classes on Saturday mornings at the Art Association of Montreal. An advocate for the importance of art education, Savage was instrumental in helping to found the High School Art Teachers’ Association, The Child Art Council, and the Quebec Society for Education Through Art. She returned to teaching in 1954 when invited to become an instructor at McGill University, where she taught until 1959. In 1927, she was invited by ethnologist Marius Barbeau to join sculptor Florence Wyle on a trip to Skeena River, British Columbia to record the totem poles of the Native people of the Northwest coast. The works produced were displayed as part of the 1927 exhibition “Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern” at the National Gallery.
