Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Montreal, QC

Note:

Accompanied by copy of Certificate of Authenticity from Alan Klinkhoff Gallery.

In Untitled, (Landscape) Savage offers two different compositions on this double-sided panel, both typical Quebec scenic landscapes rendered with an almost impressionistic touch. Art historian Katrie Chagnon writes: “what particularly stands out is the rigour and diligence with which [Savage] carried out her aesthetic research. Exploring specific colour palettes and often returning to a fixed set of subjects (trees, rocks, forests, lakes, hills, sunflowers, buildings, animals, etc.), Savage usually organized these elements on different planes according to recurring compositional schemas. Her work thus demonstrates a particular attention to composition and formal aspects of the painting’s surface, rather than to spontaneous representation of landscape per se.”[1]

According to Anne McDougall: “Anne Savage sought light and rhythm and had a sure hand with a purple shadow...”[2] This composition takes us to the early spring season where the snow melts in the sun but refuses to recede under the protection of the trees. Savage shared a deep relationship with A.Y. Jackson, and their kinship is evident in this panel through the choice of colour palette and subject. In Untitled, (Landscape), Savage put the emphasis on the specific Quebec landscape.

Surely painted not long after the front side of this double sided panel, the back portrays a completely different landscape. Here a small hill covered by pines, in a deep green palette, sits on top of a cold blue sparkling river. Savage spoke in 1967 about the diversity of the Quebec landscape and her attachment to the region: “The part of the country which is my real locale is a little lake in the Laurentians… this beautiful little lake. A very deep, clear, cold water… And the country around this puddle was very undulating. It seemed to have little hills, and little ravines so that, without going for more than a very short distance, you could sit down, turn your back and you would have a complete new composition.”[3]

[1] Anne Savage a Latent Collection: https://ellengallery.concordia.ca/annesavage/en/
[2] Anne McDougall, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter, Montreal, 1977, page 44.
[3] Anne Savage in https://www.beaux-arts.ca/node/3180