Photo by Gail

Known for her lyrical, rhythmic landscapes, Anne Savage (1896 – 1971) was one of several important women artists who were active in Montreal after the First World War. As with the Group of Seven, she shared  a romantic vision of the Canadian landscape as a symbol of nationalism, as well as a modernist concern for the formal elements of painting. Savage was also an inspiring and innovative art teacher, who counted among her students Alfred Pinsky, the first Dean of Fine Arts at Concordia University, and the painters Rita Briansky and Moe Reinblatt.

With her active teaching schedule in Montreal, the artist relished the summers she spent spent at her family’s country house at Lake Wonish in the Laurentians, where she could devote herself exclusively to painting. Some of her boldest experiments in vivid color and stylized, minimal composition, came from these moments of rural retreat,  as depicted here  in Country Scene (1920) .

Photographed in the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver BC, Canada.