Lot 138: Anne Douglas Savage 1896 - 1971 Canadian oil on

Anne Douglas Savage 1896 - 1971 Canadian oil on board Birches 20 x 24 inches 50.8 x 61 centimeters signed and on verso signed and titled Literature:Anne McDougall, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter, 1977, page 127 Provenance:A gift from the Artist to Baron Byng High School, Montreal The PSBGM Cultural Heritage Foundation Anne McDougall described Anne Savage's method of working as follows: "She used to stand her easel by the front window where the light came over her left shoulder. She would hold one brush in her teeth while reaching with a finer one for a new colour. She was quick and deft and unfussy in her movements; mixing turpentine, flourishing a rag to clean her palette, and standing back, squinting, to get a better perspective." This description aptly fits the execution of this bright, modernist still life. We are looking down on a simple bouquet of leaves that has been evenly illuminated through Savage's attention to light and colour. In the angle of the table, window and distant hills outside, we see Savage's modernist leanings clearly expressed. Careful forethought has been put into the layers of colour that give us the wall, window frame and table. Savage paints the sun on the bouquet as prominently as the bouquet itself, and the effect, with pink light and blue shadows playing with the fallen leaves on the table while sun streams through the foliage in the vase, is quite dazzling.