Lot 230: Anne Douglas Savage (Canadian, 1897-1971) Untitled (sunflower and vegetable garden in summer, with farm buildings beyond)

Untitled (sunflower and vegetable garden in summer, with farm buildings beyond)
signed 'A.D.Savage' (lower right)
oil on panel (plywood)
40.6 x 43.2cm (16 x 17in).

Provenance:
Studio of the artist, thence by descent
Private collection, Ontario

It is tempting to compare the work of Beaver Hall artist Anne Savage with that of her friend and colleague A.Y. Jackson. For decades Savage and Jackson enjoyed a close relationship and an extensive record of correspondence bears witness to the influence they had on one another with much advice flowing from the senior artist, Jackson, to Savage, who seemed to welcome his suggestions. However, while there are affinities in their work that are quite obvious, one is remiss if one sees Savage only as the feminine counterpart to Jackson.

Sunflower and Vegetable Garden is an opportunity to appreciate the distinct approaches taken by Savage. While the farm buildings in the background may evoke Jackson in Quebec - for how can we think of such buildings without recalling his work - the choice of season, the selection of hues, the application of paint and the composition are Savage's own interpretation and owe much less than we may suppose to Jackson.

Savage's responsibilities as a teacher at Baron Byng High School in Montreal as well as family obligations left little time for painting during the school year. Summer, however, was her opportunity to focus on making art and it was this season perhaps above any other that fed her inspiration. As a result, her choice of colour, so reflective of the season, is often luminously cheerful and, according to many people who knew her well, seemed also to reflect the personality of a woman determined to extract only the best from her surroundings. The intense hues of lavender, red, cobalt and green seen here are characteristically Savage.

Savage wrote: "It is not the poetry of subject matter which is the legitimate country of painting – it is the artist's organization of his canvas." Janet Braide comments on Savage's compulsion for ordered compositions, balanced with "pleasant counterpoints of space and mass" and notes the artist's skillful use of design to create strong contrasts in mass and space, and the consequent tensions created within each painting.


While we do not see here the significant distortion of space evident in other works by Savage, there is nonetheless a subtle manipulation at play. Tension abounds for example in her rendering of the sturdy buildings and the contrasting undulating vegetation which seems to grow lush and fat in defiance of how meticulously it may have been "sewn". The sinewy sunflower twisting skyward and the slashes of blue and green paint, suggesting rather than depicting thriving crops to the foreground, act as the perfect counterfoil to the upright cornstalks and anchored farm buildings in the background constructed so deliberately with architectonic brushstrokes. That single sunflower is used as a device that delicately yet expertly balances the composition, weighted as it is so heavily to the right.

While untitled, this lot could well depict a scene in the environs of Savage's beloved country home and studio at Lake Wonish. According to the artist's niece, Anne McDougall: "Anne loved painting sunflowers and her sister Helen (Mrs. Brooke Claxton) used to plant them in the cottage garden especially for her." The Claxtons also had a summer home at Wonish.


References:
Anne McDougall, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter, Harvest House Ltd., Montreal, 1977, page 202.

Janet Braide, Anne Savage: Her Expression of Beauty, (catalogue) Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, 1979, page 41.