Landscape, Laurentians or Eastern Townships, 1922 (circa)

Painted in the early 1920s, reflects Savage’s organization of the scene in a manner shared by Jackson, Holgate and Robinson through simplified, structural bands of land and sky. The rolling hills are reduced to broad masses that move laterally across the composition. The dark cluster of trees in the foreground provide rhythmic punctuation. Nearly half the canvas is devoted to the sky, whose expansive presence reinforces the sense of atmosphere and weather typical of the rural landscapes that Anne Savage explored in the early 1920s, perhaps of the area around Wonish or perhaps at Foster in the Eastern Townships where Nora Collyer’s parents had a country house.

The colour palette is restrained employing soft greys and warm beige tones in the sky, set against muted greens, slate blues, and violet-tinged hills. In the foreground, small passages of ochre and bright yellow vegetation introduce lively accents that animate the otherwise subdued chromatic range.