Sarah Margaret Robertson
(1891 - 1948) Beaver Hall Group, Canadian Group of Painters

Sarah Robertson Biography
(1891 - 1948) Beaver Hall Group, Canadian Group of Painters

Born 1891, in Montreal, Sarah Robertson received a Wood Scholarship and began her art studies at the Art Association of Montreal in 1910. There she studied under William Brymner and Maurice Cullen and fellow Wood Scholarship winner, Randolph Hewton. She exhibited at the AAMs annual Spring Exibition for the first time in 1912. She became fast friends with fellow AAM student, Prudence Heward, spending time each summer at the Hewards summer home on the St.Lawrence River. The two young artists sketched together and were often joined by other artists, including close friend, A.Y. Jackson. Sarah became a member of the Beaver Hall Group, and kept the women artists together after the original group disbanded. Jackson recognized her status as unofficial leader of the group, encouraging her to, Stir your gang on!.
She won the Womens Art Society Scholarship twice,in 1919 and 1923 and exhibited for the first time at the Royal Canadian Academys annual exhibition in 1920. She traveled to Bermuda with Nora Collyer on a sketching trip at the end of the 1920s. She became a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933 and participated in a three woman show with Prudence Heward and Isabel McLaughlin the following year. As she was unable to afford a studio for most of her career, she was often forced to work under less that favourable conditions. However, she was pleased to have her paintings represented in the collection of important Canadians such as the Hon. Vincent Massey, H.S. Southam, and A.Y. Jackson. Robertsons work was also included in international exhibitions abroad, including Wembley, England. In 1940, she participated in a four woman exhibition at Art Associan of Montreal, together with Prudence Heward, Anne Savage, and Ethel Seath. When Prudence Heward died in 1947, she was called upon to help organize her Memorial Exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. Her own health had begun to decline and she died in December of 1948. Her paintings are represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts