Landscape with Skeena Mountains, 1927

Estate of the Artist Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal Kenneth R. Thomson, Toronto Masters Gallery, Calgary Private collection

"Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment", McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario; travelling to the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 20 September 2022-20 August 2023

Anne McDougall, "Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter", Montreal, 1977, page 74 Anna Hudson, 'Anne Savage' in Sarah Milroy, "Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment", Kleinburg, Ontario, 2021, page 52, reproduced page 55 as "Skeena River with Mountains", 1927

In 1927, Anne Savage travelled with the sculptor Florence Wyle and ethnographer Marius Barbeau to the Skeena River district of British Columbia. Organized by the National Gallery of Canada, the purpose of the trip was to record the totem poles of the area–Savage with paint and Wyle with plaster. Funding for the project came from Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932. It was a difficult journey. From the train, Savage, Wyle and Barbeau rode on horseback along the edge of the Skeena River to the lodge at Hazelton. The landscape had an impact on Savage, which is exemplified in the rhythmically painted sketches she executed. As Anne McDougall recalls, “They are a collection of small pine boards, 10” x 12”, and show the dusky totems standing against the heavy green-black of the B.C. bush, with turquoise peaks behind. The mountains and pines, although done on a small scale, are monumental in their effect.” As Anna Hudson shares, “Savage saw life, not extinction, in the world she discovered in the Skeena River Valley. Yet her primary concerns as an artist were always formal. ‘It is not the poetry of subject matter which is the legitimate country of painting,’ Savage argued, ‘it is the artist’s organization of his canvas.’ For Savage’s generation of artists, this organization hinged on the ‘search for essential beauty within reality’, expressed through compositional design. In her joyful renderings of Gitxsan traditional life, Savage captured that beauty.” The Gitxsan people of Skeena River were well known for defending their traditions and territory. Prior to the trip, Savage did not know anything about Barbeau, and soon found that the Gitxsan people were resistant to his totem pole restoration project. His plan was contrary to their traditional practices and beliefs. The paintings Savage executed from this pivotal trip were displayed, along with the work of other “moderns”, such as Emily Carr, in the 1927 exhibition, "Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern" at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Anne Savage valued these Skeena River sketches and kept them together as a complete collection all her life.