Concarneau, 1924

H.D. Savage

Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal 

Private Collection, Toronto

43rd Spring Exhibition, Art Association of Montreal, 26 March-18 April 1926, no. 111 as Concarneau

Although women were not invited to join the Group of Seven landscape painters, who first exhibited together as a group in Toronto in 1920, in Montreal that same year, a number of men and women artists together founded the Beaver Hall Group. Known for their bold, modern approach, Beaver Hall artists captured the energy of the 1920s, embracing a period shaped by cultural change, jazz, and the rise of the automobile. Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson was the group’s first president, and Jackson and Savage became lifelong friends.

Savage accepted a teaching job in 1922 at Montreal’s Commercial and Technical High School. A year later, she transferred to the new Baron Byng High School, where she remained on the teaching staff until 1948. Savage travelled to Europe in the summer of 1924. During this trip, she explored French and British cities such as Concarneau, Quimper and Oxford, where she produced urban and architecturally inspired works. Savage infused her canvases with light, colour, and rhythm, as exemplified in Concarneau, a rare surviving work from her 1924 trip to the coastal fishing town in Brittany. While the Group of Seven focused on remote wilderness landscapes, Savage and the women of the Beaver Hall Group were painting scenes of Montreal, windows, gardens, horse-and-carriage teams, as well as figural works.