Sold for: $28,125

PROVENANCE
Waddington Galleries, Montreal
Private Collection, Ontario

One of Canada’s most important landscape painters, Dorothy Knowles emerged from a rich art scene in Saskatoon that was well informed regarding modernist trends due to its proximity to the art school at Emma Lake, which attracted prominent painters and critics as teachers. Knowles first attended Emma Lake classes in 1948, followed by workshops in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the influence of the abstract painters she met there, Knowles remained committed to the landscape—although it was a comment by abstract artist Kenneth Noland that caused her to reconsider her use of thick paint. She began to dilute her oil paint with turpentine, which gave a transparent appearance to her paintings like watercolour, deftly capturing the light-filled vistas she portrayed. In the 1960s, Knowles often portrayed the countryside near the farms of her husband, artist William Perehudoff, and his brother along the North Saskatchewan River, west of Saskatoon. Down to the River displays Knowles’s signature style of delicate brushwork, a fresh, light palette, and a fine handling of scale and contour in a stunning panorama of layered, rolling hills and open sky.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars