Augustus Kenderdine - Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

In 1908, the stories of the Barr Colonists and their Utopian settlement of Brittania, now known as Lloydminster, inspired Kenderdine to immigrate with his family to the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada, where he homesteaded near Lashburn. For the next decade he was preoccupied by the rigors of farming and ranching, before turning his farming operations over to his son, and returning to his painting.

Kenderdine secured several portrait commissions, and in subsequent years exhibited his work across Canada, but was best known in Saskatchewan. He seldom painted in watercolour, although he did several landscape studies in charcoal and wash in a style reminiscent of Gainsborough. His sweeping romantic depictions of the Saskatchewan landscape, especially around Emma Lake, were indelibly marked by his training in England and France. His imagery recast the province's topography in the comforting image of Europe. As a teacher he influenced generations of landscape painters, among them Wynona Mulcaster, Reta Cowley and Dorothy Knowles.

In 1920 Kenderdine met Walter Charles Murray, the first president of the University of Saskatchewan, who wanted to establish an art program. He provided studio space in the Physics Building on the Saskatoon Campus, where Kenderdine could work and teach. In the 1926–27 term, Kenderdine began to teach non-credit classes which, by 1933, had become credit classes. In 1936 he established the Murray Point Art School at Emma Lake, which became the University Art Camp which was the forerunner of the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops which became the genesis of the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus which was named in his honour. Kenderdine's passion for the "wilderness" of northern Saskatchewan, and his enthusiasm for attracting people to his summer art camps, corresponded with the beginnings of the local tourist industry.

Also in 1936, a School of Fine Art was established at Regina College, now the Regina Conservatory of Music, by Norman MacKenzie, who, as part of his bequest, appointed Kenderdine as the School's first head and curator of the gallery, which he held until his death in Regina on 3 August 1947.