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Emma Lake Art School: Rooted in History
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the 1935 opening of the Emma Lake Summer Art School (Emma Lake, Saskatchewan) is that it occurred at all.
Successive years of drought and Depression had taken their toll; the University of Saskatchewan was under a deficit and operating with a bank loan. Despite these hard times, at the request of art professor A. F. L (Gus) Kenderdine, University of Saskatchewan President Walter Murray established the Emma Lake Summer Art School.
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Augustus (Gus) Kenderdine was an English immigrant. He trained at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1890 as a landscape painter. Gus Kenderdine's establishment of the Emma Lake Art School was influenced by the late 19th and early 20th century European and North American rural artist communities. Emma Lake Art School was the first university credit art school in Canada and it became a model for artists' workshops all over Europe and North America. It was renamed Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus in 1989, after its founding father.
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''Path to Emma Lake Art School, Murray Point'' by J. S. Base. 45 cm x 40 cm. Oil on Canvas
1935
Emma Lake, Saskatchewan
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Joseph Sydney Base was born in 1890 in Norwich, England. By the 1920's he was in Canada, and he was influenced by the emerging Group of Seven as they began to make headlines in Canadian art circles. Joe studied theology at McGill University and went on to become a journalist. He was a reporter for the Canadian Press and was posted across the country. In the 1930's, J. S. Base would make his way to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and become a columnist for the "Prince Albert Daily Herald" in 1933. A friend of Gus Kenderdine, they often discussed "the ideal art school".
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''Facade, Emma Lake'' by J. S. Base 20 cm x 14 cm, Watercolour on Paper
1935
Emma Lake, Saskatchewan
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''Near the Prince Albert train station'' from the Sketchbook of J. S. Base.
1935
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
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Ernest Lindner
1973
Kenderdine Campus, Emma Lake, Saskatchewan
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Ernest Lindner was born in 1897 in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to Canada in 1926. He resided in Saskatoon until his death in 1988. Marrying Bodil Brostrom von Degen in 1935, his daughter Degen was born in 1943.
He had no formal education in fine arts, however he did take night classes with Gus Kenderdine in 1927. He is accedited with introducing Kenderdine to the Emma Lake area. Lindner built a cabin on Fairy Island, near Murray Point.
He attended workshops at Emma Lake from 1955 - 1957, 1960 - 1964 and in 1966.
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Bodil Brostrom von Degen and Wynona Mulcaster were the first students of Ernest Lindner at Emma Lake in 1935.
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Gus Kenderdine's first studio and cabin.
8 August 2005
Kenderdine Campus, Emma Lake, Saskatchewan
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In 1936, the University of Saskatchewan assumed responsibility for and expanded the art camp for a summer credit art school. Gus Kenderdine was the first art instructor and the first art director of the University of Saskatchewan from 1936-1947.
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University President Walter Murray needed to reach a population that was sparsely spread throughout the province. Emma Lake Summer Art School was a northern extension of the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan). It was the beginning of the distance education and extension credit studies that are common today.
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Map to Kenderdine Campus
2005
Emma Lake, Saskatchewan
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This map shows the route north on the Number 2 Highway from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to Emma Lake. The 45 km trip takes approximately 30 minutes when travelling by car.