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HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 19
108 DAVID BROWN MILNE
CGP CSGA CSPWC 1882 ~ 1953
Woman Standing at Easel
watercolour on paper, signed and dated
Dec. 11, 1921 and inscribed M.R.
15 5/8 x 15 3/8 in, 39.7 x 39 cm
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal
An Important Private Estate, Montreal
LITERATURE:
David P. Silcox, Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne,
1996, page x
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné
of the Paintings, Volume 1: 1882 ~ 1928, 1998, page 342, reproduced
page 342, catalogue #204.26
EXHIBITED:
Art Association of Montreal, Exhibition of Water~Colour Drawings
by David B. Milne, January 1 ~ 19, 1924, titled as Figure in the Sun,
catalogue #102
Arts Club, Montreal, David Milne, January ~ February 1924,
titled as Figure in the Sun
David Milne was one of the most accomplished artists of his generation,
whether in Canada or beyond. He was as profound a thinker about the
processes of art as he was prolific, producing over 6,000 works in oil,
drypoint, drawing and watercolour during a career of over 50 years.
Milne also distinguished himself as a writer about his own work and as
a war artist of penetrating vision at the conclusion of World War I.
Born in Bruce County in rural southwestern Ontario, Milne was
ambitious enough to leave at age 21 to study at the Art Students League in
New York City (1903 to 1905). Here he came to know both American and
European Impressionism, Post~Impressionism and Fauvism, styles that
would shape his own unique approach to artmaking. Milne was
successful in New York; his work was exhibited and noticed approvingly.
The best measure of this early acclaim was his participation in two of
North America’s most important exhibitions of avant~garde art in the
early twentieth century: the Armory Show of 1913 (seen in New York,
Boston and Chicago) and the Panama~Pacific International Exposition at
the World’s Fair held in San Francisco in 1915.
It is significant that Milne showed watercolours in both these prestigious
exhibitions. The delicacy, intimacy and speed of execution characteristic
of this medium defined what he wanted his art to be. Milne also valued the
small scale typical of watercolours. “The thing that makes a picture is the
thing that makes dynamite ~ compression,” he wrote. “It’s an explosion.
Everything must hit at once.” Woman Standing at Easel encapsulates this
and many other qualities. It was painted during a highly productive time
in Milne’s long stay in upstate New York. Mt. Riga is a hamlet near Boston
Corners, the centre of Milne’s activities in this region. Milne and his wife
Patsy moved to Mt. Riga in October of 1921. In this month he began
making work with accompanying notes marked by the “M.R.” notation
that we see after his signature in this work.
As the catalogue raisonné relates, Milne wrote, “Patsy and I walked up the
trail above Rudd Pond at noon Sunday and each made a sketch. As is often
the case I did not realize how the larger shapes would simplify against
each other until they were on paper. The head and clumps of sumach
would have been clearer if left clear white instead of attempting to be
literal and use richer color to mark them.” Milne was habitually specific
about the time and place of his work and he usually focused on formal
challenges in both his painting and explanations. Here Patsy becomes a
“larger shape” that must be simplified and integrated into the visual
details of the foliage behind her. The contrast of detail and scale is
accomplished by leaving the foreground almost completely open. Colour
is another issue. While Milne notes that richer colour would have been
more literally accurate, again he simplifies, using a restrained and
exquisitely subtle palette of blue, black, red and green, hues that
highlight rather than fill the spaces they touch.
While Milne’s means and intentions were decidedly compressed, this
watercolour especially invites us to think more expansively as well. He
reflects here on the difficult yet thrilling assimilation of nature into art by
setting the easel prominently across the centre of the image. Its straight
wooden legs integrate yet contrast with the tangle of sumachs that
surround and almost consume it. The watercolour is a meditation on
painting itself.
We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of
Toronto and author of the recent Artwriting, Nation, and Cosmopolitanism
in Britain: The “Englishness” of English Art Theory since the 18th Century, for
contributing the above essay.
ESTIMATE: $30,000 ~ 40,000