David Brown Milne (1881-1953)

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An outstanding Canadian artist of the early 20th century, David Milneproduced thousands of original and starkly beautiful oils, watercolours, prints, and sketches that were widely exhibited in Canada and around the world. He was a modernist who believed in the dominance of formal attributes such as form, line, and composition over subject matter. With a unique and original style, his art depicted vibrant New York City streetscapes, superlative landscapes of rural New York State and Canada, and studied portrayals of First World War battlefields. Milne endowed everyday objects and landscapes with majesty through thoughtful composition and arrangement, and simplification of line and colour. His works reflect his emotional connection to nature, austere lifestyle, and dedication to his art, and he has been described as an “artist’s artist.”

 

Born in Burgoyne, Ontario, as a boy he moved with his family to nearby Paisley. In 1903, he relocated to New York City, and in 1913, he exhibited at the famous Armory Show where his brash avant-garde paintings were favourably reviewed. In 1916, he moved to upstate New York where he painted using symbolism and a limited palette of colours, focusing on landscapes. Milne enlisted with the Canadian military in 1917, and later worked in Europe as a war artist with the Canadian War Records Office, producing over a hundred watercolours that documented battlefields and destroyed cities. After the war he returned to upstate New York, where he devoted himself to oil painting and invented colour drypoint, a printing technique previously only done in black and white.

 

Milne returned to Canada in 1929, where he lived and painted in numerous locations in Ontario, including Temagami, Palgrave, Six Mile Lake, Toronto, Uxbridge, and Bancroft. In the 1930s, Alice and Vincent Massey organized exhibitions for Milne and introduced him to leaders in the Canadian art world. During this time Milne further developed his unique approach to colour with a reduced palette that included the generous use of white and sometimes grey and black. He also experimented with the “dazzle spot,” which attracted a viewer’s eye toward a particular part of a painting. In later years, Milne’s art took a significant departure. In 1937, he started using more vibrant colours, and in the 1940s and early 1950s, he explored whimsical and, at times, religious subjects. While some saw this as a repudiation of his earlier style, others suggested that it was a culmination of a unique approach that combined modernism with other influences. In 1948, Milne moved to Baptiste Lake near Bancroft and travelled throughout Algonquin Park painting landscapes.

 

Since his death in 1953, there have been a number of major exhibitions of his work, and his art is well represented at institutions such as the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Milne, a gifted intellectual, also left voluminous writings that provide an invaluable record of his views on the transcendence of nature. These works are a rich source for the study of Canadian art history.

 

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