David Milne

David Milne worked predominantly in oil paint, watercolour and drypoint printmaking. Like the Group of Seven, Milne primarily chose landscape as his subject matter; however, his approach to this subject was considerably less "impressionistic" than the Group's and had a more "modernist" feel. Milne was influenced in part by the European and American modernists exhibited through Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291. He also pushed himself to develop his own particular style that was stark yet beautiful and very expressively realized. • Illustration — Trees in Spring, c. 1917 Milne chose simple, ordinary subjects which he imbued with dignity and significance. His landscapes and still lifes reveal a decorative sense and fluidity of touch. His frequent use of black in his paintings is a characteristic trait. Often one type of object, trees for example, would be depicted in black in one part of the image and white in another creating an intriguing internal tension in the work. For Milne, white was an extension of the palette – a way to express the stillness of the landscape he was viewing. In both his watercolour and oil painting techniques, Milne was experimental in his approach. He paid careful attention to composition but also to the qualities of line, colour and texture that were revealed in his work. James Clark, a friend, supporter and patron of Milne's, sent him an etching press while he was at Boston Corners in 1926, and Milne was able to experiment with printmaking in new and unusual ways. He developed a method of making colour drypoints, printing one colour over another with different plates for each. Milne had first tried etching and drypoint while he was a student at the Art Students’ League and his idea of colour drypoint was unprecedented, as the tradition was to only use black and the white of the paper. He had thought of creating colour drypoints years before, but lacked the equipment to carry through his experiments, as the printmaking technique requires metal plates which are scratched or etched into, then inked, wiped and finally run through a printing press. It took many months for Milne to achieve the sparsely layered look that he envisioned with his prints, but the results were very compelling. In his later years Milne began to experiment with content far removed from the simple, albeit highly original, landscapes that make up the better part of his oeuvre. Although he had espoused a pure aestheticism in his younger years (insisting that a painting's content was merely secondary) he went on to produce a number of works that invite an allegorical interpretation. The canvas left on his easel at the time of his death showed a group of angels childishly amusing themselves with cosmetics purchased from a wandering salesman.

• Illustration — Painting Place III, 1930 Milne began to achieve real success after Toronto-based Douglas Duncan became his dealer in 1938. The American art critic Clement Greenberg described Milne as one of the three greatest North American artists of his generation. Although he was overshadowed by the Group of Seven during his early career, Milne is now recognized as one of Canada's foremost artists. After his death, the National Gallery of Canada organized a retrospective exhibition of his work (1955–1956), and then another retrospective was shown in Toronto at Hart House in 1962. In 2005, an exhibit of Milne's watercolours, David Milne Watercolors: "Painting Toward the Light", traveled from the British Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and then to the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 1952, works by Milne along with those of Emily Carr, Goodridge Roberts and Alfred Pellan represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. In June 1992, Canada Post issued 'Red Nasturtiums, David B. Milne, 1937' in the Masterpieces of Canadian art series. The stamp was designed by Pierre-Yves Pelletier based on a painting in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. • Illustration — Ollie Matson's House Is Just a Square Red Cloud, 1931 In a 2018 exhibition of his work at London's Dulwich Picture Gallery, the critic Jonathan Jones rated it one star out of five, "very little sign of development... embarrassingly repetitive." Art critic Mark Hudson gave it 4 stars out of 5 and wrote, "I’d rather have minor art like this, that takes you somewhere you’ve never been and from an intensely personal perspective, than much of the repetitive, conventionally "challenging" work served up as major by larger galleries." Florence Hallett writing in The Economist said, "The strikingly original Canadian used paint sparingly but to dramatic effect."