David Milne: A Modern Master, Overlooked No More
David Milne Pink Hills 1912–3
Featured with his own small study table in the Canadian collection galleries at the Art Gallery of Ontario, David Milne’s reputation has come up in the world since his days as a sidebar story to the Group of Seven. For those with an eye, the work has always been compelling and advanced: a mix of smart 20th-century Continental verve combined with the rough familiarity of homegrown subject matter. Still, it’s Milne’s early years in New York in the era of the Armory Show (which he participated in) that remain the most impressive. To look at a Milne from that period is to see an artist ahead of his times, an artist who could have been working in Paris alongside the avant-garde. In the end, the fact remains that Milne should be recognized as a key figure in North American art, and this remarkable Mira Godard Gallery show of 20 watercolors is a further demonstration of his place in history. Selected from across his career—both in the States and Canada—after his return in 1929, they show a proto-abstractionist, someone embedding imagery into an eloquent simplicity of rendering and materials. It’s this counterpoint between images and the materials that convey them that continues to bring such a modern, and even postmodern, air to his landscapes. (22 Hazelton Ave, Toronto ON)
David Milne Cloud Forms 1916
David Milne Blue Background 1913
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