David Milne: An Introduction to His Life and Art

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

David Milne is frequently ranked among the three greatest artists of his
generation in North America. Art critic Clement Greenberg, among others,
placed him there after the New York Armory Show of 1913 and Milne’s
silver medal in the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San
Francisco. David Silcox wrote the major biography of Milne, Painting
Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne, and co-authored the major
catalogue of his works, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the
Paintings.

In this introduction to Milne, Silcox covers the artist’s life and
work in four chapters: “Early Promise and Early Success,” “A
Solitary Path,” “The Great Depression: Years of Productivity,” and
“Recognition and Acceptance.” The relatively brief but highly
informative text is placed between scores of full-colour, mostly
full-page reproductions of Milne’s paintings, an arrangement
calculated to add to readers’ pleasure and support the text.

Milne’s palette favours blacks, browns, dull greens, and a soft
reddish-orange, certainly an unusual palette but an effective one that
draws viewers into each scene. There are also occasional black-and-white
photos, such as one of Milne in France or Belgium in 1919, just after
World War I. Milne is shown in full uniform solemnly examining a human
skull amid a vast expanse of wild land.

A brief epilogue records retrospectives of Milne’s work in the latter
half of the 20th century, and provides a selected bibliography. In a
small book modestly dubbed “An Introduction,” Silcox has covered a
surprising amount of David Milne’s life and art.