Rain on the River (Morning on the River), 1945

Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

“David Milne (1882-1953): A Survey Exhibition”, Galerie Lefort, Montreal, April 22 - May 15, 1971, no. 34 (as “Morning on the River”)

David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, “David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 1929-1953”, Toronto, 1998, listed and reproduced page 876, cat. no. 405.76 David P. Silcox, “Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne”, Toronto, 1996, page 317 Donald W. Buchanan, “The Growth of Canadian Painting”, London/ Toronto, 1950, page 42

Following a tumultuous decade of financial and marital hardship, the 1940s brought many positive changes in David Milne’s career and personal life. In 1939 David and his wife Patsy separated and shortly thereafter he fell in love with Kathleen Pavey, a nurse. That same year he left Six Mile Lake and the couple settled briefly in Toronto, before moving to Uxbridge where they lived from 1940 to 1952. Kathleen gave birth to their son, David Milne Jr., in 1941. In addition to his new family, Milne’s dealer and agent, Douglas Duncan, played a particularly positive role in Milne’s life during the 1940s. Duncan provided the artist with some long-awaited financial stability and success in the Toronto art milieu. David Silcox describes Kathleen and Duncan as the artist’s “wonderful guardian angels.” “Rain on the River (Morning on the River)” was completed in 1945 in the characteristic painterly style of Milne’s later works. That year, following a twelve-year hiatus, the artist took up watercolour again, and the medium was to dominate the remainder of his painting career. His brushstrokes in this composition are wider and looser than his early oils; their spontaneity and translucent application evoke a similar feel to watercolour painting. The artist always maintained his attention to line, as visible in the jagged tree outlines and their reflections in the river. “Rain on the River (Morning on the River)” also illustrates his preference for using black in a composition, regardless of the level of realism. The forest, water, and foreground shoreline all include the same shade of black pigment, amid the remaining reductive colour palette of orange, brown, and white. Author Donald W. Buchanan writes: “The colours he uses are rarely linked directly to Nature; he employs them more often for decorative [rather] than for realistic effects. This cool and intellectual approach of his is the product of long years of thought and reflection, of years of solitude devoted to the study of his craft.” During these happy years of the mid-1940s Milne was also writing his autobiography, which was published in 1947. The book not only demonstrated his gift for writing, but also exposed the degree of sacrifice that Milne suffered in order to devote his whole life to being an artist. Throughout much of David Milne’s career, apart from occasionally bartering his labour in exchange for necessary supplies, the artist impressively managed to dedicate all of his time to painting.