Douglas Duncan
Mrs. R.L. Anderson, through the Freida James Studio, Toronto, 1951
By descent to Nancy Goss, Toronto
J. Morris Gallery, Toronto, 1994
Peter Ohler Fine Arts, Vancouver, 1994
Private Collection, Calgary
Exhibited
“Watercolours by David Milne”, Hart House, University of Toronto, March 1947 as “Wheelbarrow”
Literature
Douglas Duncan catalogue, National Gallery of Canada Archives, EW-180, as “Building the Porch (3rd wheelbarrow)”
“Milne List”, Art Association of Montreal, sent on 26 December 1923, no. 86, listed as “Porch”
Douglas Duncan Inventory of Milne Estate Pictures, 1954 as “Building the Porch II”
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, “David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 1: 1882‒1928”, Toronto, 1998, listed and reproduced page 372, no.204.112
Katherine Lochnan, “David Milne: Watercolours: Painting toward the Light”, Toronto/Vancouver, 2005, page 96
During the winter of 1922-23, David Milne and his wife Patsy lived at the summer house of James Clarke at Mount Riga, just south of Boston Corners in New York State. Clarke was Milne’s greatest friend and benefactor during the period, and he assisted the artist with encouragement, housing and financial support.
This work is one of three similar watercolours Milne executed of the same setting. Aside from offering the artist a comfortable, sheltered painting place, Milne’s porch and verandah views were a chance to explore the visual contrast of architectural structures with natural forms. Relying on outline only, Milne depicts visual depth with the elegant use of overlapping, stacked forms. The crowded shapes pull the viewer’s eye to the centre of the picture. The posts in the foreground direct our attention to the rectangular opening at the far end of the porch.
Milne’s watercolours from the early 1920s demonstrate his diverse exploration of technique. Writer Carol Troyen noted, "He undoubtedly used a stiff-bristled brush (probably one designed for oil paints) rather than a soft, sable watercolour brush for his drybrush technique, whose raspy, angular linearity flies in the face of conventional watercolour’s spontaneous, flowing quality. Milne referred to such works as ‘line drawings in colour’."
Milne’s immense skill as a draughtsman is clearly displayed here. Executed in a radically reductive palette of red-brown and blue only, the drybrush lines are simultaneously expressive and visually accurate. Carol Troyen observed, "...watercolour has become Mine’s principal vehicle for modernist expression. As a medium, it had the potential to challenge the expected, the conventional, the academic... The excitement of how he painted, and the radical nature of his style, is best found in his watercolours."
