Construction by David Brown Milne

Provenance:
Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1977
Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg
Private Collection, Winnipeg

Literature:
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 146, no.106.26

City dwellers today can easily relate to Milne’s image of a vibrant New York City over a century ago. We see the city in its dynamism, the purposeful yet at times chaotic welter of apartments, larger homes, and in the foreground, new forms taking shape amidst the trees, streets, and established buildings. Born in rural southwestern Ontario, at age 21, Milne left for NYC to attend the Arts Students’ League (1903-05). He worked in the metropolis until 1916, when he moved to Boston Corners in New York State. Milne joined the Canadian Army in 1917 and returned to the USA after World War I. By 1910, he was exhibiting regularly and was reviewed glowingly in the New York press. Very much formed by New York, Milne learned there about the then-radical, modernist tendencies of both American and European Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism. Most significantly, he exhibited five paintings in North America’s most important and controversial early exhibition of the avant-garde, the Armory Show (1913). As we see in this painting, Milne revelled in urban scenes in the early part of his career, inspired in part by the American Ashcan School (also called ‘The Eight’: Robert Henri, Maurice Prendergast, and William J. Glackens).

The painting is decidedly flattened: forms pile up rather than receding predictably into the deep space that we nonetheless know is there. Milne had a reason for not letting our eye escape the scene. He made the space of the picture complex so that we can see and even imaginatively hear the city. As we linger and look, important observations and details are revealed. We notice, for example, that there are several types of trees among the buildings. Constructed and natural forms are linked through Milne’s characteristic method of leaving white spaces between forms, a technique that gives an overall visual buzz to the scene. His subdued and evenly distributed palette of greens, blue greens, earthy reds, and black ties all parts of the image together. At the bottom of the canvas, the immediate foreground appears to be folded along a broken black line just up from the frame. The shapes closest to us can be read reflections of the construction activity in water along the shoreline. Despite potential confusion, we have the pleasure of seeing the whole coalesce like a puzzle.

We extend our thanks to Mark A. Cheetham, a freelance writer and curator and a professor of art history at the University of Toronto for contributing the preceding essay.