The Black Chimney by David Brown Milne

Provenance:
Collection of the Artist
The Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey, Port Hope, 1934
Mellors Galleries, Toronto, 1934
Professor W.J. McAndrew, 1938
By descent to a Private Collection
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection

Exhibited:
"Exhibition of Paintings by David B. Milne", Mellors Galleries, Toronto; travelling to James Wilson and Co., Ottawa and W. Scott and Sons, Montreal, 27 November 1934-February 1935, no. 2 as "The Chimney"
David Milne, Hart House, University of Toronto, 14-28 March 1955
David Milne, Hart House, University of Toronto, 7-22 January 1962

Literature:
"Exhibition of Paintings by David B. Milne", Toronto, 1934, no. 2 as "The Chimney"
Robert H. Ayre, 'Exhibit of Works by David B. Milne', "Gazette" (Montreal), 19 March 1935
Possibly E.W. Harrold, 'David Milne's Original Art', "Ottawa Citizen", 1 February 1935
Emile Venne, 'Un Fauve: M. David B. Milne', "L'Ordre" (Montreal), 28 March 1935
"David Milne", Toronto, 1955, possibly reproduced
Susan Pamela Chykalink, "David B. Milne's Return to Canada: A Study of the Temagami, Weston and Palgrave Years, 1929-1933” (M.A. Thesis, Queen's University, 1986) page 98
David P. Silcox, "Painting Place: The Life and Work of David Milne", Toronto, 1996, pages 197, 230, 240
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, "David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 1929-1953", Toronto, 1998, reproduced page 540, catalogue raisonné no. 302.139

David Milne was a master with black pigment and used it often. Here it describes the main architectural element in a view from the upper floor of the Milne’s home in Palgrave, Ontario, a village of about 100 at this time, in the Caledon Hills north of Toronto. He and Patsy Milne moved back to Canada from the USA in 1929, lived briefly in Toronto, and arrived in Palgrave the spring of 1930. The place where he painted was especially important to Milne. Palgrave’s serene, agrarian surrounds and village sights were ideal aesthetically.

Milne frequently painted prospects of this town and neighbouring countryside from this vantage point. As the late David Silcox has pointed out, one reason for this choice is that strong, anchoring motifs such as this chimney provide visual interest through contrast with a relatively calm sky. We see that strategy here and in cognate paintings such as "Kitchen Chimney", 1931 and "Chimney on Wallace Street", 1932.

Looking at "The Black Chimney", we might recall that Milne was a skillful printmaker, a medium that demands nuanced attention to tonalities. In his oils too, black is not just black: paint is applied thinly to describe the title’s motif and the roofs of most of the adjacent buildings. He was sparing with the saturation of his forms for economic as well as aesthetic reasons, as he explained in a letter from this time: “The reason for this way of putting on the paint is a feeling for economy – of aesthetic means ... a hankering to do things by the slightest touch on the canvas, the brush meeting it and no more ... Some feeling of economy prevents me from varying hues in the same picture (by adding white or less white). This is so strong that I sacrifice economy of touch ... to economy of value in the hues. These things are slight when put in words but they are very strong and control you pretty completely.”

The Great Depression was particularly dire for the always impecunious Milne, but as always, he made personal hardship into an aesthetic triumph. His blacks here are living skins of paint, not unrelieved, inanimate blocks. White accents sparkle through on the chimney itself. The flashing joining this structure to the roof is completely white. The longer we look, the more apparent it becomes that "The Black Chimney" is articulated throughout using black, white, and just a few coloured accents. In Milne, maximal vision is achieved with minimal means.

Mark A. Cheetham has written extensively on Canadian artists, including Jack Chambers, Alex Colville, Robert Houle, and Camille Turner, most recently in the collection "Unsettling Canadian Art History" (2022). He is a freelance writer and curator and a professor of Art History at the University of Toronto.