David Milne: The Father Of Canadian Art

"Do you like flowers? So do I, but I never paint them. I didn't even see the hepaticas. I saw, instead, an arrangement of the lines, spaces, hues, values and relations that I habitually use. That is, I saw one of my own pictures, a little different from ones done before, changed slightly, very slightly, by what I saw before me.'"

(David Milne, 1936)

David Milne was a painter, printmaker, and writer, who captured the essence of Canadian art. Milne showed a pure aesthetic approach to his work that was dependant of his specific formula. Essentially Milne sought to reduce a painting to the basic form. David Milne was born on January 8, 1882, in a southern Ontario village named Burgoyne. David was the last of ten children to his Scottish immigrant

After several years he decided to study painting in New York City. To do so David had to set aside some of his own money and borrow money from his brother Jim. David enrolled in a post secondary institution and he was accepted and entered into the Art Students’ League in 1903. He took his passion for art even further by spending three years in New York studying at the Art Students’ League. The Art Students’ League of New York is an art school located in Manhattan, New York City, New York, artists of all kinds can build and learn together. The League has welcomed everyone from amateurs and professional artists throughout history. David studied under George Bridgman and Frank V. Dumond and gradually developed his art work on the

This artist was named Amos Engle. The both young artists shared ideas and tools, which eventually led them into sharing a space over a Greek restaurant. David and Amos were both very excited about art and were eager to learn new techniques and skills. Over the time living together David and Amos closely did eeverything together. They visited many art shows and exhibitions, which included shows at the Stieglitz Gallery 291. The work in the Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery had a huge influence on David’s approach to art. Alfred Stieglitz, who was the artist/photographer, was an American photographer and a modern art promoter. Works of Rodin and Matisse in 1908 and later paintings by Czanne, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and American artists like Demuth, Dove, Hartley, Marin were shown. David and Amos appreciated the exhibition of The Eight (Luke, Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Shinn, Lawson, Prendergast and Davies). The work of Maurice Prendergast, who was an American Post-Impressionist artist who worked in oil, watercolor, and monotype, stood out to David. Seriously involved with experiments in painting, Prendergast and the French Impressionists Monet and Seurat heavily influenced Milne. He approached various paintings with a style of applying and layering various paints to a canvas, like a mosaic fashion. At the time of working in Ney York, Milne included his paintings to be a part