Milne, David Brown National Historic Person
Paisley, Ontario
David Brown Milne
(© Library and Archives Canada | Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, C-057194)
Address :
Paisley, Ontario
Recognition Statute:
Historic Sites and Monuments Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. H-4)
Designation Date:
2016-02-02
Life Date:
1881 to 1953
Other Name(s):
-
Milne, David Brown
(Designation Name)
-
David B. Milne
(Other Name)
Research Report Number:
2014-21; 2018-CED-SDC-16
Importance:
One of Canada’s most outstanding artists of the early 20th century, modernist painter who produced thousands of original oils, watercolours, prints and sketches, which are widely exhibited in Canada and internationally
Plaque(s)
David Milne was one of the first Canadian artists to explore modernist styles and subject matter. His paintings, watercolours, and prints are subtle arrangements of colour, space, and line. In 1903, he left Paisley for New York City, where he exhibited at the famous Armory Show in 1913. He later became a Canadian war artist, depicting scenes of First World War battlefields. He moved to upstate New York, returning to Ontario in 1929, where he lived and painted in Temagami, Palgrave, Six Mile Lake, Toronto, Uxbridge, and Bancroft. “The thing that ‘makes’ a picture,” Milne wrote, “is the thing that ‘makes’ dynamite—compression.”