Additional Images

Provenance:

Douglas Duncan, Picture Loan Society, Toronto
Art Gallery of Toronto Women’s Committee
Collection of Lady Kemp, Toronto (1948)
Laing Galleries, Toronto (1956)
Collection of Percy Bower, Winnipeg (1967)
By descent to his family
Private Collection, Ontario

Literature:

David P. Silcox, Painting Place: the life and work of David B. Milne, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1996, pages 307-308 and page 309 for this lot, reproduced.

David B. Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume II: 1929 - 1952, Toronto, 1998, page 702, no. 401.21 for a related drawing in the Milne Estate and for this lot, reproduced.

Exhibited:

Recent Water Colours by David Milne, 11 - 24 January 1941, Picture Loan Society, Toronto, no. 13

Women’s Committee Purchase Sale Exhibition, 30 October - 04 November 1948, Art Gallery of Toronto

Note:

According to Silcox and Milne Jr.: “The subject (of this work) is the provincial legislature building at Queen’s Park, Toronto, seen from the south and lit by flood lighting at night. Milne painted an oil version in January 1940, Parliament Buildings at Queen’s Park, 401.42, and the building is in the background of Shrine and Saints I and II, 404.10-11.”

Silcox refers to the period in which this lot was produced as a productive one for Milne, but it would be erroneous to view such painting as commonplace. In fact, Silcox notes: “The watercolours, which were now carrying all the freight of Milne’s thought, not only had to survive Milne’s severe editing and repainting process, but also had to run the gauntlet of (dealer Douglas) Duncan’s fussy critical eye and his commercial concerns... On 28 October 1940 he (Duncan) recorded that he had taken home a bundle of watercolours and destroyed 68 (mostly inferior versions).” It would be fair to surmise that those which remained - such as this lot - were among those that Duncan and Milne deemed superior.