David Brown Milne 1882 - 1953

Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1972

Private Collection, Toronto

Paintings by David Milne, Marlborough - Godard Gallery, Toronto, 1972, no. 25

David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume I, 105.90, p. 122, illustrated

This painting is in excellent condition with no apparent issues under UV. It has been treated with wax on the reverse.
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For three months in the summer of 1914, Milne and his wife Patsy rented a small cottage in West Saugerties, a town on the Hudson River where a number of artists found congenial subjects and economic living conditions. This was the second summer they had spent there, and the second time in his life that Milne was able to paint full time.

The result was a harvest of exciting canvases, among which was this gem of Patsy sitting and reading. Patsy was often Milne's subject during these early years of their marriage, but in this instance she was co-opted into another fascination that Milne developed that summer: camouflage.

Milne was at West Saugerties when World War I broke out in Europe that summer, and he followed the events avidly, even to the extent of keeping a scrapbook of clippings as the war developed. He was also and immediately taken by the characteristics of camouflage. Although the war triggered this interest, Milne's other artistic concerns fitted happily with it. He had already reduced his palette to four or five colours only for each canvas, and he had always been captivated by the challenge of creating and fitting new shapes and shape groups together in some coherent way.

Blue Reader is a culmination of these artistic issues. The painting is one in which the viewer has to decode what Milne offers through few colours and created shapes to depict the scene in which Patsy sits. The shapes themselves appear to be repetitive, although they are not, and the sitter at first glance seems to be one with her surroundings.

The experience Milne had at West Saugerties that summer determined him to leave New York City and devote himself to steady painting in the rural countryside of upstate New York. Two years later, he made the momentous move to Boston Corners.