David Brown Milne 1882 - 1953

Herbert Schwartz, Montreal

The Framing Gallery, Toronto, c. 1967

Private Collection, Toronto, c. 1967

Perhaps Babcock Galleries, New York

The New York Water Color Club, 1909, no.108

The Philadelphia Water Color Club, 1910, no. 332

David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume I,102.54, p. 31, and in colour, plate 1

This works is in pristine condition.
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The Defiant Maple is Milne's first publicly exhibited work. He submitted this pastel, a medium Milne used only a few times early in his career, to the New York Water Color Club's annual exhibition in 1909, where it was accepted.

The following year, he dated it 1910 and sent it to the Eighth Annual Philadelphia Water Color Club Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, where it earned him his first public notice. The anonymous art critic of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, gave him a one-sentence review: "The Defiant Maple of David Milne is clever, if bilious". The ambiguity of the dates, which Milne may have altered when submitting it to Pennsylvania, or perhaps hadn't signed until then, at least shows his staunch belief in his work.

The Defiant Maple is ambitious and impressive, despite its controversial debut. Milne's life-long attraction to reflections and his deft handling of them to create a resonating visual echo is as evident here as it was later in Boston Corners, where the secluded little ponds with their near-perfect reflections captured his attention again and again.

One should also draw some symbolic meaning from the subject and the title. Although the little maple at the upper centre of the work does not stand out or dominate the composition in any way, the energy that emanates from it in waves towards the viewer is perhaps a sort of self portrait of Milne. He had been in New York since 1903 and spent three years at the Art Students League. He was a Canadian eager to make his reputation and to garner a measure of fame in the larger world and market of the United States.

This work is an auspicious start, despite the critic's dyspeptic comment, and a clear indicator that Milne would, a mere three years later, have five works prominently shown in the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913. He must have been pleased to find himself in the Armory Show catalogue not far from Henri Matisse and as the entry before Claude Monet.