- 11
David Brown Milne 1882 - 1953
Description
- David Brown Milne
- Noah and the Ark and Mount Ararat I
1941
W-297, David Milne: Noah + the Ark + Mt. Ararat, No. 1, about Dec. 1941. Of the seven versions saved out of perhaps 30 variations this is the first and the only one saved in which the animals face to the left. The last 2 versions have a rainbow in the upper right corner (April 1942) inscribed by Douglas Duncan on a fragment of the original mat, attached to the reverse
- watercolour
- 38.7 by 54.2 cm.
- 15 ¼ by 21 7/8 in.
Provenance
Douglas Duncan, Picture Loan Society, Toronto
Dr. and Mrs. A.E. Mowry, London
By descent in the family
Private Collection, Kingston, Ontario
Exhibited
Kingston Collects: Canadian Paintings, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, April 11 - May 9, 1976
From Private Walls, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, November 8 - December 7, 1980, no. 37
Literature
David Milne, Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2: 1929-1953, p. 781, 403.94, and p. 782, reproduced
Catalogue Note
Painted in Uxbridge, Ontario, December 1941.
This whimsical watercolour is the first in a series of Noah's Ark paintings that Milne painted after he moved to Uxbridge, a small community about forty miles north-east of Toronto. The ark, looking like a modern steamer or a ferry, has landed on Mount Ararat after the flood and Noah and the animals are streaming out across the land.
Milne wrote:
Most of the picture is filled with drawings of animals in fine lines, mostly black; and this is where the interest of the picture lies. Between the animals are patches of gray, which give whatever order the picture has. This is very slight... (throwing) the attention back to the detail, for lack of anything else to feed on: you begin to take it bit by bit, to see what it's all about. And this is the whole point of the picture: each little group is a picture in itself, and they are explored one by one without any importance attached to the order... This is a 'browsing' picture, taking five minutes or so to grasp with any completeness.
Recognition, discovery, surprise are important in it... These single figures and groups are not meant to be funny; they are merely meant to enrich the pleasure of recognition, of coming on the unexpected.