David Brown Milne 1882 - 1953

Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto

Private Collection, Ontario

Milne thought of this painting of 2 February 1922 as one of the most successful oils done in a long time. The house, in Mount Riga, just five miles south of Boston Corners, had been purchased the previous year by his friend James Clarke, who invited the Milnes to stay there for the winter in exchange for rebuilding the porch. But the reason for the 'long time' since the last successful oil was neither the distraction of carpentry nor lethargy, but because at Dart's Lake in the Adirondacks the previous summer and all through the autumn at Mount Riga, Milne had been painting almost exclusively in watercolour.

In his Mount Riga Painting Note 52 he wrote:

The texture change in this [painting] has not been used to mark contours in the snow but to give emphasis to the cold white patches of snow contrasted with other light-colored objects of the picture, which are all warmer in color than the snow. Previously I would have made all the lighter shapes - the house, tree, sky and snow - heavy white.

The color in this picture is warmer than usual, partly because it was done late in a sunny afternoon facing with the sun, and partly because my mind was fixed on the contrast explained above.

Certainly Milne's own rating of this painting is, as usual, right on the mark. With just five colours and a number of original shapes and contours, he has produced a portrait of Clarke's house that gives a sharp sense of the site, the weather, and the time of day. At Mount Riga, Milne was still riding the wave of creative energy that the intense activity of the war paintings of France and Belgium, just over two years earlier, had set off.