PROVENANCE
Douglas Duncan Picture Loan Society, Toronto
Robertson Galleries, Ottawa
Private Collection
Sold sale of Important Canadian Paintings, Drawings, Watercolour, Books and Prints of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Sotheby's Canada, May 18, 1976, lot 310
Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
Rosemarie L. Tovell, Reflections in a Quiet Pool: The Prints of David Milne, National Gallery of Canada, 1980, catalogue #89, state VII reproduced pages 183 and 202
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume 2: 1929 - 1953, 1998, the 1940 watercolour entitled St. Michael’s Cathedral 1, in the collection of the Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University, Sackville, reproduced page 709, catalogue #401.49, the 1940 watercolour entitled St. Michael’s Cathedral II, in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, reproduced page 710, catalogue #401.50 and the 1943 canvas entitled St. Michael’s Cathedral III, in the collection of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, reproduced page 819, catalogue #404.15

In early 1940, after a long and largely solitary time in Muskoka, David Milne found himself in Toronto. Here he was given the opportunity to explore many of the landmarks and streetscapes of the city, which would become valuable subjects for the artist through the remainder of his career. St Michael’s Cathedral, located at Bond and Shuter Streets, would be the subject of two watercolours made while he lived in the city. This etching, produced three years later, is a singular example of the artist’s drypoints. The heavily-inked work recalls Milne’s contemporary preoccupation with watercolours, but the structure of the piece is defined by the confidently articulated lines, the lightness of the textured architectural form within a hazy sky, and the impressionistic glints of windows rendered in glowing orange. The overall effect is something loose and evocative, yet deliberate (interestingly, Milne took care that the image is not reversed in the final print). Perhaps the finest of his etchings, this would be the last of Milne’s published prints; he would produce a canvas of the same image in 1943, now in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

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