CGP CSGA CSPWC
1882 - 1953
Canadian
Breakfast with Flowers
watercolour on paper
signed and dated 1938 and on verso titled and titled on the Art Gallery of Toronto label, dated July 1938 and inscribed "1" (circled) / "Use narrow frame with no mat" / "David Milne" / "Severn Park, Ont."
15 x 22 in, 38.1 x 55.9 cm
Estimate: $20,000 - $30,000 CAD
Sold for: $22,500
Preview at:
PROVENANCE
Douglas Duncan Picture Loan Society, Toronto
Lady Kemp, Toronto, 1947
G. Blair Laing Limited, Toronto
Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, 1967
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario
LITERATURE
"Mr. David Milne Speaks on Art," The Varsity, January 19, 1938, page 4
David P. Silcox, Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne, 1996, listed page 288
David Milne Jr. and David P. Silcox, David B. Milne: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume 2, 1929 - 1953, 1998, reproduced page 665, catalogue #306.31
EXHIBITED
Hart House, University of Toronto, 1947
Art Gallery of Toronto, Women's Committee, 1947
In January 1938, David Milne in an interview with The Varsity said that “music is an arrangement of sounds against time, whereas painting is an arrangement of lines, hues, and values against flat space." He also noted “the similarity of feeling between the formless patches of black in one of his own paintings and certain massive chords in a Stravinsky concerto.”
Six months after this interview, Milne painted Breakfast with Flowers. In this work, the formless patch of black on the left – heavy like a “massive chord” – gives way to a lighter, open space on the right. Meanwhile, the arrangement of objects leads the eye across this transition, not in a smooth progression, but in rhythmic beats. As David Silcox notes, in this composition “two systems of rhythms, one of shapes and one of colours, are syncopated across the sheet at the same time.” These rhythms interact in a lively and harmonious dialogue that puts Milne’s musical approach to painting on masterful display.
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