Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris & David Milne Lead Way to $19-million Fine Art Auction

This oil on canvas landscape was fought over by four different bidders at Heffel’s Fine Art Auction held November 23, 2007 at Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel.

Source:  Heffel Fine Art Auction House

David Milne has long been recognized as one of Canada’s most original and influential artists.  Born in Bruce County, Ontario in 1882, he moved to Boston Corners in Upstate New York in 1916 where landscape painting became his primary focus.

In 1917, Milne joined the Canadian Army, and in May 1919 he received a commission from the Canadian War Memorials Fund to record the aftermath of the war. He returned to the States in late 1919 where he continued to live until the spring of 1929 when he moved back to Canada, eventually settling near Bancroft, where he died in 1953.

While camping near Temagami, Ontario, Milne often worked in a deserted prospector’s cabin, arranging the local flowers and other objects as subjects for his paintings.  In Water Lilies and Sunday Paper, Milne uses an almost transparent paint and delicate lines to depict a bowl and a jar of water lilies that create a starlike pattern against the grid of the Sunday newspaper, which is opened to the comics. The original, oil on canvas, was painted in 1928. 

Northland Art Company has published a re-creation of this painting, which is included in The Cameo^© collection.