Painting Place

David P. Silcox, former managing director of Sotheby's Canada, is an art historian, a cultural administrator, and a senior fellow at Massey College.

David P. Silcox's eagerly awaited biography of David B. Milne (1882-1953) tells the remarkable story of one of Canada's great artists and his work. This book has been very much a labour of love by Silcox, a love for the work of the artist and an appreciation of his ideas. Lavishly illustrated and based on many years of research, Painting Place provides a perceptive analysis of Milne's work, both the paintings and the artist's voluminous and lively writings. The book balances words and pictures in a way that would surely have delighted its subject as it will its readers. Milne's unique and striking images set him on a path of his own early in his life. He never sought fame or commercial success, but in time curators sought him out, critics hailed his work, and knowledgeable collectors bought his paintings and prints. Most important of all, he was a painter's painter, acknowledged by other artists as an innovator of supreme ability, an uncompromising master of technique, and a creator of memorable paintings.

Preface