VICTORIA, BC.- David Milne may have been overshadowed by the Group of Seven early in his career, but his work eventually gained world-wide recognition—acclaimed American art critic Clement Greenberg once wrote Milne was arguably Canada’s greatest painter. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is presenting From the Collection: David Milne until October 25, 2015..

“We are extremely fortunate to have seventeen of David Milne’s works in our collection,” says Michelle Jacques, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. “To view them as an exhibition is quite moving, particularly to see Milne’s varied skill in oil, watercolour and drypoint. The works that will be on display are the result of fifty-four years of collecting Milne and demonstrate his artistic legacy.”

From the Collection: David Milne invites visitors to learn about how the AGGV came to have this wonderful collection of the artist’s work. The Ontario-born painter, printmaker and writer (1882-1953) had a distinctive style, a stark, modern approach to landscapes, which had a tremendous impact on Canadian art. This exhibition explores the people and events that contributed to the migration of Milne’s reputation and support to western Canada, and particularly Victoria.

Like the members of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr, Milne focused his efforts on the landscape around him. However, unlike these contemporaries who were so deeply connected to their natural surroundings, Milne was more interested in the formal properties of paint on canvas than on his relationship to the land.

Born in Bruce County, Ontario, the baby in a family of 10 children, Milne was largely self-taught, and his style included watercolour, oil and his own creation of a printmaking technique. Milne moved to New York City in 1903 where he studied art and exhibited in the groundbreaking Armory Show of 1913. Serving as a Canadian war artist in Britain, Belgium and northern France during WWI, he returned to upstate New York and cultivated his distinctive artistic style. In 1929, he returned to Canada, settling in rural Ontario. Following a year spent in Toronto, he spent the remainder of his life painting in relative seclusion, dividing his time between a cabin on the shores of Baptiste Lake, Alberta, and the small town of Uxbridge, Ontario, with his wife and son.