David Milne -- Another Canadian to Discover at Dulwich

It's not opening until September 10, but tickets to see The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum go on sale at 1000 on July 1, so if you want to see it this year you'll probably need to get in early. Follow the link for details. Booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, 2027, will open later in 2026. If you've never seen this most astounding of historical artefacts in its natural habitat in Normandy, you'll want to seize the chance in London. But what about this month? Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) is regarded as one of Austria's finest 19th-century painters, and there's a free single-room show devoted to his views of the Alps, Vienna and Sicily from July 2 at the National Gallery. Waldmüller: Landscapes is on till September 20. Richard Dadd (1817-1886) was already known as a successful painter of Shakespearean fairy scenes before he began experiencing delusions, leading him to kill his father. Confined to Bethlem and Broa...

David Milne -- Another Canadian to Discover at Dulwich

It's hugely satisfying going to an exhibition by an artist you know virtually nothing about and coming away full of enthusiasm for a new discovery.

David Milne: Modern Painting is the latest in a series of shows at London's Dulwich Picture Gallery to make Britons aware of Canadian artists who previously hadn't really penetrated the consciousness of the Old World. Apologies, Canadians; we really should do better.

Milne was born in 1882, making him a contemporary of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, who featured in the excellent Painting Canada show at Dulwich in 2011, and of Emily Carr, whose work was on display there four years ago.

Walk into the first room and you'll be struck by the brightness and freshness of Milne's early work, done in New York in his 20s. A sort of colourful impressionism with nods to America's Ashcan School. There are urban interiors and exteriors, in oils and watercolours, with a lot of interest in the advertising that will have plastered the city. Here's Billboards from about 1912:

The works in this room, as further on in the show, are drawn mostly from Canadian galleries and from private collections.

Milne's palette darkened in 1914, as he began to experiment further with colour. He moved away from the city, to Boston Corners on the New York-Massachusetts border. Here his work became much more abstract, with a limited colour range, but those apparently abstract images resolve into pictures of his wife in the landscape or closeups of rocks largely in brown, green, black and white. Milne had developed an interest in camouflage as World War I was raging in Europe.

There's more colour in Bishop's Pond (Reflections) from 1916, but a trademark use as well of large areas of white:

Milne went off to join the Canadian forces at war in 1917, but didn't see active service. He worked as a war artist recording the aftermath, and his style changed markedly. His previous splodges and smears of paint were replaced by short thin strokes, almost like splinters of shrapnel. Montreal Crater, Vimy Ridge records the huge depression caused by a massive explosion. At the rim, two tiny figures give scale to the extent of the devastation.

In a letter to a friend, Milne put down in words what he found as he made his way through the shattered landscape: "Tinned food, shells, hand grenades, water bottles, bandoliers, gas masks, helmets, clothing. Some of the boots still had feet in them."

Back in Boston Corners, Milne continued to focus on landscape, in what looks like a fusion of his previous styles. These are paintings that reward viewing from different distances -- not always easy in the relatively small exhibition space in Dulwich. White, the Waterfall is a 1921 work:

At the end of the 1920s, Milne returned to Canada to paint. But he found it hard to make a living. The palette darkened again: Milne's use of colour seems very closely linked to the state of his emotions. Prospect Hole is the title of one black, black work, depicting what looks to be a flooded mineshaft in Temagami but seeming to sum up in name and subject matter his financial circumstances.

Things began to look up for Milne after 1933 as he sold more. We get a change of style again: much brighter, but more abstract and minimalist. The experiments with colour continued. In Ollie Matson's House in Snow, the shadow is deep plum.

Summer Colours dates from 1936:

As you leave, Milne is captured on camera burning work he deemed not up to scratch. But go and see this show, because it is very much up to scratch. Otherwise, you'll have to go to Canada....

Practicalities

David Milne: Modern Painting continues at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London until May 7. It's open from 1000 to 1700 from Tuesdays to Sundays and tickets cost £15.50, which also covers entry to the permanent collection. They can be bought online here. The gallery is about 10 minutes' walk from both West Dulwich station, for trains from Victoria, and North Dulwich station, for trains from London Bridge.

Images

David Milne, Billboards, c. 1912, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Gift of Douglas M. Duncan, Toronto, 1962. Photo: NGC. (c) The Estate of David Milne
David Milne, Bishop's Pond (Reflections), 1916, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC. (c) The Estate of David Milne

David Milne, White, the Waterfall, 1921, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC. (c) The Estate of David Milne

David Milne, Summer Colours, 1936, Purchase 1993, McMichael Canadian Art Collection. (c) The Estate of David Milne

David Milne, 

Bishop's Pond (Reflections)

, 1916, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. 

Photo: NGC. © The Estate of David Milne

David Milne, 

Bishop's Pond (Reflections)

, 1916, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. 

Photo: NGC. © The Estate of David Miln

An Englishman Abroad: John Frederick Lewis

The Victorians had a taste for the exotic. The chance to be transported, as if on a magic carpet, away from rainy, smoky Britain to the delights of the East. And so they were captivated by the pictures John Frederick Lewis made of Egypt. Drawings and paintings so full of detail, so full of local colour, they were seen by his contemporaries as "accurately and intimately true". John Frederick Lewis: Facing Fame at the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey traces the story of an English artist who not only travelled to the Orient, he was so wooed by it that he stayed in Cairo for a decade. And who, when he eventually returned to Britain, continued to paint Oriental-inspired scenes. "There was something un-English about him," John Ruskin said. And here we are in Cairo's El Khan Khalil textile market. Full of colourful fabrics and carpets, turbanned extras, the obligatory sleeping dog and an Islamic arch. And in the foreground, a prosperous merchant himsel...

What's On in 2026

Coming up in 2026: Lots more big exhibitions starring women artists, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Gwen John , as well as a host of names from the 17th-century Low Countries. And women almost certainly embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry, a contender for this year's hottest ticket in London. Here's a selection of shows that have caught our eye around Britain and Europe, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. January We'll start the year at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, where they're devoting an exhibition to Paul Cezanne . Focusing on the artist's later years, the show will bring together some 80 oil paintings and watercolours. January 25 to May 25. February Two leading British women artists feature in exhibitions opening this month, with the National Museum in Cardiff honouring the best-known female painter Wales has pr...

The Highs and Lows of the Nahmad Collection

It's widely referred to as the world's most valuable private art collection : the one assembled over decades by the Nahmad brothers, dealers Ezra and David . Worth an estimated $3 billion or more, it's said to include hundreds of Picassos. Some 60 works from it are now on display at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny as The Nahmad Collection: From Monet to Picasso . Intended, apparently, to demonstrate how art developed from the early 19th century through Impressionism and on to the start of the modern era, towards the liberation of colour and form, this is an exhibition that ends up coming across as somewhat incoherent. We're not really told much about the Nahmads or their collecting choices -- and as you search the Internet, things become slightly mysterious: Is Ezra alive or dead? The art, presumably, is supposed to speak for itself, but it's a rather eclectic, if not confusing, selection; some of the works are fantastic, some are distinctly ho-hum. Let...

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