Alex Colville, Diary of a War Artist

Alex Colville – Diary of a War Artist; compiled by Graham Metson and Cheryl Lean; Nimbus Publishing Limited, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1981. Presentation copy signed by Alex Colville. David Alexander Colville (1920 – 2013) was a Canadian painter. Born in 1920 in Toronto, Ontario, Colville moved with his family at age seven to St. Catharines, and then to Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1929. He attended Mount Allison University from 1938 to 1942, where he studied under Canadian Post-Impressionists like Stanley Royle and Sarah Hart, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Colville married Rhoda Wright, who he had been friends with since his freshman year at "Mount A," in 1942 and enlisted in the Canadian Army shortly afterwards. He enlisted in the infantry, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant. He painted in Yorkshire and took part in the Royal Canadian Navy's landings in southern France. He was then attached to the 3rd Canadian Division. After being in the army for two years, and because he was a fine-arts student, he was made a war artist in May 1944. His unit relieved the 82nd Airborne Division at Nijmegen, Netherlands in mid-September 1944 during Operation Market Garden and remained there until the following February. He continued on to tours in the Netherlands and Germany, where he was also tasked with depicting the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. This book comprises the drawings and paintings from this period in war-torn Europe. After the war, Colville returned to New Brunswick and became a faculty member with the Fine Arts Department at Mount Allison University. He taught there from 1946 to 1963. Colville developed his own style of Realism that influenced both a regional and national art community, as teacher and founder of what would become known as Maritime Realism. Alex Colville's work is found in many collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Cape Breton University Art Gallery in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover, Germany. Trained as an infantry officer, he did a painting when World War II ended. Based upon numerous drawings, it was called Infantry and is now in the Canadian War Museum. It represents a platoon of Canadian soldiers spread out and marching along both sides of a road. Colville believed it conveyed his perception of war, as both heroism and enduring persistence among nature's elements and constant danger. The face of the first man is actually a portrait of the artist's father. This painting is one of the iconic depictions of Canadian soldiers at war in Europe and it is reproduced on pages 90 and 91 of this book. Other famous works by Colville include: Horse and Train; Man on Verandah, Ocean Limited, to Prince Edward Island, and Cyclist and Crow. Colville is considered to be the realist Canadian painter in the second half of the twentieth century. His works are now selling in the millions of dollars. This large format book, 159 pages measuring 303mm X 225mm, is in fine condition. The dust jacket is in near-fine condition, the only fault a small, triangular tear on the back measuring 15mm X 30mm, and it is now enclosed in a protective mylar wrap. A spectacular, association copy of one of Canada’s premier war artists and one of the country’s finest realist painters, period.…