This vivid watercolour by David Milne, titled Peeling Pulpwood, captures a fleeting moment of work and light in the northern landscape. With a few gestural lines and washes of translucent colour, Milne distils the essence of men labouring among logs in a sun-dappled clearing. The scene is rendered with striking economy—broad passages of green, ochre, and brown drift across the paper like fragments of memory, while the figures emerge only as suggestions, their forms dissolving into the forested ground.

Milne’s technique here demonstrates his late mastery of abstraction through restraint. The interplay between the deep, inky shadows and the glowing whites of untouched paper evokes both the density of the woods and the crisp brilliance of filtered sunlight. The few strokes of green and orange breathe life into the composition, suggesting leaves, bark, and movement without literal detail.

Painted during Milne’s mature years in the Bancroft–Baptiste Lake period, Peeling Pulpwood reflects his fascination with the rhythms of labour and the harmony between human presence and nature. The result is a work at once spontaneous and deeply contemplative—an image where form, light, and gesture merge into pure expression.