Royle believed that painting was "not a trick dependent on skill and craftsmanship" but a language the grammar and syntax of which could be learned through perserverence and practise. Colville seems to have adopted this belief but rejected his painting master's political cant, except where… Continue

This image of a dead German soldier was also painted a year after the end of the war. It is not surprising that Colville's post-war world became "unsettling and uncompromising." His lexicon of expressionism from then on became: "absence, loss, emptiness, disquiet, mystery, al… Continue

This Colville painting is not plein air, but a rectrospective of war painted in 1946. It shows the "rough, broken technique of painting" which his teacher, Stanley Royle, managed to bend in the direction of "subtlety of tone, and thin, rather smooth paint."

Colville has t… Continue

Born in Toronto in 1920, David Alexander Colville and his family moved to Nova Scotia nine years later. He studied Fine Art at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick under Stanley Royle. At graduation in 1942 he married Rhoda Wright and enlisted in the Canadian army. In 1944 he w… Continue

Harris had war experience, family connections and a great art background so it was not surprising that he became the new man in charge of the Owen's Art Gallery and School at Sackville when his teacher, Stanley Royle, sailed back to England in 1946. Harris was destined to remain… Continue