David who? Milne at the Met.(Art)(David Milne Watercolors: 'Painting Toward Fire Light,' The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Some artists' work, like certain wines or cheeses, doesn't travel. Why is unclear, although it seems to have less to do with merit than with such intangibles as connections, relationships with dealers and collectors, self-presentation, the state of the art world, and national interest. Even in today's apparently borderless world of websites and assiduously attended art events in places you have to look up in your atlas, there are still artists, however celebrated at home, whose reputations remain local. David Milne, an inventive modernist painter whose career spanned roughly the first half of the twentieth century, is a case in point. In his native Canada, he is a major ...