Arthur B. Davies

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Gertrude Käsebier : Arthur B. Davies , photograph around 1907
Elysian Fields, undated, oil on canvas, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Arthur Bowen Davies (born September 26, 1862 in Utica , New York , † October 24, 1928 in Florence , Italy ) was an American painter of symbolism . He was influenced by the Hudson River School , especially the luminist and dream landscape painter George Inness .

life and work

Davies studied at the "School of the Art Institute of Chicago" from 1879 to 1882. He briefly attended the Art Institute of Chicago and moved to New York in 1887 , where he began studying at the Art Students League and Robert Henri and George Benjamin Luks met. From 1888 to 1891 he worked in advertising, where he designed billboards, he also made technical drawings and designed illustrations for magazines.

Davies was a member of The Eight group , a group of painters with five associate members of the Ashcan School : William Glackens (1870–1938), Robert Henri (1865–1929), George Benjamin Luks (1867–1933), Everett Shinn (1876–1953) , John French Sloan (1871-1951), and Davies himself, Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) and Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924). The Eight group exhibited only once at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in 1908.

From 1912 to 1914 Davies was President of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and in that position in 1913, along with Walt Kuhn and Walter Pach, one of the main founders of the Armory Show . Davies, a lifelong advocate of abstract art was had, Alfred Barr in the founding of the Museum of Modern Art supports in New York. After a heart attack in 1923, he traveled to Florence , where he painted a series of romantic pictures of the landscape of northern Italy before he died alone in his studio.

He is known for the ethereal figures in his paintings, which have a romantic, nostalgic, and often a mysterious quality. He often arranged the small figures against a dark background, giving his pictures their own poetic mood and special symbolism.

Drawings with pastel chalk

Collection of pastel drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York (selection)

  • Reading girl , 1911, drawing, pastel on gray paper

  • Across the Valley , pastel chalk on Japanese paper (18.9 × 27 cm)

  • Autumn Woods , pastel chalk on dark brown vellum paper (18.4 × 27.8 cm)

  • Bear Island Light , pastel chalk on dark blue vellum paper (26 × 31.6 cm)

  • Blue Thicket , pastel chalk on gray paper (18.6 × 27.8 cm)

  • Boat in Distress , pastel chalk on gray vellum paper (26 × 31.1 cm)

  • Boats at Evening , pastel chalk on light vellum paper (14.6 × 22.5 cm)

  • High Point , pastel chalk on gray paper (18.7 × 33 cm)

  • House on Hillside , pastel chalk on gray-green paper (19.5 × 25.4 cm)

  • Landscape with Clouds , pastel chalk and black chalk on green-gray vellum paper (15.6 × 26.8 cm)

  • Blue Landscape , pastel chalk on dark blue vellum paper (16.5 × 29.4 cm)

Awards

  • 1916: “Clark Prize”, Corcoran Biennale

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur Bowen Davies. Biographical data and works in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Dutch)

literature

  • Burroughs, A., The Art of Arthur B. Davies , Print Connoisseur, 1923, 196
  • Joseph S. Czestochowski: Arthur B. Davies: A Catalog Raisonne of the Prints . University of Delaware Press, 1987, ISBN 0-87413-242-8
  • Bennard B. Perlman: The Lives, Loves and Art of Arthur B. Davies , State University of New York Press, 1998, ISBN 0-7914-3835-X (available online)

Web links

Commons : Arthur B. Davies  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Davies, Arthur B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davies, Arthur Bowen (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Utica (New York)
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1928
Place of death Florence