Arthur B. Davies | |
|---|---|
 photo byGertrude Käsebier c.1907 | |
| Born | September 26, 1862 (1862-09-26)[1] Utica, New York, US |
| Died | October 24, 1928 (1928-10-25) (aged 66) Florence, Italy |
| Education | Chicago Academy of Design,Art Students League |
| Known for | Painting,Printmaking |
| Movement | The Eight,Ashcan school |
Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was anavant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928.
Davies was born inUtica, New York,[2] the son of David and Phoebe Davies.[3] He was keenly interested in drawing when he was young and, at fifteen, attended a large touring exhibition in his hometown of American landscape art, featuring works byGeorge Inness and members of theHudson River School. The show had a profound effect on him. He was especially impressed by Inness'stonalist landscapes.[4] After his family relocated to Chicago, Davies studied at theChicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882 and briefly attended theArt Institute of Chicago, before moving to New York City, where he studied at theArt Students League. He worked as a magazine illustrator before devoting himself to painting.
In 1892, Davies marriedVirginia Meriwether, one of New York State's first female physicians. Her family, suspecting that their daughter might end by being the sole breadwinner of the family if she was to marry an impoverished artist, insisted that thebridegroom sign aprenuptial agreement, renouncing any claim on his wife's money in the event of divorce. (Davies would eventually become very wealthy through the sale of his paintings, though his prospects at thirty did not look encouraging.) Appearances notwithstanding, they were anything but a conventional couple, even aside from the fact that Davies was of aphilandering nature. Virginia had eloped when she was young and had murdered her husband on her honeymoon when she discovered that he was an abusive drug addict and compulsive gambler, a fact that she and her family kept from Davies.[5] With Virginia, Davies had two sons, Niles and Arthur.[6] When Davies died in 1928, Virginia discovered that he had kept hidden a second life, with anothercommon-law wife, Edna, and family. Edna discovered that she was given a subsistence allowance by Arthur, despite his financial success as an artist.[7]
An urbane man with a formal demeanor, Davies was "famously diffident and retiring".[8] He would rarely invite anyone to his studio and, later in life, would go out of his way to avoid old friends and acquaintances.[9] The reason for Davies' reticence became known after his sudden death while vacationing in Italy in 1928: his second family with Edna, a secret kept from Virginia for twenty-five years.
Within a year of his marriage, Davies' paintings began to sell, slowly but steadily.[10] In turn-of-the-century America, he found a market for his gentle, expertly painted evocations of a fantasy world. Regular trips to Europe, where he immersed himself in Dutch art and came to love the work ofCorot andMillet, helped him to hone his color sense and refine his brushwork. By the time he was in his forties, Davies had definitively proved his in-laws wrong and, represented by a prestigious Manhattan art dealer, William Macbeth, was making a comfortable living. His reputation at the time, and still today (to the extent that he is known at all), rests on his ethereal figure paintings, the most famous of which isUnicorns: Legend, Sea Calm (1906) in the collection of theMetropolitan Museum of Art. In the 1920s, his works commanded very high prices and he was recognized as one of the most respected and financially successful American painters. He was prolific, consistent, and highly skilled. Art history texts routinely cited him as one of America's greatest artists. Important collectors likeDuncan Phillips were eager to buy his latest drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings.
Davies was also the principal organizer of the legendary 1913Armory Show and a member ofThe Eight, a group of painters who in 1908 mounted a protest against the restrictive exhibition practices of the powerful, conservativeNational Academy of Design. Five members of the Eight—Robert Henri (1865–1929),George Luks (1867–1933),William Glackens (1870–1938),John Sloan (1871–1951), andEverett Shinn (1876–1953)—were Ashcan realists, while Davies,Maurice Prendergast (1859–1924), andErnest Lawson (1873–1939) painted in a different, less realistic style. His friendAlfred Stieglitz, patron to many modern artists, regarded Davies as more broadly knowledgeable about contemporary art than anyone he knew.[11] Davies also served as an advisor to many wealthy New Yorkers who wanted guidance about making purchases for their art collections. Two of those collectors wereLillie P. Bliss andAbby Aldrich Rockefeller, two of the founders of theMuseum of Modern Art, whose Davies-guided collections eventually became a core part of that museum.[12]
Davies was quietly but remarkably generous in his support of fellow artists. He was a mentor to the gifted but deeply troubled sculptorJohn Flannagan, whom he rescued from dire poverty and near-starvation.[13] He helped financeMarsden Hartley's 1912 trip to Europe, which resulted in a major phase of Hartley's career. He recommended to his own dealer financially strapped artists whose talent he believed in, likeRockwell Kent.[14]
Yet Davies made enemies as well. His role in organizing the Armory Show, a massive display of modern art which proved somewhat threatening to American realists like Robert Henri, the leader of The Eight, showed a forceful side to his character that many in the art world had never seen. With fellow artistsWalt Kuhn andWalter Pach, he devoted himself with great zeal to the project of scouring Europe for the best examples ofCubism,Fauvism, andFuturism and publicizing the exhibition in New York and later in Chicago and Boston. Those who did not fully support the venture or expressed any reservations, like his old colleague Henri, were treated with contempt. Davies knew in which direction the tide of art history was flowing and displayed little tolerance for those who could not keep pace.[15]
In an official statement for a pamphlet that was sold at the Chicago venue of the Armory Show and later reprinted inThe Outlook magazine, Davies wrote: "In getting together the works of the European Moderns, the Society [i.e., the organizing body for the Armory Show, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors] has embarked on no propaganda. It proposes to enter on no controversy with any institution ... Of course, controversies will arise, but they will not be the result of any stand taken by the Association as such."[16] With these masterfully disingenuous words, Davies pretended that the men who had brought some of the most radical contemporary art to the United States were merely offering Americans an opportunity for a dispassionate viewing experience. In reality, Davies, Kuhn, and Pach knew that their bold project was likely to alter, decisively and permanently, the cultural landscape of America.
Arthur B. Davies is an anomaly in American art history, an artist whose own lyrical work could be described as restrained and conservative but whose tastes were as advanced and open to experimentation as those of anyone of his time. (His personal art collection at the time of his death included works byAlfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, andJoseph Stella as well as major European modernists likeCézanne andBrâncuși.[17]) As art historian Milton Brown wrote of Davies' early period, "A product of the Tonalist school andWhistler, he had developed a unique decorative style. He was completely eclectic," with influences that ranged from Hellenistic Greek art toSandro Botticelli, the German painterArnold Böcklin, and the EnglishPre-Raphaelites.[18] A painter of dream-like maidens and "frieze-like idylls,"[19] he was most often compared to the French artist PierrePuvis de Chavannes. His involvement with the Armory Show and prolonged exposure to European Modernism, however, changed his outlook utterly. As art historianSam Hunter wrote, "[One] could scarcely have guessed that the bold colors ofMatisse and the radical simplifications of the Cubists would engage Davies' sympathies," but so they did.[20] His subsequent work attempted to merge stronger color and a Cubist sense of structure and Cubist forms with his on-going preoccupation with the female body, delicate movement, and an essentially romantic outlook (e.g.,Day of Good Fortune, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.) "Mr. Davies takes his Cubism lightly," a sympathetic critic wrote in 1913,[21] acknowledging a view, held then and now, that Davies' Cubist-inspired paintings have an elegant appeal but are not in the more rigorous or authentic spirit of Cubism as practiced byPicasso,Georges Braque, andJuan Gris.
By 1918, Davies returned, in large part, to his earlier style. Kimberly Orcutt plausibly speculates that Davies found the mixed reactions (and sometimes very negative responses) to his more modernist explorations distressing and so "returned to the style that was expected of him, the one that had brought him praise and prosperity."[22] A traditionalist, a visionary, an Arcadian fantasist, an advocate for Modernism: varied and seemingly contradictory designations describe Arthur B. Davies.
Collectionpastel drawings in theMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York (selection)
(In alphabetical order bystate, then bycity, then bymuseum name)
