Arthur Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove (August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946) was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career. Dove made a series of experimental collages in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion as exemplified in Dove's 1938 painting Tanks, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Early life and education Dove's Nature Symbolized No. 2, , a pastel on paper, at the Art Institute of Chicago Dove was born to a wealthy family in Canandaigua, New York. His parents, William George and Anna Elizabeth, were of English ancestry. William Dove was interested in politics and named his son Arthur Garfield, after the Republican candidates for president and vice-president in the 1880 election, James Garfield and Chester Arthur, who ultimately won the vote. Arthur Dove grew up loving the outdoors on a farm; however, his father was a very successful businessman who owned a brickyard (along with city real estate) and expected his son to become wealthy. Dove's childhood interests included playing the piano, painting lessons, and pitching on a high school baseball team. conducive to Dove's appreciation of nature. Weatherby was also an amateur painter who gave Dove pieces of leftover canvas to work with.

Dove attended Hobart College and Cornell University, where he enrolled in elective art classes. He graduated from Cornell in 1903.

Career

In 1907, Dove and his first wife, Florence, traveled to France and moved to Paris, then the world's art capital. The photographer was 16 years older than Dove and his urban, Jewish and European cultural roots were in contrast to Dove's rural Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage. Dove was said to be gentle, quiet, and a good friend while Stieglitz was known as being argumentative and shrewd. and he experimented with techniques, combining paints like oil and/or tempera over a wax emulsion. Tanks, 1938 is an example of oil over a wax emulsion; commenting about Tanks, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts says: Set off by a halo of pale gray, the quivering structures almost seem to dematerialize and merge into the surrounding scenery, yet at the same time, they retain their hulking forms. Dove produced about twenty-five assemblages between 1924 and 1930.

Arthur Dove-Helen Torr Cottage

In July 1924, when Arthur Dove and Helen Torr sailed into Huntington Harbor aboard their 42-foot yawl, Mona, they could not have anticipated the extent to which Long Island's North Shore would inspire some of their greatest paintings. They lived in Halesite until the Great Depression when both Dove and Torr moved back to Dove's estate located in Geneva.

Wishing to return to Long Island, in 1938 the couple moved back into their first home, a former post office and general store on Center Shore Road in Centerport, New York. They purchased the house for $980.00. The tiny, one-room cottage stood on the edge of the Titus Mill Pond. Almost immediately, Dove was found to have pneumonia; he eventually suffered from a heart attack and was diagnosed with a debilitating kidney disorder. In terrible health for the remainder of his days, he lived quietly, finally able to devote himself entirely to painting, and focus on the inspiration of his surroundings and his home. Some of the most powerful paintings of his career, including Indian Summer, were painted in Centerport. Torr remained in the house on the millpond but never painted again. Helen Torr died in 1967. In 1979, her works and Dove's were hung together in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Arthur Dove-Helen Torr Cottage was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. In October, just before his death, Dove wrote to Phillips for the last time:

You have no idea what sending on those checks to me at this time. After fighting for an idea all your life I realize that your backing has saved it for me and meant to thank you with all my heart and soul for what you have done. It has been marvelous. So many letters have been written and not mailed and owing to having been in bed a great deal of time this summer, the paintings were about all I could muster up enough energy to do what I considered the best of my ability. Just before Stieglitz’s death I took some paintings to him that I considered as having something new in the. He immediately walked right up to them and spoke of the new ideas. His intuition in that way was remarkable and I am so glad to have been allowed to live during his and your lifetimes. It has been a great privilege for which I am truly thankful.

Arthur Dove's granddaughter is the interactive artist Toni Dove.

The Estate of Arthur Dove is represented by the Terry Dintenfass Gallery.

In 2017, it was announced that Geneva, New York, would receive economic revitalization funding that would, in part, assist with rehabilitating the 1878 Dove Block building, once Dove's studio in the 1930s. The Landmark Society of Western New York had previously announced that the historic Dove Block building was on its "Five to Revive for 2016."

Selected works

Selected list of works

1910 Abstraction No. 1 - 6 1911 Movement No. 1 1911 Nature Symbolized ca. 1911 Nature Symbolized, No. 2 1911 - 2 Sails ca. 1912 Plant Forms ca. 1912 - 3 A Walk: Poplars 1913 Pagan Philosophy 1915 Plant Form 1917 - 20 Gear 1917 - 20 Thunderstorm 1920 Dark Abstraction (Woods) ca. 1921 Thunderstorm 1922 After the Storm, Silver and Green (Vault Sky) New Jersey State Museum 1923 Moon and Sea II 1923 Chinese Music 1924 Sunrise 1924 Huntington Harbor 1924 Starry Heavens 1924 Nature Symbolized or Reefs 1925 The Intellectual 1925 Goin’ Fishin’ 1925 The Critic 1926 Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz 1927 George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue Part 1 1928 Snow and Water 1928 Composition 1928 Sea Gull Motive (also known as Sea Thunder or The Wave) 1929 Alfie’s Delight 1929 Silver Sun 1929 Foghorns 1929 Wind (number 1) 1929 Harbor in Light 1929 Moth Dance 1929 "Tree Trunk" 1930 - ? Brick Barge with Landscape 1931 Ice and Clouds 1931 Fields of Grain as Seen from Train 1931 Ferry Boat Wreck 1931 Pine Tree 1931 Two Forms 1931 Abstract from Threshing Engine 1931 Steam Boat - Northport 1932 Gale 1932 Dawn III 1932 Sunday ca. 1933 Sun Drawing Water 1934 Trees 1934 Trees II 1934 Brickyard Shed 1934 - ? Sowing Wheat 1935 Moon 1935 Corn Crib 1935 Red Sun 1935 " Cow #1" 1935 Snowstorm 1935 Barns 1935 Tree I 1936 Windy Morning 1937 Me and the Moon 1937 Happy Landscape 1937 - ? Water Swirl, Canandaigua Outlet 1938 "City Moon" 1938 Shore Front 1938 Tanks 1938 Holbrook’s Bridge to the Northwest 1938 Swing Music (Louis Armstrong) 1938 "Motor Boat" Boston MFA 1939 Continuity 1939 What Harbor Worcester Art Museum 1940 Abstract Still Life 1940 Syosset 1940 Black and White 1941 Our House 1941 Pyramid Formation 1941 The Brothers #1 Honolulu Museum of Art 1941 Landscape 1941 "Neighborly Attempt At Murder" Boston MFA 1942 The Brothers McNay Art Museum 1942 Untitled #3 New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut 1943 Space Divided by Line Motive (U.S.A.) 1943 Sun 1943 Sand and Sea 1936 - 44 Fire the Sauerkraut Factory, West X, New York 1938 "Sun On The Lake" Boston MFA 1942 "Square On The Pond" Boston MFA 1943 "Spring" Boston MFA 1944 "Dancing Willows" Boston MFA 1944 That Red One Boston MFA 1944 High Noon 1945 Figure 4

Exhibitions

1940-1946 Untitled from Sketchbook “E” Arkansas Arts Center American 1941 "Across the Road" oil on canvas Des Moines Art Center American 1941 "Centerport Series #16" watercolor and gouac Hirshhorn Museum American 1941 "Indian Summer" oil on canvas Heckscher Museum of Art 1943 "Space Divided" by Line Motive oil on canvas Corcoran Gallery of Art American 1943 "Arthur Garfield Dove, Paintings 1942-43" An American Place, New York, NY 1947 "Dove Retrospective Exhibition: Paintings 1908-1946" Downtown Gallery, New York, NY 1958 "Arthur Dove Retrospective" Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1971 "Arthur Dove" Galerie Ann, Houston, TX 1975 "Arthur Dove: Mainly the Forties" Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX 2016-2018 "Making Modern" Boston MFA, Boston, MA