Arthur Bowen Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies (American, 1862-1928)
Arthur B. Davies is an elusive and contradictory figure in early twentieth century American art. His Arcadian scenes have been considered an American version of Symbolism. Yet, he was pivotal in introducing to America modern abstract art, a style antithetical to his idyllic subject matter.
He began his art studies in 1877 with Dwight Williams, an artist from Cazenovia, New York, near Davies’ hometown of Utica. In 1878 the Davies family moved to Chicago, where Arthur studied briefly at the Academy of Design. He went to Colorado for his health in 1879 and later worked in Mexico as a civil engineering draftsman. After attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Davies moved to New York City in 1886, enrolling in the Art Students League and earning his living by drawing for Century Magazine and St. Nicolas. He began exhibiting his works in 1888 and first showed at the National Academy of Design in 1893, the year in which he sold his first painting.
Davies married Dr. Lucy Virginia Merriweather in 1892. His family lived on a farm in Congers, New York, but Davies remained in New York City to further his career, seeing his wife and children only on weekends. In 1905 Davies began living in New York (under pseudonym) with model Edna Potter. The couple and their child stayed together until Davies’ death in 1928; this second family was unknown to all but a few close friends.
Davies developed his mature theme of idealized nudes in pastoral settings during the late 1890s and early 1900s in New York. He was greatly influenced by the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and adopted his frieze-like horizontal format, willowy figures, and flat, two-dimensional style. Davies, like Puvis de Chavannes, painted a dreamlike world, recalling the classical Golden Age, peopled by lithe, carefree youths.
In one of his best known works, Unicorns (1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), two women, one nude and the other clothed, face a group of unicorns. Behind them stretches a mirror-smooth expanse of water broken by an undulating mountain range. The scene depicts no specific story, but evokes a sense of ritual and supernatural calm. Such mystery is an integral part of Symbolism, a late nineteenth-century movement characterized by an attitude rather than a single style. Uninterested in external appearances, Symbolists emphasized introspection and highly personal symbols and visions. Hence, images of fantasy and dream appear frequently in Symbolist art.
Despite his allegiance to Symbolism, Davies became an important figure in two exhibitions representing styles very different from his own. In 1908 he joined Robert Henri in organizing a show to protest the restrictive exhibition policies of the National Academy of Design. The paintings of The Eight, as the exhibitors were called, were mostly broadly brushed urban scenes. While Davies did not share their realistic style, he was in sympathy with the group’s aim.
Davies was also president of the American Association of Painters and Sculptors, which in 1913 organized the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show. This exhibition was designed to be the showcase for contemporary American Art, but it became the vehicle for introducing modern European art on a large scale to the American public and artists. Americans saw how much further Europeans had pursued abstraction, and the result was the beginning of a decade of American variation on European abstract art.
From about 1913 to 1916 Davies experimented with his own version of Cubism, applying the Cubist practice of faceting objects to his traditional Symbolist subject matter. Davies’ works were brightly colored and retained a more solid and recognizable form than other Cubist paintings. He soon returned to his earlier Symbolist style. Although the artist never explained this reversion, scholars assume that he simply felt dissatisfied with his efforts. In the last years of his life he traveled to Europe frequently, experimenting with landscapes in oil and watercolor. These visits produced over 300 landscapes, an intended diversion from the idyllic figures, which defined his style.
[Taken from the internet web site of Comenos Fine Arts, www.comenosfinearts.com, 2/7/2000 --jag]
