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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
ARTHUR B. DAVIES View of a Town on a River.
Watercolor on cream wove paper. 245x350 mm; 9 3/4x13 3/4 inches. Signed in pencil, lower left recto.
Provenance: Private collection, Baltimore.
Davies (1862-1928) was a visionary modern artist and arts director, just as remembered for his instrumental role in organizing the Armory Show in 1913. Davies was born in Utica, New York and showed artistic promise early on, studying with Dwight Williams, a local landscape painter in 1877. Once Davies' family moved to Chicago in 1879, he attended classes at the Chicago Academy of Design and supported himself with commercial commissions. He moved to New York in either 1885 or 1886 and attended the Art Students League and classes with the Gotham Art Students. Davies worked and exhibited throughout the city, despite having moved to Congers, New York in the early 1890s. In 1893, he made the first of his two trips to Europe with funding from patrons through the Macbeth Gallery. The commute to New York and constant travel caused a rift between Davies and his wife, and in the early 1900s he started a secret second family with model Edna Potter in New York.
Rooted in poetic fantasy, Davies' works did not stylistically resemble his contemporaries known as "The Eight," though his work did appear at the Macbeth Gallery's controversial landmark exhibition in 1908. Davies was active in the New York artist community and befriended several young progressive artists like Marsden Hartley and Rockwell Kent. It was in the capacity of president of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors that Davies worked with Walter Pach to organize the Armory Show, pushing to include contemporary American artists. It was during this time that Davies changed from his Romantic style to one more inspired by Cubism. He took on printmaking from 1917 to 1924, returning to his earlier style in his later years.
