Arthur Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove was born in upstate New York (Canandaigua) in 1880, when the United States was still largely rural and provincial, but by the time he died on Long Island in 1946, " American civilization had evolved into something no less distinctive but thoroughly modernized and internationalized." Dove's formative years were spent living the simple life, close to nature, and we see that influence in his work. Dove recalled, " The single most important influence on my early years was a middle-aged neighbor, Newton Weatherly, who was a truck farmer by trade but a naturalist and painter by avocation." Dove enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca to study law, but by the time he completed his B.A. degree he had decided to become an illustrator, drawing for McClure's, Century, Collier's, St. Nicholas, and The Illustrated Sporting News. In 1904 he married Florence; in 1908 they went to Paris where he gained exposure to the European art world; they returned to America in 1909. Dove worked in Westport, Connecticut to support his wife and son, but soon after his father died, and almost paralleling the behavior of Stieglitz and O'Keeffe, Dove departed with a fellow artist who eventually became his second wife. Helen Torr, or " Reds" as she was known to friends, was married . . .. Dove and Reds apparently did not provoke gossip when they went sketching together, but those expeditions must have had a salutary effect on Dove's self-confidence since he found he could have not only the respect but the love of another artist, whereas his own socially inclined wife, who had no serious interest in art, had chafed at the lifestyle Dove had chosen to support his vocation.

Arthur Dove Images:
Dancing Willows
Tanks, 1938
That Red One