After his move to Centerport, Long Island, in 1938, Dove began making daily drawings such as the present work in pocket-size sketchbooks he carried everywhere he went, recording on the spot an idea or insight that he could then carry back home to contemplate at greater length and compare with other drawings he had made over the previous days and weeks. As an ongoing practice in the 1930s that accelerated in the 1940s, these studies surely influenced Dove’s decision to turn to non-objective abstraction during the Centerport years.

—Rachael Z. DeLue, excerpt from “Arthur Dove: Yes, I Could Paint a Cyclone”