Arthur Dove American, 1880-1946
50.8 x 71.1 cm
Brickyard Shed (1934), which depicts a section of the old brickworks on the Dove family property, bears no trace of the hardships Dove faced in Geneva. Dove treats the subject of the work with painterly exuberance, rendering the modest structure with broad and flowing bands of brown, white, and yellow paint and adorning the building’s right side with a pattern of gem-like green-blue shapes. The canvas barely contains the boisterous trees that burst into view from behind the shed, their limbs laden with a charming mix of abstract and naturalistic forms. A series of circles dances in the sky above the shed, their quirky twists mirrored in the bean-shaped sun and the plump, disc-shaped forms encircling the lowest tree branch. Concentric bands of white and yellow grey radiate towards the canvas’s upper edge, their animated spread amplifying the dynamism of the scene. A bright yellow flower provides a burst of enlivening color at upper right, and a brown shape adjacent to the shed appears loosely animal-like, complete with a large round eye, adding a touch of whimsy to the scene.
—Rachael Z. DeLue, excerpt from “Arthur Dove: Yes, I Could Paint a Cyclone”
Provenance
The artist, 1934; to[An American Place, New York];
Charles and Inez Brooks, 1939;
[Terry Dintenfass, Inc., New York, 1978];
William C. Janss, Sun Valley, Idaho, 1980, until at least 1984;
[Alexandre Gallery, New York, 2003]; to
Private collection, New York, 2004, until the present
Exhibitions
An American Place, New York, New Paintings by Arthur Dove, 1936The Downtown Gallery, New York; Vanbark Studios, Los Angeles, California; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; San Francisco Museum of Art, California, Dove Retrospective Exhibition: Paintings, 1908–1946, January 7–May 18, 1947, exhibited in San Francisco only
Terry Dintenfass, Inc., New York, Arthur Dove: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Collages, November 3–December 29, 1984
Menconi + Schoelkopf Fine Art, New York, A Century of American Art: 1866–1966, 2018, no. 16, illus. in color p. 40
Marlborough, New York, In Search of the Miraculous, January 24–March 11, 2023, p. 13, illus. in color
Literature
Letter from Arthur Dove to Alfred Stieglitz, April 10, 1934, in Ann Lee Morgan, ed., Dear Stieglitz, Dear Dove, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988, p. 303
Ann Lee Morgan, Arthur Dove: Life and Work, With a Catalogue Raisonné, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984, p. 213, no. 34.3, illus. p. 214, illus. in color n.p.
Debra Bricker Balken and Anne Cohen DePietro, Arthur Dove Watercolors, New York: Alexandre Gallery, 2006, p. 10, fig. 6, illus. in color
Debra Bricker Balken, Arthur Dove: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Things, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, p. 200, no. 1934.3
