While in France in 1908, Arthur Dove made the acquaintance of members of a group called the New Society of American Artists in Paris, which had formed in reaction to the perceived conservatism of the existing, Paris-based American artist organizations. Through the New Society, Dove met several American artists who frequented the salons of Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein and, with them, championed new directions in modern art. The cohort included Max Weber, Arthur B. Carles, Jo Davidson, John Marin, Edward Steichen, and Alfred Maurer, who would become Dove’s dear friend. Dove’s Parisian circle helped introduce him to recent French art.

His paintings from this period reflect his exposure to Post-Impressionism, a style associated with Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne. They also reflect his growing familiarity with the Fauves, especially Henri Matisse, whose Blue Still Life (1907; Barnes Foundation) Dove saw at the 1908 Salon d’Automne. Dove’s own painting at that exhibition, The Lobster (1908; Amon Carter Museum of American Art), with its vivid color, thick brushwork, bluntly eloquent forms, and condensed space, makes clear that he had enthusiastically absorbed the lessons of his French counterparts.... Being in the thick of the most forward-looking ideas about art in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century set the tone for Dove’s future work and laid the foundation for his groundbreaking forays into abstraction in the years to come.

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