Arthur Dove American, 1880-1946

In the 1930s, Dove began making small-scale studies, many of them three-by-four, five-by-seven, or six-by-nine inches, in various media, including oil, wax emulsion, watercolor, gouache, graphite, ink, or combinations thereof. In these studies, including in the present work, he experimented with various configurations of color and form. Dove referred to these studies as “ideas” and Torr noted in the diary the two kept together those occasions when Dove went out “looking for ideas,” by which she meant things to capture in the format of a small-scale sketch. Dove regularly composed written lists of his thoughts about art and about other subjects, titling the lists “ideas,” thus suggesting that both the sketches and his written musings played an important part in shaping his practice. As with his watercolor sketches, some of Dove’s “ideas” contain motifs that he carried over into paintings, and some map out entire compositions for larger works. But many did not, largely because Dove saw the studies, as he did his watercolors, as finished works. There exist scores of these pocket-size studies in various museum collections, a large portion of them the gift of Dove’s son, William, and they constitute a sizable and arresting body of work.

—Rachael Z. DeLue, excerpt from “Arthur Dove: Yes, I Could Paint a Cyclone,” Schoelkopf Gallery, 2023