Arthur Dove: Watercolors And Pastels

The first book to focus the exclusively on the luminous watercolors and pastels of Arthur Dove (1880-1946), this volume explores the contributions of these mediums to the development of Dove's distinctive images of the American landscape. While the pastels and watercolors of his colleagues in the Stieglitz circle are well-known, Dove's forays into these mediums have never before been fully integrated into his own work, Crucial to his own development, Dove's pastels and watercolors are also significant in the history of modern painting in America.

Dove's landmark pastel series of 1911-12, The Ten Commandments, represents American modernism's first breakthrough into abstraction. His subsequent pastels of the 1910s and 1920s provided him with stylistic innovations he later adapted in his oil paintings.

Watercolor became the primary medium of Dove's summer months in the early 1930s and remained so throughout his career. These exquisite images, rapidly executed in the woods, on his boat, on the train, or even from his porch, reveal his spontaneous responses to nature. Ms. Kirschner considers the role of these works in Dove's stylistic growth in this second half of his career. While some of these watercolors will seem familiar to those acquainted with Dove's work, many have never before been published.

The importance of Dove's watercolors has been increasingly recognized in recent years in several small exhibitions. Bringing together watercolors and pastels from collections across the country, this book will be of deep interest to both scholars and admirers of twentieth-century American art.