Davies, Arthur Bowen

Davies, Arthur Bowen (1862–1928). American painter, printmaker, and tapestry designer, born in Utica, New York. During his lifetime he had a high reputation as an artist, but he is now remembered mainly for his role in promoting avant-garde art (even though his own work was fairly conservative). He studied art in Chicago and worked in Mexico as an engineering draughtsman before settling in New York in 1886. Initially he supported himself as a magazine illustrator, whilst studying at the Art Students League and elsewhere, 1886–8. In 1893 he visited Europe, and his enthusiasm for the Pre-Raphaelites, Whistler, and the French Symbolist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was part of the remarkably diverse artistic background from which he created his style and outlook. He painted various subjects, but before the First World War he specialized in idyllic, fantasy landscapes inhabited by dreamlike, visionary figures of nude women or mythical animals, often arranged in flat, frieze-like compositions (Unicorns, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1906). In spite of his preference for such subject-matter, he was part of the circle of Robert Henri, the chief apostle of the idea that art should be in touch with everyday life. This contradiction was typical of Davies: ‘his nature was paradoxical: His art was both intuitive and intellectual; it was rooted in past styles but he was keenly interested in the avant-garde. His personality seemed in harmony with his mild decorous manner but it hid totally unsuspected depths. His sympathy with the more adventurous younger men led to his exhibiting with The Eight in 1908 [indeed, Davies organized the show], though his art was at the opposite pole from New York realism’ ( David W. Scott in Britannica Encyclopedia of American Art, 1973).

In 1911 Davies became president of the Association of American Painters and Sculp tors, formed to create the exhibition that became known as the Armory Show (1913). His wide and liberal culture and his enthusiasm for the project were largely responsible for the scope of the show and the force of its impact. After the Armory Show his work showed superficial Cubist influence for a while, but in the 1920s he returned to a more traditional style, devoting much of his time to lithography and designing tapestries for the Gobelins factory in Paris. In 1924 a book was published by Phillips Memorial Art Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, celebrating Davies's work (Arthur B. Davies: Essays on the Man and his Art). It shows the remarkably high opinion in which he was held, one contributor (Edward Root) describing him as ‘the most comprehensive intelligence that has yet, in America, attempted to express itself in paint'.