Tree

Artist Arthur Garfield Dove (American, 1880 - 1946)

Date1934

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 18 1/16 x 24 inches (45.88 x 60.96 cm)
Framed: 24 x 29 3/4 inches (60.96 x 75.57 cm)

Credit LineGift of Commerce Bancshares, Inc.

Object number2003.3

SignedSigned lower center: Dove—

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThis horizontally-oriented composition is filled with organic abstract forms rendered in earth tones (browns, grays, and tans). Despite the subdued color scheme, the painting is dynamic, restlessly undulating with energy. The most prominent form, presumably the trunk or large branch of a tree, extends snake-like across the center of the composition from left to right. The spaces around this dominant form are filled with flame-like forms and contours suggestive of foliage.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Possibly Arthur G. Dove: New Things and Old, An American Place, New York, April 17–June 1934, no cat.

Possibly Arthur G. Dove, An American Place, New York, May 1–27, 1935, no cat.

Art Inc.: American Paintings from Corporate Collections, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Ala., March 7–December 30, 1979 (traveled), no. 29.

Gallery Label

Arthur Dove's Tree suggests the restless energy and restorative powers of nature. Comprised of undulating, organic forms and an earthy palette of browns and tans, the painting features a large tree limb stretching across the composition and silhouetted against paler, flamelike shapes. These integrated forms suggest the strong, interconnected elements of nature. The composition's horizontality links the painting discreetly to the traditional landscape painting.

Rooting his art deeply in the natural world, Dove was a pioneer in abstraction. He created his earliest abstract compositions in the 1910s, and his efforts were supported by New York-based photographer and gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz. A major proponent of modernism in America, Stieglitz also promoted the work of Georgia O'Keeffe and Marsden Hartley, among others.

Provenance

(Downtown Gallery, New York, by 1961);

to Commerce Bank, Kansas City, MO, 1964;

to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2003.

Published References

Possibly Edwin Alden Jewell, “Exhibition Shows Dove’s Early Art,” New York Times, April 21, 1934, 13.

Art Inc.: American Paintings from Corporate Collections, exh. cat. (Montgomery, Ala.: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, in association with Brandywine Press, 1979), 120–21.

Ann Lee Morgan, Arthur Dove: Life and Work with a Catalogue Raisonné (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 216.

Commerce Bancshares Collection (Kansas City, Mo.: Commerce Bancshares, 1989), unpaginated.

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 170–71.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 23, 228-31 (repro.), 2: 101-02 (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 179 (repro.).

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