
Stuart Davis
Marine Scene/Docks, Gloucester, Massachusetts, alternately titled Gloucester Docks Motif #1, c. 1933
8.875 x 7 in. (22.2 x 17.8 cm),
framed.
Literature: Ani Boyajian, Mark Rutkoski, William C. Agee, …

Stuart Davis’s paintings synthesized many of the most prominent movements and styles of 20th-century modernism. Though his early works reveal the influence of Robert Henri and the Ashcan School of American painting, he would later abandon this Realist style in favor of experimentation with Post-Impressionism and Cubism, drawing particular influence from Cézanne and Matisse. Davis developed his own style based on Synthetic Cubism, depicting American commercial products and household implements with a stylized integration of figure and ground and a strong interest in surface quality and perspective. Later in his career, Davis would explore the urban confluence of technology, architecture, and music—he came to consider jazz the musical equivalent to abstract visual art, channeling its energy with his bold colors and rhythmic geometries.

8.875 x 7 in. (22.2 x 17.8 cm),
framed.
Literature: Ani Boyajian, Mark Rutkoski, William C. Agee, and Karen Wilkin, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume Two (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2007), as No. 1179, pp. 601-2 (ill.).
N.B. This work is assumed to be one noted by Davis in his record of works …

Stuart Davis’s paintings synthesized many of the most prominent movements and styles of 20th-century modernism. Though his early works reveal the influence of Robert Henri and the Ashcan School of American painting, he would later abandon this Realist style in favor of experimentation with Post-Impressionism and Cubism, drawing particular influence from Cézanne and Matisse. Davis developed his own style based on Synthetic Cubism, depicting American commercial products and household implements with a stylized integration of figure and ground and a strong interest in surface quality and perspective. Later in his career, Davis would explore the urban confluence of technology, architecture, and music—he came to consider jazz the musical equivalent to abstract visual art, channeling its energy with his bold colors and rhythmic geometries.