Interpretation
Sunrise, Northport Harbor depicts an area on Long Island’s North Shore favored by Dove. Completed in 1929, the piece epitomizes the artist’s newly evolved vocabulary of swelling curvilinear forms of modulating color. An early adopter of abstraction among American artists, Dove alternated his imagery between representational and nonrepresentational modes, unified by a common aesthetic of repeated interlocking shapes used to convey the interconnectedness of life and the potential of nature as a generative force for artistic inspiration.
Although renowned for his production, around 1910, of perhaps the earliest abstract works by an American, Arthur Dove alternated his imagery between representational and nonrepresentational modes, unified by a common aesthetic of repeating, often interlocking, shapes that reveal his belief in the essential movement and interpenetration of life. Completed in 1929, Sunrise, Northport Harbor depicts an area on Long Island’s North Shore favored by the artist, rendered in the vocabulary of swelling, curvilinear forms of modulating color then characteristic of his work, through which he sought to portray a nonautonomous perception of nature. The painting was exhibited at An American Place, the Manhattan gallery run by the photographer and influential promoter of American Modernism Alfred Stieglitz, who championed Dove’s work from the beginning of his career.
Information
- Title
- Sunrise, Northport Harbor
- Object Number
- y1962-44
- Maker
- Arthur Garfield Dove
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dates
- 1929
- Dimensions
- 38 × 51 cm (14 15/16 × 20 1/16 in.) frame: 41 × 53.7 cm (16 1/8 × 21 1/8 in.) exhibition frame: 41 × 53.8 × 5.4 cm (16 1/8 × 21 3/16 × 2 1/8 in.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of John S. McGovern, Class of 1926
- Culture
- American
- Place depicted
- North America, United States, New York, Northport, Northport Harbor
- Signatures
- Signed lower right: Dove.
- "Recent acquisitions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 22, no. 1 (1963): p. 15-19., p. 15
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 290
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 39, fig. 34
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 244 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 259
- Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum Saturday, February 4, 2023 - Sunday, January 7, 2024
- An Educated Eye: The Princeton University Art Museum Collection (Friday, February 22, 2008 - Sunday, June 15, 2008)
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