Currently not on view
Red Barge,
1931
Arthur Garfield Dove, 1880–1946; born Canandaigua, NY; died Huntington, NY
x1944-568
Dove worked in a variety of media, using spare forms to conjure a sense of place rather than to document his immediate surroundings. This earth‐toned watercolor depicts one of the many barges he observed between 1924 and 1933, when he lived on Long Island, often on a houseboat. Executed quickly with thin, layered brushstrokes over skeletal chalk lines, it served as a preliminary sketch for the oil painting Red Barge. Both works were exhibited together in 1932 at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery An American Place, where the gallerist featured watercolors in this distinctive American style. Former Princeton University Art Museum director Frank Jewett Mather Jr. purchased the piece there in 1944.
Information
Title
Red Barge
Dates
1931
Maker
Medium
Watercolor over black chalk
Dimensions
21.6 x 27.9 cm (8 1/2 x 11 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
Object Number
x1944-568
Culture
Type
Materials
Subject
An American Place, New York, 1932; Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
- "Accessions", Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University 3, no. 1 (Spring, 1944): p. 15., p. 15
- 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. 135, cat. no. 28; p. 137 (illus.); p. 336, checklist no. 778
