Florence Sittenham Davey (Mrs. Randall Davey)

1914

George Bellows

Painter, American, 1882 - 1925

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Painted on Monhegan Island in Maine in August 1914, this portrait represents Florence Sittenham Davey, the wife of Bellows’s friend, the artist Randall Davey. Florence Davey was a modernist sculptor who had studied with Alexander Archipenko. According to the Daveys’ son William, Bellows lost a considerable amount of money to his father playing pool and painted the portrait to settle his debt.

This work, along with the many other portraits that Bellows produced on Monhegan Island in 1914, is noteworthy for achieving a new expressive power and intensity through the use of assertive frontal poses, geometric compositions, brilliant color, and intense light. Bellows had been prompted to reevaluate his approach to color in part after seeing works by Henri Matisse and the European avant-garde at the Armory Show the previous year. At the time Bellows was already beginning to experiment with the chromatic possibilities of the set-palettes diagrammed by Harvard University professor Denman Waldo Ross in his influential 1912 publication On Drawing and Painting.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 69

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Florence Sittenham Davey (Mrs. Randall Davey), 1914

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1882-1925]; presented 1922 to the sitter's first husband, Randall Davey [1887-1964], until 1930;[1] Florence Sittenham Davey (1888-1979, later Mrs. Cyrus Hall McCormick III); bequest 1979 to NGA.
[1] The artist's Record Book notes the date the painting was presented to Randall Davey. According to a 15 December 1980 letter to NGA curator Deborah Chotner, in NGA curatorial files, from William Davey, son of Randall and Florence Davey, the couple were divorced in 1930. While unsure whether ownership of the painting was specified in the terms of the divorce, William assumed that his father gave the work to his mother. He also related the following: "George Bellows and Randall Davey used to shoot a lot of pool together and although Bellows was a good baseball player he lost a lot of money to Randall Davey attempting to beat him at pool. That is why he painted a portrait of Randall Davey's wife and 'presented' it to him. It was in payment of a gambling debt."

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1914

  • Paintings by George Bellows, Art Institute of Chicago, 1914-1915, no. 25, as Portrait: Mrs. Randall Davey.

1915

  • Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, Worcester Art Museum, September 1915, no. 9, as Portrait of Mrs. Randall Davey.

  • Paintings by George Bellows, N.A., Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, Exposition Park, February 1915, no. 26, as Portrait of Mrs. Randall Davey.

  • Paintings by George Bellows, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, May 1915, no. 47, as Portrait of Mrs. Randall Davey.

  • [Paintings by George Bellows], Hackley Art Gallery, Muskegon, Michigan, June-August 1915, no cat.

  • Exhibition of Paintings By George Bellows, Detroit Museum of Art, January 1915, no. 24, as Portrait: Mrs. Randall Davey.

  • Special Exhibition of Paintings by Mr. George Bellows, Cincinnati Museum, October 1915, no. 23, as Mrs. Randall Davey.

  • Paintings by George Bellows, N.A., San Francisco Institute of Art, March 1915, no. 26, as Portrait of Mrs. Randall Davey.

1916

  • Exhibition of Oil Paintings by George W. Bellows, N.A. and Clarence K. Chatterton, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1916, no. 7, as Mrs. Davey.

Bibliography

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 27, repro.

1981

  • Southgate, M. Therese. "The Cover: George Bellows: Florence Davey." Journal of the American Medical Association 246, no. 11 (11 September 1981): cover repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 30, repro.

  • Quick, Michael, Jane Myers, Marianne Doezema, and Franklin Kelly. The Paintings of George Bellows. Exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, 1992-1993. New York, 1992: 194-195, fig. 22.

2009

  • Peck, Glenn C. George Bellows' Catalogue Raisonné. H.V. Allison & Co., 2009. Online resource, URL: http://www.hvallison.com. Accessed 16 August 2016.

Inscriptions

lower left: Geo. Bellows; reverse in black crayon, "McCormick" in a hand other than the artist: Portrait Florence Davey McCormick / Geo Bellows / 146 E 19 St / New York.

Wikidata ID

Q20191821

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