Moon

1935

Arthur Dove

Painter, American, 1880 - 1946

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Moon was painted during the fall of 1935 and depicts a tree covering the glowing moon. Arthur Dove lived and worked at his family home in Geneva, New York, from 1933 to 1938. His works from this period were influenced by the landscape and light of the Finger Lakes region, and are characterized by highly simplified compositions depicting subjects from nature, such as the sun, the moon, and tree trunks. Additionally, Dove’s study of Max Doerner’s recently translated Materials of the Artist led him to experiment with using resin oil color and wax to achieve what Doerner called “a misty, pleasingly dull and mat appearance, and great brightness and clarity.” Painted with short, thin, almost translucent brushstrokes over underlying hues of different intensities, Moon has a surface that seems almost to throb with luminosity and energy.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth

  • Dimensions

    overall: 88.9 x 63.5 cm (35 x 25 in.)
    framed: 94.6 x 69.2 x 5.1 cm (37 1/4 x 27 1/4 x 2 in.)

  • Accession

    2000.39.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Moon, 1935

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

Alfred Stieglitz [1864-1946], New York; (The Downtown Gallery, New York), by 1952;[1] Mr. and Mrs. Max Zurier, Los Angeles, by 1957;[2] (John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco); purchased July 1985 by Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth, St. Louis; gift 2000 to NGA.
[1] The Downtown Gallery lent the painting to an exhibition in Buffalo in 1952.
[2] The Zuriers lent the painting to an exhibition in New York in 1957. They owned the painting until 1984, when it was included in an exhibition at the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco in which all the works exhibited were for sale.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1936

  • New Paintings by Arthur Dove, An American Place, New York, April-May 1936, checklist no. 16.

  • Third Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November-December 1936, no. 11.

1941

  • Exhibition of New Arthur Dove Paintings, An American Place, New York, 1941, checklist no. 12.

1952

  • Arthur Dove, 1880-1946: Paintings, The Downtown Gallery, New York, April-May 1952, no. 9.

  • Expressionism in American Painting, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, May-June 1952, no. 28, repro.

1954

  • Paintings and Watercolors by Arthur Dove, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1954, no. 11.

1956

  • American Paintings in This Century, University of California at Los Angeles, November-December 1956.

  • The American Scene, Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, April-May 1956.

1957

  • Ten Paintings Selected From "New Art in America," The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1957, unnumbered checklist.

1958

  • Arthur G. Dove Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Phillips Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute (now McNay Art Museum), San Antonio; Art Galleries of the University of California at Los Angeles; La Jolla Art Center; San Francisco Museum of Moderm Art, 1958-1959, no. 52, repro.

1963

  • Mr. and Mrs. Max Zurier Collection, Pasadena Art Museum, 1963, no. 23, repro. on cover.

1964

  • A View of the Century, Pasadena Art Museum, 1964, no. 47.

1974

  • Arthur Dove, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Saint Louis Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Des Moines Art Center; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1974-1976, unnumbered catalogue, repro. (shown only in San Francisco).

1976

  • Paintings from the Zurier Collection, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 1976, no catalogue.

1979

  • 2 Jahrzehnte amerikanische Malerei 1920-1940, Städtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, 1979, no. 59, repro.

1980

  • A Mirror of Creation: 150 Years of American Nature Painting, Braccio di Carlo Magno, The Vatican; Terra Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois, 1980-1981, no. 43, repro.

1981

  • Amerikanische Malerei 1930-1980, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1981-1982, no. 4, repro.

1984

  • The Zurier Collection: An Exhibition of 20th Century American and European Paintings and Works on Paper, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, 1984, no. 12, repro.

1987

  • The Ebsworth Collection: American Modernism, 1911-1947, Saint Louis Art Museum; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987-1988, no. 21, repro.

1997

  • Arthur Dove: A Retrospective, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1997-1998, no. 62, repro.

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

  • Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Seattle Art Museum, 2000, no. 17, repro.

2009

  • Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2009, pl. 58.

2019

  • The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art, The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers; James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, 2019, no. 29, repro.

Bibliography

1957

  • Baur, John, et al. New Art in America: Fifty Painters of the Twentieth Century. New York, 1957: 80, repro.

1962

  • Baur, John. "Art in America: Four Centuries of Painting and Sculpture at the Galaxon New York World's Fair." Art in America 50, no. 3 (Fall 1962): 46, 59, repro.

1973

  • Metzger, Robert. "Biomorphism in American Painting." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1973: 62-63.

  • Morgan, Ann Lee. "Toward the Definition of Early Modernism in America: A Study of Arthur Dove." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1973: 70, 73, 195-196, 288-289, 528, no. 35.14, repro.

1975

  • Rosenblum, Robert. Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko. New York, 1975: 207, 228, no. 302, repro.

1976

  • Wight, Frederick. The Potent Image: Art in the Western World From Cave Painting to the 1970s. New York, 1976: 446, repro.

1981

  • Selz, Peter. Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History 1890-1980. New York, 1981: 324-325, no. 856, repro.

1984

  • "Moon." Art in America 72, no. 4 (April 1984): 6, repro.

  • Cohn, Sherrye. "The Image and the Imagination of Space in the Art of Arthur Dove; Part II: Dove and 'The Fourth Dimension'." Arts Magazine 58, no. 5 (January 1984): 121-125, fig. 3.

  • Morgan, Ann Lee. Arthur Dove: Life and Work, with a Catalogue Raisonné. Newark, London, and Toronto, 1984: 57, 232-234, no. 36.8.

1985

  • Cohn, Sherrye. Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol. Ann Arbor, 1985: 16, 35, 67-68, 76, 78, 113, 121, fig. 5, repro.

1997

  • Balken, Debra Bricker, et al. Arthur Dove: A Retrospective. Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, pp. 29, 94, 95, 105, 119, no. 62.

1998

  • Kimmelman, Michael. "Nature Stripped to Its Essence in Visionary Images." The New York Times (16 January 1998): E37.

  • Updike, John. "Pioneer." New York Review of Books 45 (5 March 1998): 15.

2000

  • Robertson, Bruce, et al. Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Seattle Art Museum. Washington, 2000: no. 17, repro.

2009

  • Balken, Debra Bricker. Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence. Exh. cat. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2009: 63, pl. 58.

2016

  • DeLue, Rachael Ziady. Arthur Dove: Always Connect Chicago and London, 2016: 1, 16, 23, 44, 53, 105, 134, 184, 252.

Inscriptions

lower center: Dove

Wikidata ID

Q20192999

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