Study for "Swing Landscape"

1937-1938

Stuart Davis

Painter, American, 1892 - 1964

Vividly colored, curved and straight-edged geometric shapes are piled and layered against a background of chalk white in this horizontal abstract composition. The paint is applied thickly with visible brush strokes. The shapes that fill the canvas are painted in flat areas of canary and buttercup yellow, cobalt blue, beet and brick red, pumpkin orange, kelly green, white, or black. Three vertical, cinnamon-brown bands are spaced along a sky-blue square, which nearly spans the left half of the composition. The tall brown forms can be read as masts while some of the other shapes can be the water, sails, rigging, anchors, and the forms of ships.
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This modest canvas is an impressive work in its own right as well as an important document of one of Stuart Davis’s greatest paintings, Swing Landscape (Indiana University Art Museum), a mural he painted for the Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938. He submitted this one-quarter-scale study for the mural to the Works Progress Administration, which employed Davis and many other artists to decorate public buildings during the Depression. After the study was approved in June 1937, Davis spent about a year painting the mural itself, but for unknown reasons it was never installed. Another mystery concerns the study, which at some point was cut down by about a third on the right. Nonetheless, it retains a satisfying wholeness: the friezelike composition, based on Davis’s theory of “serial centers,” has not been thrown off balance by the reduction in size.

Compared to the finished mural, the study has much less detail, making it simpler and more abstract, and yet a clear subject can still be discerned. Angled masts and rigging punctuate the composition while a buoy at lower left firmly establishes the harbor scene. Davis composed the work by drawing on numerous sketches he had made in the early 1930s of the docks, piers, and fishing schooners in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he summered for many years. The nautical theme explains the rocking, swaying character of the entire composition, which has almost no verticals, and so may help explain the title, too. But “swing” equally refers to Davis’s musical passion, the jazz music that he played in his youth as an amateur pianist and always followed closely as a fan. While it is difficult to draw parallels between the painting and any particular jazz recordings, it is easy to imagine bright, brassy timbres and twisting, syncopated rhythms as one explores the endless complexities of this essay in color and movement.

On View

East Building Ground Level, Gallery 106-B

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Study for "Swing Landscape", 1937-1938

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 [1892-1964], New York; his estate, until 1977-1978;[1] (Borgenicht Gallery, New York). private collection, New York. Mr. and Mrs. N. Richard Miller, New York, by 1979.[2] (Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York);[3] purchased 16 December 1981 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington;[4] acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Mrs. Stuart Davis lent the painting to the 1977 exhibition New Deal for Art: The Government Art Projects of the 1930s with Examples from New York City & State. The catalogue for the 1978 Biennale di Venezia stated that the picture belonged to a private collection in New York.
[2] The Millers lent the painting to the 1979 exhibition The Modern Art Society: The Center's Early Years, 1939-1954 held in Cincinnati.
[3] The painting was featured in advertisements for the Barbara Mathes Gallery in April 1981: Antiques 119 (April 1981): 793, and Art in America 69 (April 1981): 7.
[4] This painting was acquired in exchange for Cafe, Place des Vosges by the same artist, which the Corcoran had accessioned in 1975.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1941

  • Marsden Hartley-Stuart Davis, Modern Art Society, Cincinnati, October-November 1941.

1976

  • Stuart Davis: Murals: An Exhibition of Related Studies, 1932-1957, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 27 January - 14 February 1976, no. 7, as Study for a Mural.

1977

  • New Deal for Art: The Government Art Projects of the 1930s with Examples from New York City & State, Tyler Art Gallery, State University of New York College of Arts and Sciences, Oswego; Picker Gallery, Colgate University; Albany Institute of History and Art, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica; Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University; Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University; Huntington Galleries, West Virginia, 25 January 1977 - 3 February 1978, no. 86.

1978

  • La Biennale di Venezia 1978: dalla natura all'arte, dall'arte alla natura, June - October 1978, no. 60, as Studio per murale con paesaggio ondulato.

1979

  • The Modern Art Society: The Center's Early Years, 1939-1954, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 13 October - 25 November 1979, unnumbered catalogue.

1981

  • Loan to display with permanent collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1981.

1982

  • Acquisitions Since 1975, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 5 November 1982 - 16 January 1983, no catalogue.

1985

  • Henri's Circle, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 20 April - 16 June 1985, unnumbered checklist.

2005

  • Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no.92 (shown only in Washington).

2008

  • The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009

  • American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June - 18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013

  • American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013 - 28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

2022

  • Swing Landscape: Stuart Davis and the Modernist Mural, Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington, 2022, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1940

  • Gilbert, Morris. "Portrait of the Artist: Eggbeater Artist Defends Credit to France for Help Given American Painters." New York World-Telegram (21 February 1940): 2:13, repro.

1941

  • Pearson, Ralph M. The New Art Education. New York and London, 1941: 104, 117, repro., as Preliminary study for color-space arrangements.

1976

  • Bourdon, David. "Stuart Davis: Mural." Arts 50, no. 6 (February 1976): 61.

1982

  • Simon, Robert B. "Letters to the Editor: USIA's Art." The Washington Post (16 December 1982): A22.

  • Richard, Paul. "The Stuart Davis Switch." The Washington Post (19 August 1982): D7, repro.

1988

  • Robinson, Malcolm. The American Vision: Landscape Paintings of the United States. London and New York, 1988: 122-124, repro.

1997

  • Rylands, Philip, ed. Stuart Davis. Exh. cat. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Palazzo delle esposizione, Rome; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Milan, 1997: 50 n. 15, as Study for Mural with Undulating Landscape.

1999

  • Wilkin, Karen. Stuart Davis in Gloucester. Exh. cat. Cape Ann Historical Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; National Academy Museum, New York. West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1999: 74, pl. 43.

2000

  • Cash, Sarah, with Terrie Sultan. American Treasures of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. New York, 2000: 162-163, repro.

2002

  • Heartney, Eleanor, ed. A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art. London, 2002: 222-223, 225, repro.

2004

  • Duplaix, Sophie and Marcella Lista, eds. Sons & Lumières: Une histoire du son dans l'art du XXe siècle Exh. cat. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2004: 47, 49, repro.

2007

  • Boyajian, Ani and Mark Rutkoski. Stuart Davis, A Catalogue Raisonné. 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007: no. 1612, repro.

2008

  • Miller, Angela et al. American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2008: 531, color fig. 16.12.

  • Dietsch, Deborah K. "Corcoran Redux: Exhibit Reconfigures American Collection [exh. review]." Washington Times (15 March 2008): B:4.

2011

  • Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 293, repro.

2016

  • National Gallery of Art. Highlights from the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, 2016: 304, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20193105

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