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Robert Torchia, “Arthur B. Davies/Sweet Tremulous Leaves/1922/1923,” American Paintings, 1900–1945, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/46594 (accessed October 10, 2024).

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Overview

In 1918, after a four-year period in which he experimented with a cubist-influenced style, Arthur B. Davies revisited the idealized, romantic representations of female nudes in pastoral settings that he had painted during the first decade of the twentieth century. Sweet Tremulous Leaves (1922/1923) reflects this return to his earlier interests in mythology, dreams, photography, and classical Greek and Roman art.

In this mysterious, dreamlike scene, two contemplative women seem to drift across the composition as if in a trance, their upraised arms aligned with the trunk and branches of a tree. The two figures reflect the “theory of inhalation” that Davies had recently developed in collaboration with archaeologist Dr. Gustavus A. Eisen. The theory asserts that the source of the superiority (in Davies’s view) of ancient Greek art is the deliberate depiction of the subjects at the height of inhaling.

Entry

Arthur B. Davies completed Sweet Tremulous Leaves (1922/1923) in the last decade of his career.[1] Four years earlier, after a period of experimentation with a cubist-influenced style, Davies had returned to the idealized, romantic representations of female nudes in pastoral settings that he had painted during the first decade of the twentieth century. In this work, two contemplative women hold their arms aloft and seem to drift across the composition as if in a trance. The women are positioned in the extreme foreground of the painting in front of a tree trunk and a distant landscape. The painting’s somewhat cryptic title adds to the mysterious, dreamlike quality of the scene.

The figures in Sweet Tremulous Leaves are similar to the woman in an earlier work, A Measure of Dreams [fig. 1]. Brooks Wright characterized such paintings by Davies in his biography of the artist:

Typically, his paintings show figures that do not look at or interact with the viewer; their faces are veiled or averted, their eyes half closed, their expressions rapt and trance-bound. So little rooted are they to the ground they seem almost to float. Their action is a mute charade, the meaning of which is unclear. Sometimes it is violent, but more often vaguely erotic. The landscape settings often show evidence of symbolic transformation with a consequent displacement of affect, as when a part of the human body is transmuted into a mountain, a valley, a tree, a tower.[2]

Davies studied psychology and was fascinated by dreams. He sometimes used dreams as the stimulus for his paintings, referring back to the notes and drawings that he made upon waking.[3] Davies also found inspiration in poetry. A Measure of Dreams has been linked to George Meredith’s poem “A Faith on Trial” (1885),[4] and Sweet Tremulous Leaves may have a source in poetry as well. For instance, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Flowers” (1839) and Edgar Allan Poe’s “To Isadore” (1845) both contain the phrase “tremulous leaves.”[5]

The setting for Davies’s figures is derived from Greek mythology. Davies had long admired Sir James George Frazer’s comparative study of mythology and religion, The Golden Bough (first published in 1890), and even named his farm in upstate New York after it. The manner in which the upraised arms of the nude women align with the trunk and branches of the tree in Sweet Tremulous Leaves is similar to pictorial representations of the myth of Apollo and Daphne mentioned in Frazer’s text (in the National Gallery of Art’s collection, examples include Apollo Pursuing Daphne and Daphne Changed into a Laurel Tree).

Davies was deeply influenced by the classical art that he saw during a trip to Italy and Greece in 1910 and 1911. This fascination took an esoteric turn in 1922 when he collaborated with archaeologist Gustavus A. Eisen in developing the “theory of inhalation.” As explained by Davies’s biographer Bennard B. Perlman, the artist determined that “the excellence of Greek art was based upon the fact that the thorax, rather than the brain, is the center of emotions, and that the figures depicted in Greek painting and sculpture were consciously shown at the height of inhaling a breath, rather than when exhaling and relaxed.”[6] Sweet Tremulous Leaves was painted at the height of Davies’s interest in the inhalation theory. The figures’ raised chests and ribcages and upstretched arms imply that their bodies are at the apex of breathing in.

The similarities of the women’s appearance, their friezelike positioning on the canvas, and the slight difference in their movements could be read as a representation of sequential motion. Davies was familiar with the photographic studies of Eadweard Muybridge (American, born England, 1830 - 1904), and he referred to Muybridge’s use of multiple images of the human figure as “continuous composition.”[7] Perlman traced the artist’s interest in sequential motion to the earlier pastel Design, Birth of Tragedy (c. 1912, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME), noting that in subsequent works Davies “tended to avoid overlapping figures so that the negative spaces between them could take on added significance.”[8] The unconventional cropping of the figures—a pictorial strategy that Davies used often, as in A Measure of Dreams—also reflects the influence of photography.

Robert Torchia

July 24, 2024

Inscription

lower left: A.B. DAVIES

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by (Ferargil Galleries, New York); sold 8 January 1927 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.

Associated Names

Dale, Chester

Exhibition History

1924
An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, and Water Colors by Arthur B. Davies, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1924, no. 29.
1937
An Exhibition of American Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection, The Union League Club, New York, 1937, no. 42.
1943
Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1943-1951, unnumbered catalogue, repro.
1965
The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

Technical Summary

The lined, lightweight, plain-weave fabric support is heavily textured with numerous horizontal weave imperfections. Cusping is visible at the top margin. The lining fabric is double threaded and of heavier weight than the original. The artist applied paint directly to the fabric without using a ground layer. He worked in a variety of techniques, ranging from thin applications in the underlayers to a rich, fluid paste applied with a palette knife. Infrared reflectography and x-radiography reveal small adjustments to the contours of the figures. The profile of the figure in the rear was originally tilted upward at a sharper angle, the nipple of her breast was larger, and her nose was longer; the contour of the figure in the front was more curvilinear. The composition was carefully planned—several thin, unpainted lines appear between adjacent forms. The painting is in good condition with only minor paint loss at the right edge. The surface is coated with a thin layer of natural resin varnish.

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024

Bibliography

1931
Davies, Virginia M. "The Known Works of Arthur B. Davies." In Royal Cortissoz, Arthur B. Davies. New York, 1931: 33.
1943
Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. Philadelphia, 1943:, unpaginated, repro.
1965
Paintings other than French in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 59, repro.
1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 48, repro.
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 142, repro.
1981
Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: repro. 206, 208.
1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 155, repro.
1998
Perlman, Bennard B. The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies. Albany, 1998: 226, repro. no. 51.

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