| Arthur Dove | ||
| Birth Date: August 2, 1880 |
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| Death Date: November 23, 1946 Artist Gallery |
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| Raised in upstate New York, Arthur Dove studied law at Cornell University before deciding, in 1903, to pursue a career in art. He moved to New York City, securing work as a freelance magazine illustrator. A trip to Europe in 1909 introduced Dove to the vivid color and decorative patterning of Henri Matisse and the Fauves as well as Paul Cézanne. Upon his return to New York, he joined the circle of progressive artists supported by Alfred Stieglitz, and began a series of small, daring, non-objective paintings. In fact, “Along Long Pier”, was at one time in the collection of Alfred Stieglitz. Dove found support for his art from Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, but few others understood his abstractions, and even fewer purchased them.
In 1921, Dove left his family and moved onto a houseboat with the artist Helen Torr. The next year, Dove and Torr moved onto a sailboat, which they kept in Huntington Bay on the Long Island Sound. After six years on the water, Dove and Torr found quarters in the Ketewomoke Yacht Club in Halesite, satisfying Dove’s wish to enlarge his storage and work space without sacrificing the freedom of his unmoored life. As he wrote to Stieglitz in May 1929, “If we have no boat, I shall miss something of the storms and weather that seem to give me more”.
In September of 1929, Dove’s wife, Florence died, leaving him free to marry Torr as well as to reunite with his nineteen year-old son. Late in 1929, Stieglitz opened a new gallery, “An American Place”, which focused especially on the work of three artists, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe and Arthur Dove.
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