Arthur G. Dove
Green Sun

ArtistAmerican, 1880–1946
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Green Sun
Datec. 1936
MediumWatercolor on wove paper
DimensionsSheet: 5 × 7 in. (12.7 × 17.8 cm)
Frame (outer): 12 × 14 1/4 in. (30.5 × 36.2 cm)
Credit LineThe Alice C. Simkins Collection, gift of Alice C. Simkins and museum purchase funded by American Art & Wine
Object number2016.314
Not on view

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Description

Between 1933 and 1938, Arthur Dove and his wife Helen Torr lived in Geneva, New York.  This was among the most prolific periods of Dove’s career, and he embarked on an extended series of intimately scaled works that vividly captured the rolling landscape.

"Green Sun" is typical of the watercolors of these years. Rather than painting the sun as a radiant disc, Dove chose to reverse the color of the sun to suggest the after-image left on the retina after staring at intense light. By emphasizing the subjective rather than objective reality, "Green Sun" captures, in Dove’s words, “the first flash [that] will give the truth of one’s feelings.”


ProvenanceThe artist; [Edith Halpert (Downtown Gallery), New York]; Howard Rose, New York; Peter Socolof, New York; [Allan Stone Gallery, New York]; acquired by Jane Perlman, 1980; Estate of Jane Perlman, 1998; [Linda Hyman Fine Arts, New York]; The Alice C. Simkins Collection, San Antonio, January 19, 1999; to MFAH, 2016.
Exhibition History“American Modern: Works from the Collection of Alice C. Simkins,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, April 15–July 19, 2015.

"The Rise of Modernism: Europe and America," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Oct. 28, 2020 – July 27, 2021. [Inaugural Installation: Kinder Building 207: No Catalog]
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Recto: Signed in paint, lower center: Dove
Verso: [inaccessible]
Recto: Signed in paint, lower center: Dove
Verso: [inaccessible]
Recto: [none]
Verso: [inaccessible]
Catalogue raisonnéMorgan, Ann Lee. "Arthur Dove: Life and Work, with a Catalogue Raisonné" (Newark: University of Delaware Press and London: Associated University Presses, 1984).

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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