Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Provenance:

Estate of the artist

Exhibited:
Along Ipswich River: The Color Woodcuts of Arthur Wesley Dow, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1999, p. 40, no. 21; p. 42, nos. 19, 22; p. 44 no. 20, figs. 30-32; illus. in color.

Writing in a 1916 magazine article about , Dow wrote:
[The woodblock print is] a painter's art, for creative colour is the aim and purpose of the whole thing.  It is a free craft, for the artist is his own engraver, printer, and publisher producing, by hand, single prints, no two alike.  Colour variation has always fascinated me.  There is a particular pleasure in seeing the same design appear in different colours – the design seems to have a soul in each colour scheme.¹

Born in the coastal town of Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1857, Arthur Wesley Dow did not become seriously interested in art until adulthood, when he began formal studies in 1880.  He traveled to Paris in 1884 where he studied at the Académie Julian and the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs.  Regular acceptance of his work in the annual Salons in Paris led to a one-man show at a Boston gallery in January 1888 for which Dow returned to the United States.  The success of the show allowed him to visit France for an additional year of studies at the Académie Delance where he focused on landscapes.

Returning permanently to Ipswich in 1889, Dow had a newfound appreciation for the scenery in this quaint coastal town.  He found a studio in Boston and was intent on making a career in painting.  This proved more difficult than he had anticipated so he began to search, through his studies of art history, for a new approach to his art.  Thus Dow came to discover Japanese woodblock prints (in particular, Hokusai), which played a central role in the stylistic development of his oeuvre.   

Dow started making color woodcuts in 1891.  Dating from between 1893 and 1895, The Dory or Near the Wharf, is made from either four or five blocks.  A different color watercolor is applied to each block on which, in turn, the sheet of paper is laid and the back then rubbed with a blunt instrument.  Once the print is made, the blocks are wiped clean and new colors are applied.

Using local scenery for his subject matter, The Dory or Near the Wharf depicts the sandy shore on which a dory has come to rest.  In these works, Dow steered his compositions away from linear perspective towards a flatter, more decorative one.  Leading the viewer into the work by the angle at which it sits, the boat points to a small fishing shack, nestled against a fence and a background of dense foliage.  Dow’s emphasis in The Dory clearly rests with the application of color.  The four images are exact in arrangement, yet the varying colors (and their technical application) results in profound shifts in compositional balance and emotive quality.  Through the use of the woodblock, Dow achieves four distinct and equally persuasive interpretations of the same scene.  Each has its own pictorial logic and rich beauty; the four together record the work of a progressive artist working in an historical technique in a manner new to American art, one that would have a redoubtable influence on succeeding generations of American artists.