Anchors, 1930

Stuart Davis (1892–1964)

Oil on canvas
22 x 32⅛ inches - Framed: 29⅝ x 39⅝ x 1⅞ inches

Signed upper left: Stuart Davis; on stretcher bar: ANCHORS DEC 1930 STUART DAVIS

Stuart Davis - Anchors, 1930

Provenance

The artist, executed in December 1930
The Downtown Gallery, New York, New York, 1931
William Steig, New York, ca. 1942
Fulton Cutting, New York
Edith Halpert, New York
Estate of above
Sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, New York, March 14, 1973, lot 44
from above Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York, New York
Terry De Lapp, Los Angeles, California
Marion and Gustave Ring, Washington, DC
Estate of above
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, December 3, 1987, lot 317A
The Forbes Magazine Collection, New York, New York
Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, New York
Private collection, California, 2000
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, December 5, 2002, lot 207,
from above
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Kaufman, acquired from above
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, May 22, 2014, lot 13, from above
Driscoll Babcock Galleries, New York, New York
Burrichter / Kierlin Collection
Collection of J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox

Exhibited

The Downtown Gallery, New York, New York, Stuart Davis: Recent Painting in Oil and Watercolor, March 31–April 19, 1931

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 127th Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, January 24–March 13, 1932

The Downtown Gallery, New York, New York, Main Gallery—Concurrently with Willard Cummings and the 40th Annual Christmas Exhibition, November 30–December 18, 1965 (as Anchor) The Larry Aldrich Museum, Brandeis University, Ridgefield, Connecticut, Creative Arts Awards 1957– 1966: Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, April 17–June 26, 1966 (as Anchor)

Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York, New York, Pioneers of American Abstraction, October 17–November 17, 1973

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Selections from the Collection of Marion and Gustave Ring, October 17, 1985–January 12, 1986

Chairman’s Choice: A Miscellany of American Paintings, Forbes Magazine Galleries, New York, New York, February 16–November 8, 1988; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey, November 19, 1988–January 15, 1989

Stuart Davis: American Painter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, November 23, 1991–February 16, 1992; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, March 26–June 7, 1992

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York, American Vanguards, January 21–April 28, 1996 (as Anchor)

Cape Ann Historical Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts, Stuart Davis in Gloucester, June 5–November 27, 1999

Literature

Brandeis University, Creative Arts Awards 1957–1966: Tenth Anniversary Exhibition (Ridgefield, CT: The Larry Aldrich Museum Foundation, Inc., 1966), n.p., no. 2 (as Anchor).

Pioneers of American Abstraction (New York: Andrew Crispo Gallery, 1973), n.p., no. 24. Selections from the Collection of Marion and Gustave Ring (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), n.p., no. 11.

Chairman’s Choice: A Miscellany of American Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Museum, 1988), n.p., no. 11.

The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, vol III, 1914–1968 (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1989), 154, no. 193.

Lowery Stokes Sims, Stuart Davis: American Painter (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 201, 203, no. 86.

Jane Lilienfeld et al., The Artist and the Times: Readings on the Harlem Renaissance and the European Renaissance (New York: American Heritage Custom Publishing, 1996), cover.

American Vanguards (Roslyn Harbor, NY: Nassau County Museum of Art, 1996), 53, 88 (as Anchor). Karen Wilkin, Stuart Davis in Gloucester (West Stockbridge, MA: Hard Press, Inc., 1999), 64, pl. 33. Bruce Robertson, “Yankee Modernism,” in Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory, eds. William H.

Truettner and Roger B. Stein (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 175–76, fig. 198.

Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 3, Catalogue Entries 1324–1749 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 2007), 211–12, no. 1550.

Note

Stuart Davis visited Gloucester, Massachusetts every year from 1915 to 1934. The piers, harbors, and wharfs became a central motif in Davis’s work, and these dockside depictions exemplify his growing interest in abstraction. The artist writes, “I brought drawings of different places and things into a single focus. The necessity to select and define the spatial limits of these separate drawings, in relation to the unity of the whole picture, developed an objective attitude towards size and shape relations.”¹ In Anchors, Davis overlaps recognizable forms, combining contrasting viewpoints and accenting the geometric composition with areas of color. Describing the work, historian Bruce Robertson writes, “the anchor functions metonymically, as a visual and verbal sign of the activity on the dock behind it,” continuing “they animate aspects of New England life as persons, making them speak directly to the view as presences rather than things that the painter has represented.”²

¹Quoted in Selections from the Collection of Marion and Gustave Ring (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), n.p.

² Bruce Robertson, “Yankee Modernism,” in Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory, eds. William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 175.

Related Work

Sketchbook 10–11 (Drawing for “Anchors”), ca. 1930, pencil on paper, 8 x 10¼ inches; Private collection Composition with Boats, 1932, oil on canvas, 20 x 22 inches, signed lower right; The San Diego Museum of Art, California

Waterfront Landscape, 1936, oil on canvas, 23⅛ x 30¼ inches; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

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