Arthur B. Davies was pivotal in organizing the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show, bringing avant gard European artists to America: Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, Odilon Redon, Georges Braque, Georges Rouault, Marcel Duchamp, Frances Picabia, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Mary Cassatt, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, James McNeill Whistler. The Armory show brought Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Cubism to American artists and collectors visiting its three venues in the 'New World'; New York, Chicago and Boston.
Davies was himself, a painter more attached late 19th century French influences, particularly the stylized, symbolist works of Puvis de Chavannes. He was a muralist and printmaker of visionary landscapes inhabited by dreamy, Arcadian figures, whose works found great support among collectors as can be seen by the enormous list of museums with his collected his works - but who will forever by remembered for his role in introducing modernism to America.
Born in Utica, New York, Davies showed an early interest in mechanics, sports and art. He first studied privately with Dwight Williams in Utica and when the family moved to Chicago in 1878, he enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Design and studied under Toy Robertson. He soon left for the West. Davies joined an expedition to Mexico as a civil engineer, traveling to the post by horseback after spending time with the Blackfeet Indians in the Dakota Territory in 1880. By 1882, he was back in Chicago where he enrolled at the Art Institute School to study with Charles Corwin. From Chicago he moved to New York City in 1885 where he studied at the Art Students League and Gotham Art Students League, while supporting himself doing billboard painting, engineering draftsman projects, and magazine illustration.
In 1893, he made the first of many trips to Europe, visiting Holland, Paris, and London, studying contemporary art on the Continent. . During this period his works were keenly influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French Symbolist Painter and Mural Painter of the second half of the 19th century and the Dutch realist painters, the Maris brothers. Upon his return to the United States, he again traveled throughout the United States. His marriage to a medical doctor, Virginia Davis, in 1892 prompted a move to Congers New York, where Davies tried unsuccessfully to farm. The neighboring countryside, however, became a new backdrop for his watercolors, pastels and small oil panels of the period. He continued to exhibit in New York and, with the support of his dealer, William Macbeth, was able to spend time in Europe in 1893, studying the work of the Venetian's, the Pre-Raphaelites and the German Romantics. Three years later Macbeth held a one-man show for Davies, which guaranteed him a wide circle of patrons. By 1900, the artist was having major domestic difficulties. He began living with Edna Potter, a model, in New York City, and assumed the name of David A Owen within this second group of family and friends. He kept these two separate identities to the end of his life. His artistic friends in New York who knew him as Davies included Marsden Hartley, Rockwell Kent, Walt Kuhn and the members of the so-called Ashcan School (Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast) with whom he exhibited at Macbeth's famous show of The Eight in 1908.
In 1911, Davies was elected President of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and, with Walter Pach, Kuhn and others, organized the Armory Show of 1913. Davies was the primary creative and administrative force behind the pivotal Armory Show, which first brought the full force of Modernism to the United States. Davies's involvement with the Modern artists is reflected in his production of cubist-inspired works during the period. Also during this period, he was advising the collector Lillie P Bliss, whose Post-Impressionist masterpieces later became the foundation of the Museum of Modern Art. Davies' past-Armory work, under the strong influence of the Synchromism of Morgan Russell and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, combined the interpenetrating planes of Cubism with his figural representations.
In 1924 Davies executed murals for Bliss and for the International House in New York. He also produced, in his lifetime, about eighty works in bronze and wood and numerous lithographs, aquatints and etchings, The last decade saw a return to his romanticized figure works, which show the influence of the theories of "inhalation," in which the models posed while holding their breath. In the twenties, Davies also began to divide his time between New York and Europe, first in Paris and the in Florence.
Davies was certainly well respected and widely collected in his own day. His contribution to the promotion of progressive American art are critical to its development.
Arthur B Davies died in Florence in 1928. The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a memorial exhibition two years after his death. His work is represented in over 100 museums.
