72. Arthur Bowen Davies (American, 1862-1928)

"Femme".
Pastel on grey paper, signed in pencil lower right, matted and framed. Tag on reverse from ACA American Masters Gallery.
9-1/2" x 11-1/2".

Provenance: Originally from the Estate of Mildred Davies.

Arthur Bowen Davies was a key figure in the history of early American Modernism, for together with Walter Pach he was one of the primary organizers of the Armory Show of 1913 which brought European modern art (Cubism, Fauvism) to the United States for the first time. He worked in a wide variety of genres including portraiture, figure painting and drawing, allegorical subjects, and landscapes, and also acquired facility with a wide variety of media (etching and engraving, watercolor, pastel, oil). Davies was a member of The Eight (also known as the Ashcan School on account of the urban realism they often portrayed). The Eight were based in New York and depicted the city with an unvarnished directness that separated their efforts from the prevailing academic style of the early 20th Century.

This drawing by Davies is rendered in pastel, a medium he often employed for his more intimate figure sketches. The colored paper characterizing this lot is also typical of his figure studies.

1,000/2,000     SOLD: $1,437.50

Condition: slight window mark from former matting.