Sails

Alive with motion, Arthur Dove’s Sails is an image of sailboats on the moving sea abstracted into echoing series of arching, tapering triangles that are layered against rounded, bulbous forms. The repetition of colors and shapes mimics the rhythms of rocking waves and the recurring shapes of sails against the horizon, reduced by distance to their simplest geometric forms. Dove’s triangles swoop gracefully through space in a manner suggesting sails seen from a distance as well as from within the boat. His bubble-like forms evoke both the rounded crests of waves and individual water droplets flying through the air. The work flirts with the conventional illusion of three-dimensional reality in the seemingly rounded, softened edges of the shapes and in their organization in planes that recede into space, where the concept of horizon is undermined as if by the viewer’s constant motion in a wave-tossed boat. Dove drew Sails in pastel, a powdery crayon that yields rich color, a soft, velvety texture, and a matte surface. The subtle texture of the ephemeral medium underscores the intimate quality of this small work, in which Dove used the inspiration of nature—the familiar forms of boats and waves—to express his subjective experience of it.

Sails belongs in a series of ten pastel drawings Dove created in 1911 and 1912. Known as the "Ten Commandments," they are among the first abstract works made in the United States: defying artistic conventions of representation, they incorporate recognizable forms from the real world into compositions that stand independently as works of art. The series created a sensation when it was exhibited in 1912 at the New York gallery of Dove’s friend and ardent supporter Alfred Steiglitz (1864–1946) and then in a gallery in Chicago. Until the groundbreaking exhibition known as the Armory Show brought avant-garde European art to America the following year, abstract art was almost unknown in America. With their organic imagery borrowed from nature and their emotional intensity, Dove’s 1911–12 pastels were prophetic of the concerns that distinguished American modernism as it developed in the following decades.

Sails was also prophetic of the personal significance of sailboats for Dove. Growing up on Seneca Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes region, Dove was an avid outdoorsman who probably sailed as a boy. In 1922, a decade after completing his “Ten Commandments,” he purchased a 42-foot yawl (a small sailboat) which served for several years as a residence and studio for himself and artist Helen (“Reds”) Torr, who later became his second wife. Except for a period during the 1930s when Dove returned to his hometown of Geneva, New York, to settle his family’s estate, he lived in harbor towns for the remainder of his life. The first of several works by Dove that evoke boats and the sea, Sails marries geometry and nature in an image pervaded by a controlled sense of euphoria.

Exhibition of Paintings by Arthur Dove, The Little Galleries of the Photo Secession (291), New York, New York, February 27–March 12, 1912.

The Paintings of Arthur G. Dove, W. Scott Thurber Galleries, Chicago, Illinois, March 14–30, 1912.

Group Exhibition, Society of Independent Artists, 1917, no. 92 (as Nature Symbolized, 1).

Seven American Painters, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York (organizer). Venues: Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, December 1–22, 1944; Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 3–27, 1945; The Norton Gallery & School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, February 6–27, 1945; Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia, March 9–30, 1945; Arts & Crafts Club, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 11–May 2, 1945.

Pioneers of Modern Art in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, April 2–May 12, 1946. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 1994.

Arthur Dove: A Retrospective, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and the Addison Art Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (organizer). Venues: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, September 1997–April 1998. [exh. cat.]

L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002.

Chicago Evening Post Literary Review (March 29, 1912).

Chamberlain, Joseph Edgar. "Pattern Painting by A. G. Dove." Evening Mail, New York (March 2, 1912): 8.

"News and Notes of the Art World: Plain Pictures," New York Times (March 3, 1912): sec. 5, p. 15.

Cook, George Cram. "Causerie (Post-Impressionism After Seeing Mr. Dove's Pictures," Friday Review, New York (n.d.; btw. May 1911 and August 1912).

Wight, Frederick S. Arthur G. Dove. (exh. cat., Art Galleries of the University of California, Los Angeles). Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1958. Ill. p. 33 (black & white).

Homer, William Innes. "Identifying Arthur Dove's 'The Ten Commandments. '" The American Art Journal 12:3 (Summer 1980): 21–32. Text p. 27; ill. no. 5, p. 27 (black & white).

Sails, Arthur G. Dove. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Ilinois, May 1994. Ill. (black & white).

Morgan, Ann Lee. Arthur Dove: Life and Work, with a Catalogue Raisonné. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1984. Text pp. 43, 109–10; ill. no. 11/12.8, p. 110 (black & white).

Cohn, Sherrye. Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985. Text pp. 26, 51, 95; fig. 8, p. 124 (black & white).

Balken, Debra Bricker. Arthur Dove: A Retrospective. (exh. cat., Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.). Andover: Addison Gallery of American Art; Cambridge: MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in association with The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1997. Text p. 21; ill. no. 11, p. 44 (color).

Kirschner, Melanie. Arthur Dove: Watercolors and Pastels. New York: George Braziller Publisher, 1998. Text pp. 28, 31–32, 116; pl. 3, p. 75 (color).

Loughery, John. “Subject Matter in Modern Art.” The Hudson Review 51: 2 (Summer 1998). Text p. 389.

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 11, p. 38 (color).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 11, p. 38 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. An American Point of View: The Daniel J. Terra Collection. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text pp. 156, 195; ill. pp. 11 (color), 157 (color), 195 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Un regard transatlantique. La collection d'art américain de Daniel J. Terra. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text pp. 156, 195; ill. pp. 11 (color), 157 (color), 195 (black & white).

Balkin, Debra Bricker. Dove/O'Keefe: Circles of Influence. (exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Text p. 22; ill. fig. 18, p. 23 (color).

Timpano, Nathan J., Pan American Modernism: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America and the United States. Edited by Patricia García-Vélez Hanna. Coral Gables, Florida: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 2013. Text pp. 30–31 (in spanish and english); ill. 2, p. 31 (color).

DeLue, Rachael Z. Arthur Dove: Always Connect. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Text pp. 92–93, 95, 226. Ill. p. 92, fig. 67 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 251; ill. p. 251 (color).