Arthur Davies: 195 Colour Plates

Davies is an anomaly in American art history, an artist whose own lyrical work could be described as restrained and conservative but whose tastes were as advanced and open to experimentation as those of anyone of his time. His personal art collection at the time of his death included works by Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, and Joseph Stella as well as major European modernists like Cezanne and Brancusi. He was completely eclectic," with influences that ranged from Hellenistic Greek art to Sandro Botticelli, the German painter Arnold Bocklin, and the English Pre-Raphaelites. A painter of dream-like maidens and "frieze-like idylls,"he was most often compared to the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. His involvement with the Armory Show and prolonged exposure to European Modernism, however, changed his outlook utterly.