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Lot Essay
One of America's pioneering Precisionists, Henry Billings was represented by Charles Daniel who also championed the work of Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, Elsie Driggs and Peter Blume. He exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club and was active in the Woodstock, New York summer colony. Billings "was grouped with Sheeler, Spencer and Dickinson for painting 'with precision and elegance...seem[ing] to know definitely what they are about before they touch brush to canvas.'" (G. Stavitsky, et al., Precisionism in America 1915-1941: Reordering Reality, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1994, p. 22)
The monumental White Boats is an early Precisionist work which manifests the movement's approach towards industrialization. The work is objectively rendered and composed of large forms of unadulterated color, which are acutely delineated and oriented parallel to the picture plane. Depth in the composition is achieved through the layering of these color blocks. White Boats incorporates many motifs, such as the boat, grain elevators and architectural elements, which were central to the Precisionist movement, and presages the work of later masters such as Ralston Crawford. Later in his career, Billings moved away from the Precisionist style to produce more surreal works, and indeed the roots of this transition can be seen in the assimilation of disparate elements in the present work.
The monumental White Boats is an early Precisionist work which manifests the movement's approach towards industrialization. The work is objectively rendered and composed of large forms of unadulterated color, which are acutely delineated and oriented parallel to the picture plane. Depth in the composition is achieved through the layering of these color blocks. White Boats incorporates many motifs, such as the boat, grain elevators and architectural elements, which were central to the Precisionist movement, and presages the work of later masters such as Ralston Crawford. Later in his career, Billings moved away from the Precisionist style to produce more surreal works, and indeed the roots of this transition can be seen in the assimilation of disparate elements in the present work.