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Lot Essay
Anchors is characteristic of Stuart Davis' most thought-provoking imagery of the 1930s and exemplifies his clever appropriation of recognizable motifs into a modern and slightly abstracted composition. One of a series of paintings inspired by Gloucester, Massachusetts, Anchors depicts commonplace objects and elements that would be easily identifiable to any visitor to this port city. Having frequented the area several times beginning as early as 1915, Gloucester proved to be a vital source of inspiration for the artist having been intrigued by the linear qualities and geometric patterns found in the harbor and its sailing vessels.
In 1930, when Davis painted Anchors, he was fully immersed in the nautical imagery of Gloucester. The port fascinated the artist, and he often explored its byways, hauling with him cumbersome equipment, as he notes in his autobiography: "'I wandered over the rocks, moors and docks, with a sketching easel, large canvases, and a pack on my back, looking for things to paint.' He gradually began to change his working method: 'After a number of years the idea began to dawn on me that packing and unpacking all this junk...was irrelevant to my purpose...Following this revelation my daily sorties were unencumbered except by a small sketch book...and a...fountain pen.'" Lowery Stokes Sims writes, "Davis would then use these drawings to compose his pictures, combining different views into a single composition. He no longer needed to follow the narrative set by reality, but would 'select and define the spatial limits of these separate drawings in relation to the unity of the whole picture,' by which means he 'developed an objective attitude towards size and shape relations.'" (L.S. Sims, Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, pp. 224-25)
In Anchors, Davis creates a Cubistic composition of overlapping forms which includes a pair of large red and black anchors that dominate the lower left of the composition and provide a direct entrance into the scene. Inviting the viewer's eye upward, Davis has divided the upper left corner of the work into three distinct areas delineated by sturdy ship masts. Within these sections, Davis has draped fishing nets and rigging equipment at an angle that shifts the perspective of the scene. A lattice-patterned design carries the viewer's attention to the right in a clockwise motion to a distant view into the harbor, offset by a blue square and again intricately composed with an angled horizon and yet another sense of perspective. The cart, crane and masts at the far right bring the composition back to a frontal perspective that successfully ties the entire scene together as a cohesive whole. By continuing to use contrasting viewpoints the artist has successfully "condensed time and space...into one vision. He [has] united the past, present, and future by giving us both immediate shapes (identifiable things) and more general shapes." (A. Greene, "Twentieth-Century Art in the Museum Collection: Direction and Diversity," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston Bulletin, Summer 1988, p. 11)
Writing about his works from this time period, including Anchors and Summer Landscape (Private collection), Davis remarked "that the interest which really existed in the scene was the result of a coherent and various order of space relations which the particular lighting of the hour made visible. This information...made it possible for me to eliminate...all irrelevancies...such as...light...the exact relation of the color tone of the sky, to the tree, to the water, etc. Instead I examined the view to discover the chief color-space fields which composed it...These color-space quanta are abstract in the sense that they are independent of any particular objects, but they are concrete in their manifold unique configurations which are the physics of the people, objects, spaces and horizons which we know." (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 203)
In 1930, when Davis painted Anchors, he was fully immersed in the nautical imagery of Gloucester. The port fascinated the artist, and he often explored its byways, hauling with him cumbersome equipment, as he notes in his autobiography: "'I wandered over the rocks, moors and docks, with a sketching easel, large canvases, and a pack on my back, looking for things to paint.' He gradually began to change his working method: 'After a number of years the idea began to dawn on me that packing and unpacking all this junk...was irrelevant to my purpose...Following this revelation my daily sorties were unencumbered except by a small sketch book...and a...fountain pen.'" Lowery Stokes Sims writes, "Davis would then use these drawings to compose his pictures, combining different views into a single composition. He no longer needed to follow the narrative set by reality, but would 'select and define the spatial limits of these separate drawings in relation to the unity of the whole picture,' by which means he 'developed an objective attitude towards size and shape relations.'" (L.S. Sims, Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, pp. 224-25)
In Anchors, Davis creates a Cubistic composition of overlapping forms which includes a pair of large red and black anchors that dominate the lower left of the composition and provide a direct entrance into the scene. Inviting the viewer's eye upward, Davis has divided the upper left corner of the work into three distinct areas delineated by sturdy ship masts. Within these sections, Davis has draped fishing nets and rigging equipment at an angle that shifts the perspective of the scene. A lattice-patterned design carries the viewer's attention to the right in a clockwise motion to a distant view into the harbor, offset by a blue square and again intricately composed with an angled horizon and yet another sense of perspective. The cart, crane and masts at the far right bring the composition back to a frontal perspective that successfully ties the entire scene together as a cohesive whole. By continuing to use contrasting viewpoints the artist has successfully "condensed time and space...into one vision. He [has] united the past, present, and future by giving us both immediate shapes (identifiable things) and more general shapes." (A. Greene, "Twentieth-Century Art in the Museum Collection: Direction and Diversity," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston Bulletin, Summer 1988, p. 11)
Writing about his works from this time period, including Anchors and Summer Landscape (Private collection), Davis remarked "that the interest which really existed in the scene was the result of a coherent and various order of space relations which the particular lighting of the hour made visible. This information...made it possible for me to eliminate...all irrelevancies...such as...light...the exact relation of the color tone of the sky, to the tree, to the water, etc. Instead I examined the view to discover the chief color-space fields which composed it...These color-space quanta are abstract in the sense that they are independent of any particular objects, but they are concrete in their manifold unique configurations which are the physics of the people, objects, spaces and horizons which we know." (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 203)