Painted during his travels of 1924 or 1926, the sketch reflects Davies' rapid accuracy of observation, as well as his sensitive ability to contruct harmmonious compositions.
A romantic artist, Davies concentrated his paintings on gentle, dancelike figures in idyllic natural settings, endowing his dreamy canvases with wistful nostalgia, tinged with Victorian sentiment. It was an irony of his career, that he was also responsible for bringing the famous Armory Show of 1913 to New York, thereby introducing the startling new directions of modern art to America.
The sense of landscape space and mystery was always a dominant force in Davies work, as lucid in his drawings as in the paintings, and controlled in such sketches as this by the immediate demands of analyzed reality.
Source: Bulletin, January 1968
Published ReferencesDMAC Bulletin, Jan. 1968
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.57