Stuart Davis 1892-1964

Estate of the artist
Vance Jordan Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1999

New York, Independent Artists Galleries, Exhibition of Independent Artists, April 1910
Wilmington, Delaware, Delaware Art Center, The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, January-February 1960, no. 17, illustrated p. 6
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Peale House Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, A Retrospective Exhibition of the Paintings of Stuart Davis, October-November 1964, no. 1
New York, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Stuart Davis, Scapes: An Exhibition of Landscapes, Cityscapes and Seascapes Made between 1910 and 1923, March 1990, no. 3, illustrated in color
Beverly Hills, California, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, American Modernism, July-August 1991
Vienna, Austria, Galerie Ulysses; New York, Ulysses Gallery, Stuart Davis, October-November 1992, p. 8, illustrated in color
Kriyama, Japan, Koriyama City Museum of Art; Shiga, Japan, The Museum of Modern Art; Tokyo, Japan, Tokyo, Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Stuart Davis: Retrospective, 1995, July-November 1995, no. 2, pp. 43, 74,  illustrated in color p. 43

Rudi Blesh, Stuart Davis, New York and London, 1960, pp. 9-10, illustrated fig. 1
Lee Nordness, ed., Art: USA: Now, New York, 1963, Vol. 1, p. 69
Brian O'Doherty, American Masters: The Voice and the Myth, New York, 1973, p. 54
Karen Wilkin, Stuart Davis, New York, 1987, p. 45, illustrated pl. 44
Patricia Hills, Stuart Davis, New York, 1996, p. 26
Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski, Stuart Davis: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, no. 1333, p. 7, illustrated in color

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In 1909, at the age of seventeen, Stuart Davis was sent to New York by his father Edward, the art editor at the Philadelphia Press, to attend Robert Henri's art school.  Edward Davis had been instrumental in hiring Henri along with John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens and Everett Shinn as illustrators for the paper. The group, which in part made up The Eight (named for a 1908 exhibition at Macbeth Galleries), became known for their unsentimental portrayals of New York, capturing its full range of urban existence from the gritty realities of tenement living to the upper class enclaves along Fifth Avenue.   Critics described their work as coarse and at times vulgar, later earning The Eight and their followers the nickname of Ashcan School, but enthusiasts lauded the group's daring, modern direction. 

 

Henri encouraged his students to challenge the conventions of contemporary American painting by taking a progressive and direct approach to their subjects.  He stressed the importance of personal observation and instinct above the mastery of regimented techniques.  Henri's nationalistic teaching philosophy was "that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time and in their own land.  In this country we have no need for art as a culture; no need of art as refined and elegant performance; no need of art for poetry's sake ... What we do need is art that expresses the spirit of the people of today" (quoted in Robert Hughes, American Visions, 1997, p. 325).  Davis flourished under Henri's tutelage and enthusiastically took up his teacher's call to "stop studying water pitchers and bananas and paint every day New York life" (Painters of a New Century: The Eight & American Art, 1991, p. 26).  While Davis's more controlled, mature style would mark a drastic departure from the bold brushwork of his Ashcan days, Henri's missive to paint from 'real life' remained with Davis throughout his career.

 

Public entertainment was a particularly popular subject for members of Henri's circle and the Ashcan artists.  Boisterous theater scenes  had long been favored by the French Impressionists, who captured the "pathos, hustle and artifice of the life of performing artists" (Stuart Davis, American Painter, p. 116).  "That Davis had been looking at other modernist art of the nineteenth century is apparent in ... The Music Hall ... in which the old café-concert motif of the spotlighted performer viewed from the back of the hall comes directly from Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and it is not surprising that Davis had a book of reproductions of the latter's drawings" (Bill Agee, Stuart Davis: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, 2007, p. 47). 

 

In addition, by the turn of the century, vaudeville had become the most fashionable form of entertainment in America. The shows were designed by theater managers to appeal to a wide variety of audiences through a combination of comedic, dramatic and musical acts brought together in one performance.  The Music Hall, painted in April 1910, is one of Davis's first major paintings and one of only two vaudeville subjects he completed in oil.  The stalwart performer and his disinterested, louche audience are highlighted against the darkness of the theater's interior.  Davis's positioning of the viewer as audience member and exploitation of the stage's potential for brilliant light effects demonstrate his clear debt to the French Impressionists, particularly Degas.  The brisk handling of paint, vibrant palette and satirized social types, however, are the direct influence of his academic training with Henri.  Bill Agee writes, "Davis had taken instinctively to the ragtime and show tunes and later the jazz he heard in saloons and music halls in Newark, Hoboken, and New York, and responded to the music at a deep visceral level as an indigenous and authentic American art form" (Stuart Davis: Catalogue Raisonné, p. 46).