Stuart Davis 1892 - 1964

The artist
Louis Schapiro, Boston, Massachusetts, 1941
(Downtown Gallery, by 1962)
Private Collection, Atlantic Beach, New York, 1969
(James Goodman Gallery, New York)
Gerald and Kathleen Peters, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Acquired by the present owners from the above

New York, Downtown Gallery, Stuart Davis and Frank Osborn, November-December 1927, no. 9
New York, Valentine (Dudensing) Gallery, Exhibition - Paintings and Water Colors: Glenn Coleman and Stuart Davis, April-May 1928, no. 19
New York, Rand School of Social Science, Third Exhibition in Connection with the Rand School, January-March 1931, no. 6
Buffalo, New York, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, An International Exhibition Illustrating the Most Recent Development in Abstract Art, February-March 1931, no. 18
New York, Downtown Gallery, Summer 1960: Paintings in Aquamedia, Drawings, Sculpture by Gallery Roster, June 1960
Lisbon, Portugal, American Embassy, Art in Embassies, March 1961-July 1962
Washington D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, September-November 1962
Santa Barbara, California, Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Honolulu, Hawaii, Honolulu Academy of Arts; San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Loan Exhibition from the Edith Gregor Halpert Collection,  August 1963-February 1964, no. 9
Washington D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Los Angeles, California, The Art Galleries, University of California at Los Angeles, Stuart Davis Memorial Exhibition, 1894-1964, May-November 1965, no. 67, p. 47, illustrated p. 73
Washington D.C., United States Information Agency, Stuart Davis, 1894-1964, February-June 1966, no. 24

Edward Alden Jewell, "Davis Tames a Shrew" (exhibition review), New York Times, April 29, 1928, p. 18
Paul Moses, "Stuart Davis Show: Art with a Wollop," Chicago Daily News, August 21, 1965, Panaroma, illustrated p. 6
Karen Wilkin and William C. Agee, New York, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 1985, Stuart Davis (1892-1964): Black and White, no. 13
Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, no. 1116, p. 551, illustrated in color

Stuart Davis's first solo museum show was held at the Newark Museum in 1925, followed by a retrospective organized the year after the Whitney Studio Club. In 1926, Juliana Force, the Whitney's director, granted Davis a monthly stipend affording him the opportunity to further explore his evolving practices. Philip Rylands notes: "The successful climax of Davis's efforts to master Cubist structure came in 1927-28, when he made paintings based on his analyses of matchbooks, percolators, and eggbeaters. Nearly twenty years later, he described these works as 'an invented series of planes...They were a bit on the severe side, but the ideas invoked have continued to serve me'" (Stuart Davis, New York, 1997, p. 116).

Painted in 1927 and augmented slightly in 1940 with the addition of the word "Tabac" and subtle elements along the peripherary, Cigarettes was exhibited at Edith Halpert's Dowtown Gallery during Davis's 1927 solo exhibition. Roughly three months prior to this show, Davis wrote to Halpert, who always offered encouragement about his work: "In the first place my purpose is to make Realistic pictures. I insist upon this definition in spite of the fact that the type of work I am now doing is generally spoken of as Abstraction. The distinction is important in that it may lead people to realize that they are to look at what is there instead of hunting for symbolic suggestions. A picture is always a three-dimensional illusion regardless of subject matter. That is to say that most illustrative types of painting and modern so-called abstraction are identical in that they both represent an illusion of the three dimensional space of our experience. They differ in subject which means that they choose a different character of space to represent. People must be made to realize that in looking at Abstractions they are looking at pictures as objective and as realistic in intent as those commonly accepted as such. I think this point is important and not generally understood" (Patricia Hills, Stuart Davis, New York, 1995, p. 77).