Preston Dickinson 1891 - 1930

Daniel Gallery, New York
Ferdinand Howald, Columbus, Ohio, 1924
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 1931 (gift from the above)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York (sold: Sotheby’s New York, December 3, 1987, lot 290, illustrated in color)
Dr. Irwin Goldstein, New Jersey (acquired at the above sale)
The Regis Collection, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2005

(possibly) New York, Daniel Gallery, Preston Dickinson, 1924
New York, Daniel Gallery, Paintings by Modern Americans, 1924
New York, New York University, Gallery of Living Art, Opening Exhibition, 1927-28
Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Inaugural Exhibition, 1931, no. 74, illustrated
Chicago, Illinois, The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1934, no. 572, p. 76
St. Petersburg, Florida, Museum of Fine Arts, Works from the Ferdinand Howald Collection, 1968
Dayton, Ohio, Dayton Art Institute, Paintings from the Howald Collection, 1970
New York, Wildenstein & Co., The Ferdinand Howald Collection, 1970, no. 54
Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University, Hopkins Hall Art Gallery, Six Centuries of Paintings from the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, 1973, no. 37
Edinburgh, Scotland, Royal Scottish Academy; London, Hayward Gallery, Modern Spirit: American Painting 1908-1935, 1977, no. 92, p. 62
Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Institute of Arts, Paris and the American Avant-Garde, 1900-1925, 1980, no. 6
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, American Modernism: The Shein Collection, May 2010-January 2011, no. 6, pp. 12, 52, 54-55, 124, 138, illustrated in color p. 53

“The World of Art: Art in the House and in the Galleries,” The New York Times Magazine, July 20, 1924, p. 13, illustrated
Forbes Watson, “American Collections No. 1—The Ferdinand Howald Collection,” Arts, vol. 8, no. 2, August 1925, p. 90, illustrated
Columbus, Ohio, Bulletin 1, 1931, p. 11, illustrated
“Preston Dickinson—Painter,” The Index of Twentieth Century Artists, vol. 3, no. 4, January 1936, pp. 510-11, 525
Frank J. Roos, Jr., An Illustrated Handbook of Art History, 1937, p. 273, illustrated fig. C
Marcia Tucker, American Paintings in the Ferdinand Howald Collection, Columbus, Ohio, 1969, no. 54, p. 39, illustrated
William H. Gerdts and Russell Burke, American Still-Life Painting, New York, 1971, p. 228, illustrated fig. 16-11
Ruth Cloudman, Preston Dickinson 1889-1930, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1979, p. 28, illustrated fig. 7, p. 29
Richard Lee Rubenfeld, Preston Dickinson: An American Modernist, with a Catalogue of Selected Works, Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1985, vol. I, pp. 137-38; vol. II, no. 95, pp. 420-21, illustrated fig. 96
John Baker, Henry Lee McFee and Formalist Realism in American Still Life, 1923-1936, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1987, p. 71
“Catch a Rising Modernist,” ArtNews, November 1988, p. 141, illustrated
Michael O’Sullivan, “On Exhibit: Connecting old and new worlds,” The Washington Post, June 4, 2010, p. 37, illustrated in color
Stephen May, “American Modernism: The Shein Collection,” Antiques and the Arts Weekly, June 4, 2010, p. 30, illustrated 
 

Preston Dickinson was part of a group of artists working in New York in the early 20^th century who came to be known as the Precisionists, both for the exacting quality of line they employed and their thematic extrapolation from European Cubism. Dickinson received his early artistic training at the Art Students League in New York before departing for Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux Arts and the Académie Julian from 1910 to 1914. In Paris, he was exposed to a wide variety of artists and absorbed an eclectic range of styles, responding most notably to Paul Cézanne’s still lifes, and the cubist work of Juan Gris. In the first years following his return to New York, Dickinson painted views of the city, focusing on the banks of the Harlem River that were rich in industrial and architectural detail.

Dickinson turned to still life around 1918 and embarked on a group of tabletop arrangements of fruits and vegetables set in intimate interiors. A preliminary drawing for Still Life No. 1 demonstrates the artist’s initial layout and structure for the painting (fig. 1). As is typical of his most notable still lifes, Dickinson uses the vertical lines of the curtains and chair back to frame the central composition. In the final painting, these elements are embellished with graphic patterning that Dickinson also adds to the man’s necktie hanging over the chair and the handle of the knife on the table. The artist’s palette is distinctive and daring; the turquoise tablecloth and blue and white compote are juxtaposed against the deep green and blue of the peppers and plums while the brilliant orange of the fruit draws the viewer to the center of the composition. The precision with which he renders these forms imbues them with a striking sculptural quality. The angles of both the book and the knife provide additional structure against the forward tilt of the table, moving the viewer’s eye dynamically through the painting.

As Ruth Cloudman explains, "Just as the midcentury still lifes of Demuth [fig. 2], Sheeler, and O'Keeffe show them reaching beyond the examples of European modernism for new compositional means and new subjects, Dickinson's still lifes of the period reveal similar ambitions. Although his image of a bowl of fruit and knife on a table had clear antecedents in Cézanne and the cubists, it contains nothing of the Paris atelier, nor does it relate to Sheeler's nostalgia for the American past or Demuth's and O'Keeffe's connection to place and to nature. Instead, Dickinson's still life pulses with the restless energy of modern life as lived in the city and its suburbs…Dickinson is creating his own hermetic, somewhat airless environment in which objects fulfill his sense of beauty and keen desire for order, and with their smoothly worked surfaces and pulled, elongated forms they express a dynamic energy that is a unique contribution to American still life” (American Modernism: The Shein Collection, Washington, D.C., 2010, p. 55).

Upon seeing Dickinson’s solo exhibition at Charles Daniel’s gallery in 1924, the art critic Henry McBride wrote, “His new still lifes have a grace, a precision, and an elegance that are remarkable. In modern art it is rare to see so high a finish carried out with complete gusto to the end” (Henry McBride, “Notes and Activities,” New York Sun, April 26, 1924, sec. 6, p. 3). Still Life No. 1was acquired by Ferdinand Howald from Daniel that same year, shortly after its completion. Howald was a dedicated connoisseur of European and American modernism who collected many artists in depth, including Dickinson, and his collection formed the basis of the Columbus Museum of Art. The artist’s work was also admired by the important collector of American modernism Duncan Phillips who wrote, “It was only when he was truly inspired by his themes that he simplified and clarified the essentials and became lyrical or dramatic in spite of his obvious desire to be an impersonal virtuoso in his technical approach. During the comparative few years of his maturity as an artist he made a genuine impression on discriminating critics. His early loss was a tragedy. And yet his honored place in the history of American painting may, because of it, be all the more secure” (http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/dickinson-bio.htm).