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Car across the Street
Arthur Dove (born Canandaigua, NY 1880-died Huntington, NY 1946)
1940
- Medium
- pen and ink and watercolor on paper
- Classification
- Drawings
- Dimensions
- sheet: 5 1/2 x 8 7/8 in. (14.1 x 22.5 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Graphic Arts
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Dove suffered from various illnesses that kept him housebound for weeks at a time. Nevertheless he painted the world that was visible from his glass-enclosed front porch. For a painter inspired by nature, this confinement was frustrating, but Dove transformed the nearby activity into imaginative compositions. In this watercolor, he created a colorful, visually exciting scene from an otherwise banal subject, the neighbor’s car. Defined by only two black lines, the car seems to merge with the surrounding environment.
