Lantern

Arthur DoveWW-1922-134662

1922·Oil and silver paint on wood·54.3 × 45.7 cm (21 3/8 × 18 in.)

Although Arthur Dove’s work as a whole is marked by his fascination with natural elements, he occasionally explored industrial or manmade motifs, including the lighting device that dominates Lantern. Like his colleague Stuart Davis, whose painting <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/71529">Saw</a> (1988.144) transforms a mundane item into an artistic still life, Dove depicts the prosaic lantern as the object of aesthetic contemplation. Despite its abstracted forms, components of the lantern (probably a Coleman arc lantern) are recognizable, among them the two glowing mantles, the perforated collar with its black fuel valve, and the pump plunger. He employed a shimmering silver paint to depict the lantern’s globe as a flat, circular form, further marking his willingness to explore unusual materials.

Catalogue

Year: 1922
Medium: Oil and silver paint on wood
Dimensions: 54.3 × 45.7 cm (21 3/8 × 18 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Arthur Dove

Artist

Arthur Dove

Painting

Arthur Garfield Dove was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career. Dove made a series of experimental collages in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion as exemplified in Dove's 1938 painting Tanks, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Full artist profile →