Amber Garden
Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Amber Garden (Hand Raised, Autumn Mist), soft ground etching and aquatint, 1919, signed in pencil lower right margin. Reference: Czestochowski 73, third state (of 4), from an edition of unspecified size but according to Czestochowski “total printing unknown but small.” In very good condition, the matrix pristine, some folds and creasing in the (wide) margins, printed on a cream wove paper with the watermark SPECIAL MBM, 11 3/4 x 7 13/16, the sheet 14 3/4 x 11 5/8 inches; archival mounting with acid free window mat.
A fine strong impression with the several layers of aquatint contrasting effectively.
At this stage of his printmaking career Davies had for the most part abandoned the cubist idiom he had experimented with after his involvement in the Armory Show of 1913, and reverted to the expressive symbolism and mysticism characteristic of much of his earlier work. Of this work artist Marsden Hartley wrote: “Often you have the sensation of looking through a Renaissance window upon a Greek world – a world of Platonic verities in calm relation….Arthur B. Davies is a lyric poet…He is mystic only in the sense that perhaps all lyrical poetry is mystic, since it strives for union with the universal soul in things.”