Dawn (or, Kneeling Figure)
Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Dawn (or, Kneeling Figure), 1918, soft ground etching and aquatint, signed in pencil lower right. Reference: Czestochowski 59, second state (of 3). In very good condition, with margins, 11 7/8 x 7 7/8, the sheet 14 x 9 1/2 inches. Printed in black ink on a cream wove paper.
A fine impression of this very strong composition.
Dawn is unusual among Davies’s printed images for the great clarity and strength of the image, undergirded by the blackness of the aquatint background. At this stage of his career Davis was making a transition from explorations into the areas of cubism/modernism, back to a Symbolist idiom that had characterized much of his work prior to World War I and the 1913 Armory Show. Although not cubist, Dawn could certainly be regarded as essentially modernist.