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Reaching Waves

Arthur Dove American
1929
Not on view
In early 1929, Dove and his partner, artist Helen Torr, lived in a waterside cottage near Noroton Point, Connecticut. A seasoned boatman and keen observer of nature, Dove undoubtedly watched the chilly winter tides ebb and flow on the Long Island Sound. He distilled those observations in this nearly monochromatic abstraction, in which irregular waves, some tipped with flecks of white suggestive of foam, rush toward an implied shoreline across a background of vertical bars that evoke the ridges of the ocean floor. By harnessing the emotional power of color and line, Dove expressed his subjective response to nature.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Reaching Waves
  • Artist: Arthur Dove (American, Canandaigua, New York 1880–1946 Huntington, New York)
  • Date: 1929
  • Medium: Oil and aluminum paint on canvas
  • Dimensions: 20 1/8 in. × 24 in. (51.1 × 61 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
  • Object Number: 49.70.38
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Arthur Dove
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