From 1933 to 1938 Dove managed an inherited property in Geneva, New York, that included a farm. There, he was frequently in contact with barnyard animals, which he portrayed in works ranging from naturalistic to abstract, sometimes at a distance and sometimes close up. In Goat and its smaller preparatory watercolor study in The Met's collection (49.70.75), the animal visually merges with its environment. Depicted in the tones of soil, foliage, water, and sky, the goat is not only part of the landscape but also seems transformed into a landscape.
Dove’s creative process always involved preliminary studies, which he called "small ones," that were transferred to larger paintings with the aid of a pantograph machine or a slide projector. In this instance he planned almost every detail since there are very few differences between the two versions. Even the thinned oil paint washes emulate the translucency of the watercolor.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Goat
Artist:Arthur Dove (American, Canandaigua, New York 1880–1946 Huntington, New York)
Date:1935
Medium:Oil on canvas with selective varnish
Dimensions:23 × 31 in. (58.4 × 78.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Object Number:49.70.37
Inscription: Signed (lower center): Dove
the artist (from 1935; to Stieglitz); Alfred Stieglitz, New York (probably 1939–d. 1946; his estate, 1946–49; gift to MMA)
New York. An American Place. "Arthur G. Dove: An Exhibition of Paintings (1934–1935)," April 21–May 22, 1935, no catalogue.
New York. An American Place. "Arthur G. Dove, Exhibition of Oils and Temperas," April 10–May 17, 1939, no catalogue (checklist no. 1).
New York. An American Place. "Arthur G. Dove: Exhibition of New Oils and Water-Colors," March 30–May 14, 1940, no catalogue (checklist no. 35; as "The Goat").
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "Alfred Stieglitz Exhibition: His Collection," June 10–August 31, 1947, no catalogue (checklist no. 30).
Art Institute of Chicago. "Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and His Collection," February 2–29, 1948, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "20th Century Painters: A Special Exhibition of Oils, Water Colors and Drawings Selected from the Collections of American Art in the Metropolitan Museum," June 16–October 29, 1950, unnum. brochure (p. 5).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "American Painting, 1754–1954," December 18, 1953–September 1954, no catalogue [see Ref. Hale 1954].
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Arthur G. Dove," September 30–November 16, 1958, no. 51.
Washington, D. C. Phillips Memorial Art Gallery. "Arthur G. Dove," November 30, 1958–January 5, 1959, no. 51.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Arthur G. Dove," January 25–February 28, 1959, no. 51.
San Antonio. Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute. "Arthur G. Dove," March 18–April 18, 1959, no. 51.
Art Galleries of the University of California, Los Angeles. "Arthur G. Dove," May 1–June 15, 1959, no. 51.
La Jolla Art Center. "Arthur G. Dove," June 20–July 30, 1959, no. 51.
San Francisco Museum of Art. "Arthur G. Dove," August 15–September 30, 1959, no. 51.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Three Centuries of American Painting," April 9–October 17, 1965, unnum. checklist.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "American Paintings, Drawings and Watercolors from the Museum's Collections," October 1–December 7, 1969, no catalogue.
San Francisco Museum of Art. "Arthur Dove," November 21, 1974–January 5, 1975, unnumbered cat. (p. 96).
Buffalo. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "Arthur Dove," January 27–March 2, 1975, unnumbered cat.
St. Louis Art Museum. "Arthur Dove," April 3–May 25, 1975, unnumbered cat.
Art Institute of Chicago. "Arthur Dove," July 12–August 31, 1975, unnumbered cat.
Des Moines Art Center. "Arthur Dove," September 22–November 2, 1975, unnumbered cat.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Arthur Dove," November 24, 1975–January 18, 1976, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Arthur Dove: Nature Abstracted," April 16, 1991–April 6, 1992, no catalogue.
Mobile, Ala. Fine Arts Museum of the South. "Modernism and American Painting of the 1930s," February 12–March 28, 1993, unnumbered cat. (p. 9).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," October 13, 2011–January 2, 2012, no. 85.
Oxford, England. Ashmolean Museum. "America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper," March 23–July 22, 2018, no. 31.
Lewis Mumford. "The Art Galleries: A Group of Americans." New Yorker (May 4, 1935), p. 32.
Robert Beverly Hale. "American Painting 1754–1954." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12 (March 1954), ill. p. 190.
Henry Geldzahler. American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1965, pp. 55–57, ill.
Lillian Freedgood. An Enduring Image: American Painting from 1665. New York, 1970, ill. p. 280.
George M. Cohen. A History of American Art. New York, 1971, p. 177.
Ann Lee Morgan. Arthur Dove: Life and Work, with a Catalogue Raisonné. Newark, Del., 1984, p. 224, no. 35.12.
Sherrye Cohn. Arthur Dove: Nature as Symbol. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985, pp. 77–78.
Debra Bricker Balken in Debra Bricker Balken with William C. Agee and Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Arthur Dove: A Retrospective. Exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C. Andover, Mass., 1997, p. 103, fig. 32.
Lisa Mintz Messinger inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, fig. 18 (installation photo of Exh. New York 1965).
Jessica Murphy inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 122–23, 261, no. 85, ill. (color).
Isabelle Duvernois and Rachel Mustalish inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, p. 122.
Arthur Dove (American, Canandaigua, New York 1880–1946 Huntington, New York)
ca. 1942
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