Arthur B. Davies

Arthur B. Davies was an American painter and one of the principal organizers of the 1913 Armory Show in New York. As an avid proponent of contemporary art, he amassed a large collection of American and European modernism.

Davies was always interested in drawing as a child and showed interest in becoming an artist after visiting a touring exhibition of American landscape painting by the Hudson River School in 1877. His family moved from upstate New York to Chicago shortly thereafter, where Davies took courses at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882 before briefly attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (later known as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago). In 1886 he moved to New York City to continue his studies at the Art Students League, paying for his tuition by working as a magazine illustrator. He sold his first painting in 1893, marking his beginning as a professional artist. Frequent trips to museums in France and Italy helped hone his skills as a colorist. He particularly admired the works of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet. By the early 1900s, he was living comfortably off the proceeds from sales of his paintings and was represented by the New York dealer William Macbeth.

In New York, Davies developed close friendships with Ashcan Realists William Glackens and Robert Henri. Together, they promoted a more progressive aesthetic and planned an exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery to protest the Academy’s antiquated jury system. The resulting 1908 exhibition, Eight American Painters, exposed Davies to a circle of New York artists and intellectuals (including Rockwell Kent, Walt Kuhn, John Quinn, and Alfred Stieglitz), who were similarly enthusiastic about contemporary trends in art. Davies began visiting Stieglitz’s 291 gallery, where he learned about Fauvism and Cubism, and began purchasing works by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Alfred Maurer for his personal collection. In 1912 Davies became president of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, an organization of artists who sought opportunities for the exhibition of modern art and spoke out against the conservative practices of New York’s art institutions. The group’s first exhibition was the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, held at the 69th Regiment Armory in 1913. Preparations for the event took Davies to Europe alongside Kuhn and Walter Pach to scout out examples of Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism for inclusion in the show. The burgeoning collector then purchased one of the first Cubist works to enter his collection, Picasso’s Guitar, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc (1912; private collection, Daix 491), from the Galerie Kahnweiler in Paris.

Preparations for the Armory Show encouraged Davies to organize the American Cubists and Post-Impressionists exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1912) and The Exhibition of Modern Art at the Detroit Museum of Art (1914). He sometimes lent works from his personal collection to these exhibitions; examples include Juan Gris’s La Tasse (The Cup, 1914; private collection, Cooper 98), which Davies had acquired from the Galerie Kahnweiler; Picasso’s Female Nude (J’aime Eva) (1912; private collection, Daix 541), which he had acquired with the help of John Quinn in the late 1910s; Henri Matisse’s Standing Nude (1907; Tate Modern, London), acquired through the Ferargil Galleries in 1916; Gino Severini’s Danseuse (Dancer, 1915–16; Philadelphia Museum of Art); and works by Marsden Hartley and Joseph Stella. His knowledge of contemporary art attracted the attention of New York collectors Lillie P. Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, both of whom hired Davies as a private art advisor throughout the 1920s; some of Davies’ suggested acquisitions went on to form the core collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He participated in a number of solo exhibitions and group shows throughout the United States and Europe at the Ferargil Galleries, E. Wehye Gallery, Montross Gallery, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Durand-Ruel Galleries in Paris; and the Venice Biennale in 1924. During this time, his paintings and works on paper were also acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Davies passed away while on a trip to Florence with his wife. His collection, which numbered over five hundred objects, was sold at auction through the American Art Association in 1929.