Arthur Nevin Duck Decoy Print, Mallard Hen Decoy, Bay Head, New Jersey, Signed Color Etching, Framed

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Arthur Nevin Duck Decoy Print, Mallard Hen Decoy, Bay Head, New Jersey, Signed Color Etching, Framed
American, Circa 1975–1985

Arthur … Read more Arthur Nevin Duck Decoy Print, Mallard Hen Decoy, Bay Head, New Jersey, Signed Color Etching, Framed
American, Circa 1975–1985

Arthur Nevin's signed and numbered color etching portrays a Mallard Hen decoy from Bay Head, New Jersey, dated 1920 in the artist's pencil inscription. The decoy is shown in strict profile on the blank sheet, with no water and no landscape, so that it reads as a carved object rather than a living bird. Nevin records it as a working decoy survives: the brown body is stippled and flecked where the paint has worn, the head carries a pale throat, a yellow eye and a long ochre bill, and the wing patch is a dark blue speculum flanked by white bars. A horizontal seam divides the hollowed upper body from its bottom board, the two-piece construction characteristic of Barnegat Bay decoys, and the grain and weathering of the bare lower board are drawn with the same care as the painted plumage.

The print is signed by the artist in pencil below the image, numbered 45/150 at the left and inscribed with the subject at the right. It is presented in a limed oak frame with a wide white mat and a narrow wood-toned inner fillet.

The print suits a study, library or country house, and its warm browns and weathered wood tones sit comfortably with paneling, leather and sporting or coastal interiors. It hangs well on its own or paired with the firm's companion Nevin print of a Red-breasted Merganser hen decoy from Beach Haven, New Jersey, framed to match.

Dimensions (Framed)
Height: 23 5/8 inches (60.0 cm)
Width: 30 5/8 inches (77.8 cm)
Depth: 5/8 inch (1.6 cm)

Marks
Signed "Arthur Nevin" in pencil; numbered 45/150; inscribed "Mallard Hen Decoy, Bay Head, New Jersey, 1920".

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good.

References
Joel Barber, Wild Fowl Decoys (New York: Windward House, 1934).
Thomas Denenberg, Kory W. Rogers, Nancie Ravenel and Cynthia Byrd, Birds of a Feather: Wildfowl Decoys at Shelburne Museum (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2017).

Historical Context
Arthur Finley Nevin (1929–2020) was born in Manhattan and came to decoys as a boy, hunting with his father in the marshes of the Eastern Seaboard. Joel Barber, a friend of his father's and one of the first serious decoy collectors, was a lasting influence; Barber's Wild Fowl Decoys of 1934 was the first book to treat the working decoy as an American art form, and his gift of more than 400 decoys founded the collection at Shelburne Museum in 1952. After twelve years of military service, Nevin and his wife Gladys opened a gallery and frame shop in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, where he ran an etching workshop for other artists and began making intaglio prints of the decoys in his own collection. He confined his work almost entirely to the decoy, which he regarded as the one truly original American art form, issuing each subject in a signed edition of 150, and the prints brought him national and international recognition in the 1980s and 1990s.

(Ref: NY8167-B-imr) See less