Flowers & Chair | Acrylic on Canvas | Expressionist | Edward A. Davidson | 1976

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Description

Edward A. Davidson (1909 - 1987), Flowers & Chair, 1976, Acrylic on Canvas, 5" x 7".

The painting depicts two … Read more Edward A. Davidson (1909 - 1987), Flowers & Chair, 1976, Acrylic on Canvas, 5" x 7".

The painting depicts two large, dramatic flowers arranged alongside or in front of a chair, whose dark, slatted back occupies the right side of the composition. The flowers dominate the left and upper portion of the canvas, their scale almost heroic relative to the small format. Below them sits what appears to be a vase or pot in deep green, resting on a surface rendered in warm terracotta and burnt orange tones.

The color palette is rich and unapologetically bold - the flowers blaze in orange, red, and yellow, ringed with deep green foliage and white highlights that make them almost luminous. The background is handled in loose vertical strokes of lavender, grey-blue, and purple, giving a sense of an interior wall or drapery without being literal about it. The chair is rendered almost as a graphic element - heavy black strokes with white between them, more symbol than description.

This work is firmly in a Fauvist-Expressionist tradition. The saturated, non-naturalistic color and the bold simplification of forms bring to mind Matisse's interior still lifes, while the heavy black structuring echoes Rouault. There's also something here reminiscent of van Gogh's flower paintings in the sheer intensity of the blooms.

It's a remarkably confident composition - the artist balances the organic energy of the flowers against the rigid geometry of the chair with real sophistication. It bears a circular monogram ED in the lower right and the date '76. The stretcher bars are hand-joined and have a nice aged patina.

Edward A. Davidson did spot and larger illustrations and small paintings for Gourmet, Harper's, and other magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. He also sold hundreds of his drawings and paintings from a small shop/gallery on East 4th Street in Greenwich Village, through the gallery of Julius Carlebach, a few other Manhattan galleries and dealers and through many art and antique shows. See less