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Although the style of this painting is not the typical style of Davis and his more mature works, this piece marks the beginning stages of Davis's artistic career and his tendency to enlighten and educate viewers on the concept of a populist reality.

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Egg Beater No. 2, 1928

Stuart Davis

Oil on canvas
1996.9

A Closet Door, 1904-1906

John Frederick Peto

Oil on canvas
1983.158

Blips and Ifs, 1963-1964

Stuart Davis

Oil on canvas
1967.195

The Fall of the Cowboy, 1895

Frederic Remington

Oil on canvas
1961.230

Attention, Company!, 1878

William M. Harnett

Oil on canvas
1970.230

A Dash for the Timber, 1889

Frederic Remington

Oil on canvas
1961.381

Parson Weems' Fable, 1939

Grant Wood

Oil on canvas
1970.43

Sunrise, Yosemite Valley, ca. 1870

Albert Bierstadt

Oil on canvas
1966.1

Self-Portrait, 1919

Stuart Davis

Oil on canvas
1975.29

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The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of Carter members and donors, and by grants from Arts Fort Worth, the City of Fort Worth, the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

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In Gallery 6 you can find this piece of artwork, which is slightly different than Davis's typical style as it represents a moment when Davis briefly emulated the colorful, cubistically inflected manner of "synchromism." Pay attention to the lines, planes, and colors, and see if you notice any shapes that resemble a coffee pot, dishes, or anything characteristic of a breakfast table.

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Breakfast Table

Date 1917

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions 48 1/8 × 34 1/4 in. (122.2 × 87 cm)
Framed: 54 in. × 40 1/8 in. × 3 in.

Credit Line Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2006.51

Signed u.r., in gray paint: Stuart Davis

Accession number 2006.51

Provenance Charles Allen Winter [1896-1942] and Alice Beach Winter [1877-1970], Glouchester, MA; Alice Beach Winter, Glouchester, MA, 1942; Estate of Alice Beach Winter, Glouchester, MA, 1968; (Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, NY), 1969; The Williams Companies, Inc., Tulsa, OK, 1980; (Christie's, New York, NY), December 5, 2002, sale no. SPIRIT - 1124, lot no. 197, color illus.; to (Michael Altman Fine Art, New York, NY); purchased by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2006
Markings verso, on backing board, label: [Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition label for Synchronism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925]
verso, on backing board: [Kennedy Galleries label]
verso, on backing board: [Brooklyn Museum loan label]
verso, on backing board: [Salander-O'Reilly Galleries label]
verso, on backing board: [Vance Jordan Fine Art label]
verso, on backing board: [Francis M. Naumann Fine Art exhibition label for Art in America: 1909-1959]

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Gilbert Stuart

ca. 1801 - 1802

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In 1927, Davis began his series of five Egg Beater paintings depicting an eggbeater, a rubber glove, and an electric fan, which he nailed to a table in his studio. This is said to be his first truly abstract painting.

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Dimensions
Overall: 29 3/16 × 36 3/16in. (74.1 × 91.9 cm)

Accession number
31.169

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

Rights and reproductions
© Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In 1927, Stuart Davis began work on a series of five paintings based on a still life he had created by nailing an eggbeater, an electric fan, and a rubber glove to a table in his studio. Using this group of incongruous and unlikely items, he created his first truly abstract works. In Egg Beater No. 1, Davis eliminated all recognizable traces of the still life objects, leaving only a complex composition of colors and overlapping geometric shapes whose interlocking planes suggest the influence of Pablo Picasso's Synthetic Cubism. Like the other paintings in the series, this flat, spare, uncompromising statement is all the more remarkable for its adherence to advanced artistic ideas amid the general retreat from abstraction in America in the late 1920s. Still, Davis never considered himself a pure abstractionist, and would not work again in that vein for more than twenty years, instead interpreting the urban landscape through a bold graphic language of signs, words, and advertisements.

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In 1927, Stuart Davis began work on a series of five paintings based on a still life he had created by nailing an eggbeater, an electric fan, and a rubber glove to a table in his studio. Using this group of incongruous and unlikely items, he created his first truly abstract works.

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Considered one of Davis's most important works, Swing Landscape captures the waterfront in Gloucester, Massachusetts with bold and bright colors. Many considered the mural to be jarring given the bold colors and chaotic jumble of forms, however, it is now considered an important 1930s American painting given its combination of abstraction and realism, something that would influence the development of both the Abstract Expressionist and Pop art movements.
Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/davis-stuart/

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Stuart Davis: In Full Swing - Whitney Museum of American Art

In past show

SD

Stuart Davis

American, 1892–1964

Oil on canvas

86 3/4 × 173 1/8 in

220.3 × 439.7 cm

Whitney Museum of American Art

New York

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Stuart Davis | Swing Landscape (1938) | Artsy

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From Whitney Museum of American Art, Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape (1938), Oil on canvas, 86 3/4 × 173 1/8 in

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In the mid-1940s, Davis produced some of his most famous artworks, including The Mellow Pad, all of which took on a more meticulously planned pop art quality with lively colors, rhythms, and jazz-influnced visuals.

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Stuart Davis

American Art

The starting point for this lively patterned abstraction was an earlier canvas by Stuart Davis entitled House and Street, 1931. Treating each subsequent version as a riff on a jazz theme, Davis moved further and further away from his original composition to establish independent, rhythmic color patterns that retained only a few direct visual cues to the original composition. Davis theorized that abstract compositions could communicate to the viewer something of the subject from which they were derived. This composition embodies the "mellow pad"-jazz lingo for the "cool" place to be. Jazz rhythms were a potent inspiration for Davis, and their presence added a distinctly American component to his abstractions.

SIGNATURE Signed lower right: "Stuart Davis"

INSCRIPTIONS Signed, dated, and inscribed on discarded original stretcher verso: "THE MELLOW PAD STUART DAVIS 1945-1950-1"

ACCESSION NUMBER 1992.11.6

CREDIT LINE Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal

RIGHTS STATEMENT No known copyright restrictions

This work may be in the public domain in the United States. Works created by United States and non-United States nationals published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, subject to the terms of any applicable treaty or agreement. You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this work. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties, such as artists or artists' heirs holding the rights to the work. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. The Brooklyn Museum makes no representations or warranties with respect to the application or terms of any international agreement governing copyright protection in the United States for works created by foreign nationals. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.

CAPTION Stuart Davis (American, 1892-1964). The Mellow Pad, 1945-1951. Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 x 42 1/8 in. (66.7 x 107 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.6 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1992.11.6_PS9.jpg)

IMAGE overall, 1992.11.6_PS9.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2016

"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.

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Stuart Davis American Art The starting point for this lively patterned abstraction was an earlier canvas by Stuart Davis entitled House and Street, 1931. Treating each subsequent version as a riff on a jazz theme, Davis moved further and further away from his original composition to establish independent, rhythmic color patterns that retained only a few direct visual cues to the original composition.