HAROLD CHRISTOPHER DAVIES

(American, 1891-1976)

DIANA WITH HER HOUNDS

Oil on Canvas

14 x 10 Inches

Estate Stamped Lower Right, "H. Davies"

 

Harold C. Davies first studied at the Corcoran Institute of Art, to which he was admitted at the unusually young age of fourteen. After furthering his studies at the San Francisco Institute of Art, he exhibited widely and with great success throughout the United States, including at Society of Washington Artists (1908-09), San Francisco Art Association (1921-31), Oakland Art Gallery (1931), Birmingham  (AL) Museum (1951) and the Southampton Museum (1959). He was granted a solo exhibition at the Fresno Art Gallery (1976), and two posthumous retrospectives, at the Haggin Museum (1981) and the Huntsville (AL) Museum (1982). Although Davies achieved both public and critical acclaim in his lifetime, he refused gallery representation.  Believing that success would compromise his artistic integrity, he painted in his leisure time while earning his living as a corporate executive. Essentially a post-impressionist artist, he was influenced by Cezanne, Gorky, and de Kooning, among others, from whom he derived both his lyrical sense of color, a dramatic compositional sense and his intuitive and .gestural attack. Intensely dedicated to his art, Davies kept extensive notebooks and comprehensive sketchbooks in which he developed his own complex artistic theories and Modernist aesthetic philosophy. We are pleased to offer an exquisite small work, dating to circa 1950, by this master of American Modernism.

 

This work is accompanied by a copy of: 'Harold Christopher Davies (1891-1976)' by Thomas Albright & F. Herbert Hoover, the catalog of the 1982 Davies Retrospective at the Haggin & Huntsville Museums of Art.

 

Reference:

Harold Christopher Davies, 1891-1976, A Retrospective, Thomas Albright, Published by Haggin Museum, 1982; Who Was Who in American Art, Falk, Vol. I, p.835; Artists in California 1786-1940, Hughes, Vol. 1, p.280; Davenport’s Art Reference Guide, 2007/8 Edition, p.673; et al.