Picture Violin Girl of a Young Girl by American painter Arthur B. Davies

The picture Violin Girl of a Young Girl by American painter Arthur B. Davies, framed as a water-color in a wide paper mat when recently shown, is an early picture very different in execution and effect. A composition as convincing in its indication of actuality as the earlier picture of the Girl at the Fountain, the figure is drawn with extreme care and finished with a degree of precision that is unique in his art. The rich tonality of its depths of sensuous and satisfying color achieves an effect possible only to the medium as it produces the emotional equivalent of music in similar harmonies of sensitive interpretation. The pose, restricted as it is by the action, is relieved of any semblance of the commonplace by a conscientious elimination of all superfluous triviality of detail, and the picture is made really memorable by a subtle rendering of facial expression through which a definite realization of the emotion is communicated to the spectator. The work has something of the simplicity of design and of the elegance and refinement of color that one associates with Florentine painting of the Renaissance, without any suggestion of it, however, in the more obvious and essential characteristics of technic or intention. Color more eloquent than that in this picture one seldom encounters.

Several of artist Davies finer decorative panels with figures have something of the supreme refinement of the sculptured friezes of antiquity and as little relation to actual life. They are superlatively attractive representations of the immortal beauties of fable rather than of fact, and to admit that they continue to appeal to certain subconscious predilections for what one may term art for art’s sake long after one’s first enthusiasm over them has definitely passed, is to acknowledge an approximation to artistic perfection that becomes a patent and permanent interest upon fuller acquaintance.

Categories : American Painters