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Accession #	31.275
Artist	Arthur B. Davies
Title	The Dawning
Date	1915
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	108 3/8 x 108 1/4 in. (275.3 x 275 cm)
Signed	Signed, "A.B. Davies" lower left
Credit Line	Bequest of Lillie P. Bliss
Location	Visible Storage: Case 16, Screen M (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks:

In the years immediately following the Armory Show of 1913, Davies departed from his traditional figurative works to experiment with his own brand of Cubist-influenced forms and compositions. Beginning in 1914, he began to adapt his new aesthetic to large-scale canvases like this one, in which the essentially decorative character of his version of modernism is apparent. A writer in 1917 commented that in this work the artist "has allied his new knowledge of the geometrical side of art with the old knowledge stored in his vivid, dreamy, inquiring mind. This disturbing and compelling 'Dawning' fresco, which attracts more and more each time it is seen, should be in a public museum." Lillie P. Bliss, who had acquired the work by that year, must have agreed, for she left it to the Brooklyn Museum.