Seneca Lake

This small watercolor uses a technique Dove called "extraction": abstracting from some landscape only those elements necessary to render it. Here we see a few lines of ink used to trees, clouds, and a power line; watercolor and gouache then complete the forms. Horizontal layers effectively capture the distinctive long shapes and surrounding hills of New York's Finger Lakes region.

Dove was born in Canandaigua to a wealthy family, graduating from Cornell University and expected to follow a career appropriate to that education. Instead, he worked in commercial illustration and traveled to Europe; eventually upon returning to America he became friends with photographer and gallery owner Arthur Stieglitz, who encouraged his experiments with abstraction.

Dove, Arthur, 1880-1946

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Via Wikimedia Commons

Watercolor, gouache, and pen painting

5 x 7 in.