Lot 129:
Davidson, Ed (1877-1944) untitled adobe, watercolor
Description
Davidson, Ed (1877-1944) untitled adobe, watercolor, no visible signature, good condition, not examined out of frame, image size: 9.75 x 11.5 inches. "This letter is to certify that this original watercolor painting by well noted and listed. Wichita banker and artist Ed Davison was deaccessioned from an important regional collection. The paintings, created on site in the Sante Fe countryside, exhibit a special quality of light that drew many famous artists to the area. Mr. Davison owned both a house and a guest studio that he shared with visiting friends including Henry Varnum Poor, BJO Nordfeldt, William J. Dickerson, and many others.The sketches were painted as preps for finished works in oil and are in varied statesof finished work, featuring the Santa Cristo mountains at the horizon line and local stucco structures." From John Boldenow, certified art appraiserAs the eldest son of one of Wichita’s first bankers, Edmund Davison acquiesced to his father’s wishes that he takes over the family business of running the Commercial Bank. However, before he assumed his duties at the bank, Davison persuaded his father to allow him to pursue his personal interest in art. After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Davison attended three years of classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There he mastered the fundamentals of academic drawing.Back home in Wichita in 1905, Davison found friends who stimulated his artistic ambitions. Prominent among them was Wichita’s first professional artist, John Noble, who would later become a major figure in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Davison also had close ties with Ralph P. Martin, owner of Martin’s Art Store where he sold paint and operated what was then Wichita’s only art gallery. Davison admired and later collected the paintings of Martin’s gifted sister Pegus Martin Nichols. It was also in Martin’s shop that Davison first saw a painting by Birger Sandzén. Davison not only bought the painting, he immediately made the Lindsborg painter’s acquaintance. Davison later took a semester’s leave of absence from the bank to study with Sandzen.In 1933 when he was fifty-five years old Davison retired from banking in order to devote himself exclusively to painting. His mature work reveals an accomplished and gifted painter who readily absorbed the more progressive stylistic directions of his mentors in Kansas and in the Taos School. Davison’s study with Sandzén converted him to an expressive use of color. Davison emulated his friend Walter Ufer’s use of impasto and gestural brushwork as a means of creating expressive form. Davison also followed Kenneth Adams and Adams’ master Andrew Dasburg in the adoption of a simplification of form based upon Cezanne’s proto-cubist style.Edmund Davison often participated in exhibitions organized by the Taos Society painters. He exhibited his work in such nationally prominent venues as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Art Institute f Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Condition: good condition, not examined out of frame
Dimensions: 17.75 x 21.75 x 0.75 in
Weight: 3.75 lb
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