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1930s modernist oil painting by Edwin Walter Dickinson. Dickinson was a prominent modernist figure in the American art scene in the early 20th century. Title: 'A Natural Bouquet' Date: 1939 Medium: Oil on canvas Measurements: 23.25 inches by 28.25 inches sight size, and 29.5 inches by 34.5 inches by 3 inches overall including framing. Notes: This painting was exhibited in important American galleries throughout it's existence including Tibor De Nagy Galleries, New York, Graham Galleries, New York, and Robert Henry Adams Gallery in Chicago, Il. Signed and dated front with several gallery labels verso. Provenance: Robert Henry Adams Gallery collection (label verso), Tibor De Nagy Gallery (label verso), Graham Gallery (2 labels verso). About the artist: Edwin Walter Dickinson (Massachusetts/New York/California 1891-1978) was an early American modernist painter and draftsman. Dickinson was born and raised in the Finger Lakes region of New York. During his formative years Dickinson endured many tragic events including the death of his mother from tuberculosis in 1903, his older brother’s suicide in 1913, his father’s remarriage in 1914 to a much younger woman, and the death of a close friend. These tragedies all became influences on Dickinson’s work later in life. Dickinson failed two entrance exams for the US Naval Academy and consequently enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City where he studied with William Merritt Chase. In the summers of 1912 and 1913 Dickinson stayed in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met and studied with Charles W. Hawthorne. Dickinson took up residency in Provincetown from the summer 1913 to the summer of 1916, working as Hawthorne’s assistant in 1914. Hawthorne had a great influence on Dickinson’s work throughout his life. As a teacher Hawthorne had his students use palette knives and their fingers to paint “as if painting had been just invented”. Hawthorne inspired Dickinson to paint without formulas and to look for the unexpected. Hawthorne’s ideas were avant-garde and are considered by some to be the precursors to the abstract expressionist movement that would not occur until 20 years after Hawthorne’s death.Working during the modernist era, Dickinson deviated from the norm in his painting’s styles and genres. Dickinson’s paintings were often dark, dreamlike, and almost surrealist in nature. Many of his paintings were obsessively reworked again and again, yet other works were painted en plein air and at the moment. These later paintings were often small in scale, semi-abstract in style, using soft and spontaneous light to convey their ideas. Dickinson also painted many haunting portraits of himself, possibly the result of his life’s previous tragedies and reflect how he saw these event’s affects on his life.Dickinson’s training as an artist included studies in New York at the Pratt Institute Art School, the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League, and the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.Dickinson’s works have been exhibited at many prestigious institutions, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1916, 1928-57; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1917-22, 29-31, 44-49, 60, 64, 66 (solo), 2003 (solo); National Academy of Design, 1918, 49, 82, 89-92, 2003 (solo); Luxembourg Museum, Paris, 1919; Art Institute of Chicago, 1920; Carnegie Institute, 1921; Jeu de Pomme, Paris, 1938; Albright [Knox] Art Gallery, 1927 (solo), 2002 (solo); Museum of Modern Art, 1938, 43, 52, 54, 61-63, and 76; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1965 (solo), and 66; Brooklyn Museum of Art; World’s Fair of New York, 1964; Everson Museum of Art, 1977; Joseph Hirshhorn Museum, 1980(solo).Dickinson’s works are held in many private and public collections including the National Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Academy of Design, NY; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; and the Joseph Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC.