Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry
1924 · Oil, folding wooden rulers, wood, and cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas
Dimensions : 22 x 18 in. (55.9 x 45.7 cm)
Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Credit Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Among the most accomplished abstract American artists, Dove created inventive symbolic portraits of friends using found materials. Ralph Dusenberry, Dove’s neighbor, lived in a houseboat on the North Shore of Long Island. The artist selected the objects in this work for their associations with Dusenberry’s personality and interests: the sheet music pasted at the bottom is a hymn that Dusenberry often sang, while the folding rulers that frame the composition point to his profession as an architect. The pieces of weathered wood refer to the docks, shingled cabins, and shipbuilding materials of the marine environment.
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About this artwork
Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry (1924) by Arthur Dove, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.
About Arthur Dove
Arthur Garfield Dove (August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946) was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes.
More by Arthur Dove
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