Charles H. Davis: painter of poetic moods

Reviewing the memorial exhibition held in 1934 at the Macbeth Gallery (which had represented Davis since 1906), the critic for the New York Times wrote of the artist's career:

The last period [1925-1933], in certain respects most characteristic, addresses itself to a mood far less palpably "representational, "...these...works constitute the most "difficult" aspect of Charles Davis's brilliantly original art. Evocation is arrived at by means of a technique that has become, at length, almost entirely subjective. Often, studied at close range, the pictures seem merely a wild, undisciplined smearing of muddy color. But looked at from the proper distance they can at times yield a suddenly released impression that - still remote from any facile dogma of "representation" - is almost achingly real....Like the greatest landscape painters of all time, Davis sought to explore the deeper truths that give to nature her real and eternally significant meaning.(11)

In his late work Davis continually experimented with design and technique. Royal Cortissoz noted in 1929:

There seems to us something new and striking in the definition of planes which now appears in his work. Only half obscured by the tangle of trees which he may depict, there rise the great slanting structural lines of the hilly formations which evidently have a great attraction for him. They introduce a sharply rhythmical element into his compositions and, by the same token, give to these a new unity and a new force.(12)

The Farm in Winter (Pl. XVI) demonstrates how Davis enlarged the sweep of his brush strokes and expanded his technique, incorporating areas of thin, transparent stains applied in drips and dry smudges. Davis all but eliminated spatial depth, concentrating instead on the delineation of shape. The essence of the painting is the nervous zigzag of walls that circumscribe fields of snow rendered in the muted tones of winter. The whole work is executed with a masterful economy of means most apparent in the figure bent against the cold, realized in two simple brush strokes that completely integrate it into the landscape. The figure serves to humanize the scene, providing scale and direction by leading the eye toward the red barn, the single note of warm color. Completed less than a year before the artist's death on August 5, 1933, Farm in Winter demonstrates the innovation and continuity that remained the hallmark of Davis's art until the end of his life.

Davis was famous in his lifetime as a master of poetic landscape, devoting himself to evoking the mood of the natural environment. Color, surface, and composition were carefully co-ordinated to portray a familiar aspect of nature as observed and transformed by the artist. This essential simplicity, in which understatement is allied to the poetry of the commonplace, is the key to understanding his art.

I would like to thank Margaret Davis Palmer, the artist's granddaughter, Dixie Palmer Peaslee, the artist's great-granddaughter; and the late Earl Chamberlain for their generosity in sharing the Davis family papers with me. J. J. Smith gave me invaluable help in preparing and editing this manuscript and Deborah Cressler reviewed the final draft. Finally, I shall never forget the kindness and encouragement I received from the late Nelson H. White.