Join The Collection to save, track, and explore works like this.

Art Institute of Chicago

Spotted

Arthur Wesley Dow — Boats at Rest
Arthur Wesley Dow

Boats at Rest

1895

In 1891 Arthur Wesley Dow began to engage seriously with the formal elements of Japanese art in his prints and oil paintings. In works such as Boats at Rest, he depicted locales around his native Ipswich, Massachusetts, using the radical cropping, elevated perspective, and flattened pictorial space characteristic of ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock) prints. His palette of bold colors, however, is more akin to the work of French Post-Impressionist artists such as Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. Dow’s Japanese-inspired theories of composition, which he outlined both in his publications and in the classes he taught at the Ipswich Summer School of Art and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, were immensely influential to artists and designers working in both two and three dimensions.

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions

Start the Discussion

Request access to join the discussion

About this work

Arthur Wesley Dow, Boats at Rest, 1895

In 1891 Arthur Wesley Dow began to engage seriously with the formal elements of Japanese art in his prints and oil paintings. In works such as Boats at Rest, he depicted locales around his native Ipswich, Massachusetts, using the radical cropping, elevated perspective, and flattened pictorial space characteristic of ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock) prints. His palette of bold colors, however, is more akin to the work of French Post-Impressionist artists such as Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. Dow’s Japanese-inspired theories of composition, which he outlined both in his publications and in the classes he taught at the Ipswich Summer School of Art and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, were immensely influential to artists and designers working in both two and three dimensions.

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
66 x 91.4 cm
Year
1895
Seen at
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Related themes

Modern, Unique Work, Painting, Oil on Canvas

More works by Arthur Wesley Dow

Collected by

Cleveland Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago