Landscape and Legend

Arthur Wesley Dow

Boats at Rest

c. 1895

Oil on canvas, 66 × 91.4 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago

Rowboats rest on a marshy bank near the painter's home town, Ipswich, Massachusetts.

• His bold palette has much in common with Gauguin, Émile Bernard and other French Post-Impressionists.
• His Japanese-inspired teaching on composition, at Ipswich and Pratt Institute, was widely influential.
• From ukiyo-e came bold cropping, a raised viewpoint and flattened space.

Image: Art Institute of Chicago open access · CC0