Untitled (Wellfleet), 1962
Graphite on paper
9 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches
Biography
An intriguingly unique modern painter, Edwin Dickinson was born in Seneca Falls, NY in 1891. Dickinson studied fine arts at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase and in Provincetown with Charles Hawthorne. Most of his career was spent in New York City teaching at the Art Students League. Dickinson's notable works fall into two distinct groups: monumental subject paintings such as Ruin at Daphne (1943) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and “premier coup” landscapes, quickly painted landscapes done en plein air, which Dickinson started to produce when he was in France from 1937-38. Although he was thought to have anticipated abstract expressionism with his highly abstracted landscapes, the "irresistible site" is always recognizable. His desire was never to subvert the particularity of a site, but to present the viewer with an enticing interplay of painterly surface effects and depicted objects.
