Rachael Z. DeLue, Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University and author of Arthur Dove: Always Connect (2016), visited the Terra Foundation for American Art in March 2016 to examine Arthur Dove’s painting Boat Going Through Inlet (c. 1929), which the foundation acquired in 2015. In this video, DeLue shares her close, insightful observations of Dove’s abstracted rendering of a boat traveling through undulating waves of water, clouds, and light. She illuminates how Boat Going Through Inlet exemplifies Dove’s interest in meteorology and weather; his time spent living on a boat; his skillful synthesis of abstract and representational modes; and his experimental use of media in the early twentieth century. Boat Going Through Inlet, for DeLue, “embodies the best sort of painting that Dove was making in this period.”
To learn more about Arthur Dove’s Boat Going Through Inlet, see DeLue’s Terra Foundation lecture “Arthur Dove: Wind, Water, Metal.”
View the Collection in Focus: Arthur Dove’s Boat Going Through Inlet playlist on YouTube.