Harbor in Light

Arthur Dove's landscapes interlace his observation of nature with the inventive abstraction that characterized modern art in the early twentieth century. The vivid colors, simple curvilinear forms, and overall abstraction in this painting are hallmarks of Dove's work. Here a sunrise or sunset becomes a spectacular event. Expressive or perhaps symbolic forms sit within a dominant, ovoid shape resembling a sun, accentuated by heavy black lines. These abstracted forms are balanced by the illusionistic suggestion of light reflections on water in the lower half of the painting. Harbor in Light exemplifies a strand of expressive American Modernism that Dove shared with contemporaries in the 1920s, like painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) and photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946).