Dove Merlo

Arthur Dove painted Dove Merlo during the late 1920s, a period when he was refining the visual language he had been developing since becoming, in 1910, one of the first American painters to work in pure abstraction. By the time this work was executed, Dove was living on a houseboat on the Harlem River and later Long Island Sound, immersed in the textures and rhythms of the natural environment. His approach drew from American modernism and found a philosophical kinship with European Expressionism, though Dove arrived at his conclusions largely independently. Alfred Stieglitz, his lifelong dealer and advocate, exhibited his work regularly at the galleries 291 and later An American Place; Stieglitz considered Dove among the most authentically American voices in modern art. This painting reflects Dove's sustained engagement with living creatures as concentrations of organic energy rather than passive subjects, a concept he shared intellectually with writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and scientists studying vitalism.