Item #310721 Autograph Letter, signed (“Very sincerely Arthur B. Davies”), to Florence Thompson. Georges Seurat, Arthur B. Davies, John Quinn.

Autograph Letter, signed (“Very sincerely Arthur B. Davies”), to Florence Thompson.

337 E. 57th street, New York: 2 January 1925.

Price: $1,000.00


About the item

12 lines (50 words). 1 vols. 8vo. Fine, with conjugate bank. cf. Reid, The Man from New York, pp. 647-51. Provenance: from the family of Julia Quinn, sister of John Quinn, and by descent in her family.

Item #310721

Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), American artist and organizer of the International Exhibition of Modern Art (the 1913 Armory show), knew the visionary American collector John Quinn in connection with Quinn’s loans to the exhibition. Davies was also influential as a patron of the arts. The “dispersal of Davies’s art collection at public auction in April 1929 probably lent impetus to the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York later that year” (ANB).

Davies writes to Miss Thompson, “Quinn’s favorite secretary,” declining an invitation to attend the presentation of the Georges Seurat canvas Le Cirque to the French nation, which took place on 30 January 1925. The painting was the first gift by an American to the Louvre and is now held at the Musée d’Orsay.