AFA Summer 2021

Summer 88 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Theresa Bernstein (1890–2002, born in Poland) The Immigrants, 1923 Oil on canvas, 40 × 50 inches Collection of Thomas and Karen Buckley Image courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum Bernstein’s bustling deck scene captures the experience of traveling to America in steerage class. She visualizes the busy clamor and the occasion for individual introspection on a long voyage. The figure in the center foreground is thought to be Bernstein herself, holding her only daughter, who had died in 1920 at three months old. It is also possible that Bernstein was ref lecting upon her own youthful emigration from Poland on the SS Elbe at age two. The painter’s contemplative view encapsulates the emotional weight of generations of people voyaging across the ocean to make a new life. Arthur Dove (1880–1946) Moon and Sea No. II, 1923 Oil on canvas, 24 × 18 inches Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Photography by Robert LaPrelle Dove spent years living on a boat on Long Island Sound, where he gained intimate knowledge of the sea. His experience of a ferocious storm motivated him to create this work. He wrote to his dealer Alfred Steiglitz: “It is now 3:45 a.m. in the midst of a terrific gale . . . Have been trying to memorize this storm all day so that I can paint it.” Ominous black outlines of swelling waves rise to conceal the horizon, making the scene “too dark and nerve strained” at first to paint. After the storm, Dove looked to the luminous rays from the partially obscured moon and saw “storm greens and storm grey” illuminated in the aftermath.