Arthur G. Dove was a prolific illustrator for many of America's most popular magazines between 1903 and 1910 and during the 1920s. By that decade his drawings for illustration had helped to form his Modernist painting style, for which he is best known. One of America's earliest abstract painters and a member of the group of avant-garde artists who were in the intimate circle of Alfred Stieglitz, Dove combined in his career the culturally conflicting realms of art for art's sake and commercial illustration.

Arthur Garfield Dove was born on 2 August 1880 to prosperous, conservative parents, Anna Elizabeth and William George Dove, in Canandaigua, New York, where his father was serving a two-year term as county clerk. The Doves named their son after the Republican vice-presidential and presidential candidates of that year. William George Dove was a building contractor and manufacturer of bricks in Geneva, New York, where the family returned...