Leda and the Dioscuri

Arthur Bowen Davies, artist

1862–1928

Leda and the Dioscuri, circa 1905

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: canvas; oil

Dimensions:
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 66.04 x 101.6 cm
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 26 x 40 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 32 x 46 1/4 x 2 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Peter T. Bohan Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2014.0138

Not on display

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Arthur B. Davies was president of the ad-hoc organization responsible for the famous Armory Show of modern art in New York in 1913. His own paintings, however, were more traditional than the headline-grabbing works shown by his European contemporaries. Today Davies is best known for paintings of female nudes, subjects often drawn from Greek or Roman mythology and arranged in ballet poses modeled by his mistress Edna Potter, a modern dancer with the Isadora Duncan troupe.
Less well known is his work from a 1905 trip to California, Davies’s sole excursion to the American West. For years after that visit, images of high Sierra peaks haunted his imagination and his art. In this painting Davies poses the Greek goddess Leda and her twin sons Castor and Pollux, known as the Dioscuri, before a dark watery expanse and distant mountainous profile. The combination suggests a “Leda at Lake Tahoe” effect and gives new meaning to the clichéd “mythic West.” CCE