Ipswich Days

Arthur Wesley Dow and His Home Town

Fairbrother Trevor

Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) is renowned for his paintings and prints that take their subject matter from nature and reflect the orderly design and fine handcrafting championed by the Arts & Crafts movement. This charming book presents an important discovery – a previously undocumented album titled Ipswich Days that comprises forty-one cyanotypes that Dow produced in 1899. Dedicated to his poet-friend Everett Stanley Hubbard, "Ipswich Days" offers a fresh new look at Dow's attention to the abstract aspects of form, colour, and cropping in the creation of his designs while documenting his deep personal attachment to his rural and historic hometown. "Ipswich Days" analyzes this album and its significance in the artist's career. Each of the images, depicting Ipswich's clam shanties, marshes, farms, people, trees, flowers, and boats alike, is handsomely reproduced and reflects the beauty that Dow saw and uniquely interpreted in this quintessentially New England town.

About the Author

Trevor Fairbrother is an independent scholar and curator. Formerly at the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he is author of "Painting Summer in New England" and "John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist", both published by Yale.

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