The Dawning
This conversation is connected to The Dawning.
Four nude female figures occupy a pale lavender-gray space, with one standing at the center with arms raised, one seated in the foreground with her back to the viewer, one at the left in a twisting pose, and one at the upper right bending forward. The figures are painted in muted tones of white, gray-lavender, and pale gold, with dark accents of navy blue, olive green, and small patches of color at the edges. The composition is fractured into angular planes — Cubist structure holding classical figures. The palette is almost monochromatic: everything in the lavender-gray register, with the bodies barely distinguishable from the background. This is late Davies, the period after the 1913 Armory Show, when he began absorbing Cubism and Futurism into his Symbolist figure compositions.