Still Life in Interior

Arts of the Americas

1920–22

Preston Dickinson
American, 1889–1930

A leading American modernist painter, Preston Dickinson was exposed to French avant-garde art while studying in Paris between 1911 and 1914. Pictures such as Still Life in Interior demonstrate his interest in the tension between representation and abstraction. Here Dickinson depicted magazines, a sake bottle, a tea canister painted with Japanese figures, and a cup and saucer. His composition employs a tilted perspective reminiscent of Paul Cézanne’s still lifes, a Cubist fracturing of space, and the bold, complementary colors typical of American Synchromists like Stanton MacDonald-Wright. Dickinson achieved great critical success in the 1920s but died of pneumonia at the age of 41.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Preston Dickinson
Title: Still Life in Interior
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1920–1922
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed upper right: P. Dickinson
Dimensions: 71.1 × 50.8 cm (28 × 20 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
Reference Number: 2004.488

Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art: The First Year (Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, 2002), cat. 9, ill.
Thomas Holman, “Preson Dickinson (1889–1930): Paintings and Drawings,” (Zabriskie Gallery, 2002), n.p.
Annual Report (Art Insitute of Chicago, 2004–2005), p. 16 (ill. p. 22).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of CHicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 31.

Zabriskie Gallery, New York, Preston Dickinson (1889–1930): Paintings and Drawings, Sept. 10–Oct. 26, 2002, no cat.

The Downtown Gallery, New York; to private collection, New Rochelle, New York, about 1949-50 to 1999; consigned to Richard York Gallery, New York; sold to private collection, New York, 1999; consigned to Menconi & Schoelkopf, New York, 2001; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2004.

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