Manierre Dawson (1887 to 1969)
Manierre Dawson studied Civil Engineering at the Armour Institute of Technology in Illinois and his work appeared to be influenced by this background. He was one of the earliest American modernists to explore non-objective abstraction. He began his career as an architectural draftsman, going to work in 1909 for the firm of Holabird and Roche, although he was also painting at the same time, having begun a series of abstract paintings that bear comparison with Kandinsky’s first non-objective works.
Dawson traveled to Europe in 1910, visiting Siena, Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Paris. In the latter city he met Gertrude Stein who purchased one of his paintings. Soon after the Chicago artist returned from his first trip to Europe in 1910 he found himself “sketching for projects, thinking much about Rubens and Tintoretto, and the Cezannes in Paris.”
As Randy J. Ploog, the leading scholar on Dawson, noted, “Beginning in January 1911, through 1912 and part of 1913, many of his works employ motifs and sometimes complete compositions borrowed from old masters but depicted in his own geometric style.”
He continued his pursuit of abstraction and became friendly with Walter Pach, who arranged for one of his paintings (a non-objective work, “Wharf Under Mountain”) to be hung at the Chicago Armory Show when it opened there in 1913. Dawson also took up sculpture about this time and abandoned architecture permanently in 1914.
Although he participated in several exhibitions in 1914, financial problems and his resentment over the ridicule of modernistic art by contemporary critics, caused him to virtually abandon art after 1914. About this time, he and his family moved to Ludington, Michigan, where he practiced fruit farming for many years.
Information courtesy of New Orleans Auction, 2005 and Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers, October 2006