Plate with Still Life
1922–23
Henry Varnum Poor (American, 1888–1970) New City, New York
New City
Henry Varnum Poor originally trained as a painter in California but turned to pottery for economic reasons. In his abstracted earthenware decoration, Poor made use of his skills as a draftsman, emphasizing the simplified forms of Modernism to which he was drawn. This plate reveals the artist’s debt to the French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne in its fluid arrangement of forms along the table edge and the flatness of the composition.
Earthenware (red bodied), slip, colored underglaze decoration, and tin glaze