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PHILLIPS MEMORIAL GALLARY
1600 TWENTY-FIRST STREET
WASHINGTON, D.C

DUNCAN PHILLIPS, Director
C.LAW WATKINS, Associate Director
ELMIRA BIER, Manager of Publications

December 31, 1931

Mr. Arther G. Dove,
Halesite,
New York.

Dear Mr. Dove:
I was glad to get your letter for it is a joy to get in touch with you personally and I am happy if what you say is true, that my encouragement and the purchases I have made of your work have been a help to you in devoting all your time to painting. I only wish that the depression had not hit me so hard for I would so much enjoy having a Dove exhibition in our Gallery this year and making an addition to our collection of your intensely vital work which I like more and more as time goes on. I have a little room in which all your paintings hang in my house and there they are hung to perfect advantage. "Golden Storm" and "Snow Thaw" are hung directly opposite a window so that the light strikes just right in order to bring out the gleam of gold in the "Golden Storm" and the radiations in the sky of "Snow Thaw, also its glitter of ice in the foreground. I am going to put a little label on the back of each of these pictures stating that they should always be hung opposite windows so that they will show what you have done with pigment and gold leaf as an emotional means of expression.
In regard to your very kind concern about "Golden Storm" and its present condition I am glad to be able to tell you that so far as I can see it is not darkening and that, hung properly, it still gives an undiminished thrill. To be sure it has changed from exposure to the atmosphere. I have examined it closely and I am able to report on its exact condition. The dark parts are not too dark. The gold and copper areas show a slight mottled and dappled effect. It resembles the effect of rain drops in wet sand. The question of course is - will the burnish gradually lose its incandescence as the tarnsh increases and spreads it mottled film. If it stays at it is now the picture will be o.k. for the effect under proper conditions of light is very fine. I am so enthusiastic about conception and execution that I would not wish [crossed out]us[/crossed out]to give up the picture even if it is destined to gradual deterioration. I would rather buy other examples in the future in which perhaps you get the same effect with more permanent color. We are sailing for the Mediterranean in February and I fear we will miss your exhibition this year. Perhaps upon my return in the early summer I can go up to see you for I would love to have a chance to meet you as I feel that I really understand what you are trying to do and I am deeply sympathetic with it. By the way,  I was asked to write an article on American painting for the French magazine Fromes and I