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

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

January 22, 1934

Mr. Arthur G. Dove,
Geneva, Route III, 
New York.

Dear Arthur Dove:

I am anxious to hear whether you have applied to the New York Regional Committee of the Public Works of Art Project. Unless and Until you do apply it is obvious that you could not be put on the payroll. I went beyond discretion and also beyond my local jurisdiction in telling Mrs. Force and Mr. Washburn, of the Beffalo Museum, that for personal reasons you could not leave Geneva and urging Mr. Washburn to go to you to see what you were doing. I did tell him however that you would write to him putting in your application. The fact that I have not heard from him would seem to indicate that you have not done so. it may be that you have no desire and no immediately urgent need to get into this work and that it would be irksome to you to paint under pressure and submit to the criticism of local committees compelled to check up on your progress. It may be that you would prefer to go on in your own way painting for your next exhibition but carrying out the large decorative painting which would do for a wall decoration whenever Government authorities have the sense to buy it for that purpose. I am told that the ultimate decoration for the Federal Buildings, for which there is a separate appropriation, will give opportunities to many of our best painters and that the various chairmen of the Regional Committees will have something to say about the selection of the artists. You can rest assured that I will do my utmost to have you selected for some painting in Washington. I suggest that you let me have your new decoration for exhibition in the Phillips Memorial Gallery and also some of your later paintings of smaller size. If our finances will permit I would like very much to renew the arrangement we have had during the past year. i only wish our subsidy could be a little larger and I am in hopes that if we succeed in selling some pictures which we have for sale we will be able to buy outright some of your new work. I am going to New York tomorrow for a few days and I will go to see Stieglitz and talk with him about you. It would be great if you just happened to be in town at that time as I am so anxious to meet you. Best regards to you and Mrs. Dove, 

As ever
Duncan Phillips
DP.E