Composition With Still Life
In November 1933 Dickinson decided to put aside Woodland Scene, which he had been unable to bring to a satisfactory resolution, and began a new painting—his largest—that he eventually gave the neutral name of Composition with Still Life, 1933–1937. Work progressed steadily in 1934, except for the period Dickinson worked on Stranded Brig, followed by his hospitalization, and for two months at the beginning of 1935, when he finished up work on Woodland Scene at Esther's request. Dickinson put the painting aside in June 1935, after receiving word that his eldest brother, Howard, had been murdered in Detroit. He did little work on the painting until May 1936, and finished it November 1, 1937.
Adler found Composition with Still Life especially difficult to interpret, but thought it suggested "a picture of journey's end or of the last harbor". Driscoll recognizes water symbolism suggestive of disaster and death at sea in the imagery and relates it to shipwrecks that occurred in Provincetown, some of which he witnessed. Ward suggests that Composition with Still Life is the Dickinson work most explicitly presented as a dream through the combination of solid, detailed forms with passages that melt into gaseous substances or dissolve into one another.
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