Edwin Dickinson - Ruin at Daphne

Dickinson's major painting of the 1940s, a work that he worked on between 1943 and 1953, was Ruin at Daphne, inspired by the Roman ruins that had impressed him on his European visit. Dickinson wanted to dedicate the picture to his brother Burgess, an intention he had harbored long before the painting began. On a canvas covered with a red-brown ground, he began a detailed perspective drawing in pencil that he then modeled with three values of the red-brown paint. He was excited about the challenge posed by having to invent the buildings, which permitted him compositional freedom to indulge in a complex interplay of form much like that permitted to a purely abstract painter.

In 1949, Elaine de Kooning wrote an article on the painting for ARTnews, illustrated with photographs documenting its progression through various alterations and transformations. The article had a significant role in gaining wider recognition for Dickinson. Only in early 1952 did Dickinson finally begin to overpaint the preliminary reds and pinks in which he had worked out the picture's design. Working from the center outwards, he had only painted perhaps 30 per cent of the canvas in the new, off-gray color when, in 1954, while the painting was being moved to an exhibition, a gust of wind caught it, knocking over the men who were carrying it and tearing a hole in the lower right corner. A restorer repaired the hole but applied a coat of heavy varnish to the entire painting that interfered with further work.