This is a story about the history of a  painting: its artist, its provenance in Lewis  County, and the mystery or two that still  attaches to it here. 

Arthur B. Davies was born in Utica on  September 26, 1862. He showed remarkably  great skill as an artist at a very early age. At the  height of his career he was highly successful  and respected internationally and possibly the  best-known American artist, though today he is  hardly known by the general public. In the first  decade of the 20th century, he was a leading  figure of “The Eight,” a group of independent  artists that staged traveling exhibitions around  the country. He also was important in the politics  of the art world and, with other artists in The  Eight, founded the Association of American  Painters and Sculptors in 1911. As association  president, Davies was the leading organizer of  the renowned Armory Show of 1913 in New York  City. Officially called the International Exhibition  of Modern Art, the controversial show was  instrumental in introducing modern art to the  United States and trends that were happening  with the arts in Europe at that time and in  encouraging a new art movement on this side of  the Atlantic. 

Arthur B. Davies also had a darker side. In 1892, he married Lucy Virginia Meriwether, a  medical doctor and descendant of Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark team that explored  the American west after the Louisiana Purchase. The couple had bought a farm in Congers in the  lower Hudson Valley with her family’s money and her family had arranged a prenuptial agreement  because they felt that Davies, as an artist, would not amount to anything. He probably didn’t know  at the time that his bride had shot and killed her first husband not long after their honeymoon! Turns out she and her sister had eloped together  from Alabama with their future husbands. Virginia’s marriage didn’t turn out so well and  she soon returned home. Lowe Davis, her  reportedly opium-addicted, gambling husband,  followed and stalked her. At a Tennessee spa  where Virginia was mentally recuperating from  her honeymoon from hell, he pulled a gun and  threatened her, but she got off a shot first with  a pistol she carried— which a highly distraught  Lowe had handed over to Virginia’s mother two  days before. He died two days later, having  admitted the shooting was all his fault.  

Arthur and Virginia had four children. The couple drifted apart but remained married for the rest of Arthur’s life. However, Davies lived secretly for about 25 years with Edna Potter, a studio model and his mistress who became his common-law wife. In October 1905, they  began living together permanently in Manhattan  under an assumed name as Mr. and Mrs. David  A. Owen. They had one child. Edna knew of  Virginia but Virginia knew nothing of Edna and  her daughter with Davies until after Davies died in  October 1928 in Florence, Italy. 

A Gift from the Artist

G. Byron Bowen was born on January  23, 1897. He was involved in a great many  businesses and organizations, including service  as president and member of the Lowville  Academy school board and Lowville Free  Library board; director of the Constable Hall Association; elder of First Presbyterian Church;  Boy Scout troopmaster; president of the Lowville  and Beaver River Railroad, among several other  local and regional organizations and businesses  in which he was active. He was Lewis County  historian at the time of his death in Lowville on  April 21,1969, and author of “History of Lewis County, New York, 1880-1965,” published the  year after his death.

Mr. Bowen was president of the former Black River National Bank, the third generation of his family to lead the Lowville bank, which would later become the National Bank of Northern New York following its merger with Watertown National Bank. It was in that position  in the winter of 1966 that I came to know him.  I had in high school done some work for the  Bowen family and Mr. Bowen had taken some  interest in paintings I had done at that time. In his position at the National Bank (now Key Bank), he offered me their space to hold an art show, which I did in April 1966. He also showed me his art collection, which included a small watercolor painting that had been a gift to him directly from Arthur B. Davies, and told me the story of how that came to be.  

It seems that Mr. Bowen and Mr. Davies’ son had befriended one another while the artist and  his family were vacationing in the Castorland area. Now the Castorland area is a perfectly nice place to visit, but I don’t know why a  world-famous artist happened to choose there. I don’t have an exact date, but some evidence would put it in the early 1920s, at which time Mr.  Bowen was associated with his father’s produce company, F.J. Bowen and Son. The painting  itself is a pleasant small watercolor of the Tuscan  landscape in Italy that Davies frequented around  the time the picture was gifted and where he died. Though unsigned, it is unmistakably in the style of Davies.  

After Mr. Bowen’s death in 1969, the painting  remained in the family in Lowville, where his  daughter Irene showed it to me several times and retold the story. After Irene’s passing in December 2021, we were able to locate and purchase the painting —  being the only ones, apparently, who knew its significance. Another twist in the story: the ‘B.’ in Arthur B. Davies stands for Bowen, even though Mr. Bowen claimed no relation to the Davies and what brought the  Davies to Castorland remains a mystery.  

Hamish Davey is a Lowville business owner and real estate investor and a past president of  the Lewis County Historical Society, where he  continues to serve on the board of directors.

Reprinted from the 2022 Lewis County Historical Society Annual Journal