In 1987, William C. Dove, the son of acclaimed abstract painter Arthur Dove, gifted the Carter a selection of 48 works on paper by his father. Created between 1940 and 1946, the works date to when Dove was living in a small waterfront cottage in Centerport, New York, with his wife, the painter Helen Torr. At the time, heart and kidney problems left Dove confined largely to the small cottage and its immediate environs. Undeterred, he painted almost daily, creating hundreds of studies as well as a few fully finished canvases.

These studies are small; most are just 3-by-4 inches. Yet they are technically intricate, revealing complex experiments with oil, watercolor, and wax emulsion techniques. In these works, Dove explored abstract forms and compositions, but he also tested layering methods, pigment types, and color effects, continually refining his skills until his death at 66.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)