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Reconnaissance Attack, 1942, by Arkadii Soloviev
(Latvian, b. 1895) was given to Joseph E. Davies by the
Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov as a
souvenir of Davies’ 1943 diplomatic visit to the Soviet
Union on behalf of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Davies must have valued the painting as he kept
it on view in his home, and it descended to first
his daughter Eleanor and then her son, U.S.
Senator Joseph Davies Tydings.
This work joins the collection of 89 Russian
paintings that Davies, the ambassador to the
Soviet Union 1936–1938, and his wife Marjorie
Merriweather Post acquired during their first
year in Moscow and sent back to his alma mater,
the University of Wisconsin, in 1937. The Davies
Collection also includes 23 Russian icons that
Davies acquired through Josef Stalin’s personal
intervention and with the assistance of a
Tretyakov Gallery curator.
In a letter that accompanies the painting,
Molotov writes, “On behalf of myself I send you a
small painting by the Artist Soloviev, ‘Attack By
Reconnaissance Party’ which in some measure
recalls the present war and the heroism of the
ABOVE: Arkadii Soloviev (Latvian, b. 1895), Reconnaissance Attack, 1942, oil on panel, 20 1/2 x 33 3/4 in.,
museum funds purchase, 2019.6 people of our army.” Molotov also mentions in the same
LEFT: Petah Coyne (American b. 1953), Untitled 1378 (Zelda Fitzgerald), 1997–2013, specially formulated wax,
pigment, silk flowers*, 81 1/5 x 37 ¾ x 35 ¾ in., Joen Greenwood Endowment Fund purchase, 2018.39a-b himself: “a Soviet Tommy gun and a German light hand
letter the gifts presented to Davies by Joseph Stalin
machine gun from trophies of the Red Army.”
Davies Collection
Grows Eighty Years On