
1922–1923
Henry Varnum Poor originally trained as a painter in California but turned to pottery for economic reasons. In his abstracted earthenware decoration, Poor made use of his skills as a draftsman, emphasizing the simplified forms of Modernism to which he was drawn. This plate reveals the artist’s debt to the French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne in its fluid arrangement of forms along the table edge and the flatness of the composition.