Kenneth Southworth Davies

Kenneth Southworth Davies was born December 20, 1925, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Bertrand Eaves Davies and May Southworth Davies, and grew up in New Bedford, summering on Martha's Vineyard. He served in the United States Army during World War II. He attended New Bedford High School and the Massachusetts School of Fine Art before earning a B.F.A. from the Yale School of Fine Art, where he studied under Deane Keller, Rudolph Zallinger, and Lewis York.

His first solo exhibition was held at the Hewitt Gallery in New York in 1951, the same year his work appeared in the Whitney Annual. In 1962 he refocused his practice toward still life painting, and was later represented by Hirschl and Adler Galleries in New York, where his first solo exhibition was held in 1978. He went on to design three US commemorative postage stamps, for pharmacy, the American Chemical Society centennial, and the Metropolitan Opera centennial, and his work entered the collection of the White House Historical Association.

Davies taught for more than forty years at Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, where he held the titles of Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus. In 2006 the New Bedford Whaling Museum organized "Ken Davies, A Retrospective at Eighty." He died December 24, 2017, at his home in Madison, Connecticut, at age 92. He was survived by his wife, Maryann Doughan Davies, his son Barry, and his brother Donald.

Davies's reputation over six decades rested on technical precision within the American trompe l'oeil tradition, an approach that stood apart from prevailing fashions in postwar and later American painting. When one of his paintings set a sharp new auction high decades after his peak exhibition years, trade coverage in Antiques and The Arts Weekly described the work, "Clapboards and Shadows," as "an acutely rendered architectural view," language consistent with the meticulous detail that runs through his still lifes and building studies. His standing was reinforced over decades by federal commissions, by his later gallery relationship with Hirschl and Adler Galleries, and by continued institutional collecting, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and a 2006 retrospective at the New Bedford Whaling Museum marking his eightieth birthday.

Davies's auction market was, for most of his career, modest: individual paintings typically sold in the low thousands of dollars. That changed when "Clapboards and Shadows," an architectural view rendered in his precise trompe l'oeil style, sold for USD 237,500, a price trade press described as a new record for the artist against a previous high of roughly USD 11,000. The auction house and exact sale date for that result are not confirmed in available sources. No later sale has been documented above that figure as of this writing. The gap between his typical results and this single outlier sale means any one auction data point for Davies should be read with caution rather than treated as representative of the broader market.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Davies, and no current gallery or estate representative is publicly documented; his historical dealer relationship with Hirschl and Adler Galleries, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1978, and its current status is unclear. His auction market is thin, dominated by modest results, with one sale far above his typical range whose auction house and exact date are not independently confirmed, so collectors should weigh any single price against his longer sales history rather than treat it as a new baseline. His standing rests more on institutional holdings, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and several regional American museums, and on a documented teaching and commission record, than on a deep or liquid auction market.