As in the artist’s The Moon Path, 1910-15 (private collection), a ghostly nude figure dances on a pool of moonlit water. Like the nude figures that recline on the ledges in some of Daingerfield’s Grand Canyon paintings, this dancer is symbolic, in this case of the quality and poetry of moonlight. An early champion of Ryder, Daingerfield was a symbolist painter who evoked concepts and feelings through his imaginary subjects. As Ryder and Blakelock tried to do, Daingerfield sought, in The Temple Dancer, to achieve richly colored, enamellike surfaces by the extensive use of glazes.
