“In looking at a picture one does not see the familiar, the already known … one sees a new subject, a new experience,” wrote Stuart Davis in his journal. Composition with Winch reveals how the artist experimented with abstraction to pursue a new way of painting. Based on observations of the working harbor in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Davis translated the ropes and rigging of the port into a maze of thick black lines. The dynamic geometry provided a new visual vocabulary that Davis believed could best express contemporary experience.