Alfred Stieglitz - The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1 New York Monday, April 3, 2017 | Phillips

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy...

New York 3 April 2017

  • Provenance

    Doris Bry, New York, 1994

  • Literature

    Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set (Volume One), no. 806

  • Catalogue Essay

    "One of Stieglitz’s most impressive qualities as an artist was his ability to learn from younger artists . . . In his thirties he learned from Steichen and Clarence White; in his forties he learned from Alvin Langdon Coburn; at fifty he learned his greatest lesson, from the first mature work of Paul Strand and perhaps that of Charles Sheeler. At an age when most artists are content to refine the discoveries of their youth, Stieglitz, had not yet begun his best work." - John Szarkowski, Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George

    The rolling landscape and open skies of Lake George provided Alfred Stieglitz with an ideal environment in which to experiment and to perfect his Modernist vision. This photograph was made near the Stieglitz family summer home in the 1920s, and is a rare example of one his earliest cloud studies. Like his series Music—A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, Stieglitz made this image with an 8 x 10-inch view camera. The large format allowed for a contact print in which the contours of the land and the formations of the clouds are beautifully described.

    Stieglitz would switch to the smaller-format handheld Graflex camera for his sky views in 1923, and focus almost exclusively on clouds. The Equivalents he produced were smaller in format and very different in tone and intent from the image offered here.

    In Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, Sarah Greenough locates only one other print of this image: in the National Gallery of Art.

20

Alfred Stieglitz

Lake George

1922
Gelatin silver print, flush-mounted and mounted again.
7 1/2 x 9 in. (19.1 x 22.9 cm)

Estimate
$70,000 - 90,000 

Contact Specialist
Caroline Deck
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairman, Americas

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1

New York 3 April 2017