Edward Steichen - Photographs New York Friday, April 5, 2024 | Phillips
  • In Carl Sandburg’s book Steichen the Photographer, he describes Steichen titling his works ‘in the manner of Chinese painters.’ One such title mentioned by Sandburg – Pale Blue Spirals of Delphinium Early in the Morning – refers to the photograph offered here. So taken was Sandburg with this title that he paraphrased it on the verso of this print. 

     

    Edward Steichen, Installation view of Edward Steichen’s Delphiniums, The Museum of Modern Art, 1936

    In addition to Steichen’s many talents as a photographer, painter, art impresario, and curator, he was also an accomplished horticulturist. At his home in Voulangis, France, he cultivated a wide variety of flowering plants, many of which he photographed. Such were his accomplishments in this field that the French Horticultural Society awarded him a gold medal in 1913. After his return to the United States, Steichen focused his efforts on the delphinium, and devoted 10 acres on his Connecticut property to their propagation, breeding his own unique cultivars. He was made president of the American Delphinium Society in 1936 and employed three full time employees, as well as seasonal assistants, to plant and tend over fifty thousand seedlings a year (Haskell, Edward Steichen, p. 38).

     

    In 1936, The Museum of Modern Art mounted Edward Steichen’s Delphiniums, a weeklong exhibition of towering delphinium blossoms from his garden.  

     

    Seed packet for Connecticut Yankees, a Delphinium cultivar developed by Edward Steichen.

    This photograph was originally given by Edward Steichen to poet, journalist, and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. Steichen was introduced to Sandburg by his sister Lilian in 1907 on the Steichen family’s farm in Wisconsin. The two young men shared an intensity of interest in their respective fields, as well as a belief in finding an artistic voice that was distinctly American yet also emphatically new. Sandburg and Lilian Steichen married in 1908, thus cementing the personal and professional ties between the writer and photographer, ushering in a decades-long period of mutual creativity. Sandburg was a frequent subject for Steichen’s lens, and Steichen designed the jacket for Sandburg’s first book of poems. In 1929, Sandburg published Steichen The Photographer, a limited edition retrospective monograph. The two collaborated on a number of photography-related projects including the wartime Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Road to Victory. Throughout their lives, the two maintained a friendship characterized by a deep admiration of the work of the other.

    • Provenance

      The photographer to Carl Sandburg
      By descent to his daughter, Helga Sandburg

372

Delphinium

1920s
Gelatin silver print.
9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in. (24.8 x 19.1 cm)
Annotated 'pale blue spirals of delphinium early in the morning with dew on' by Carl Sandburg in pencil on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$7,000 - 9,000 

Sold for $17,780

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Photographs

New York Auction 5 April 2024