Edward Steichen’s Double Sunflower, a triumphant synthesis of aesthetics and craft, is from the series Sunflowers from Seed to Seed in which the photographer documented the lifecycle of the flowering plant. This image, with its delicate circular array of diaphanous petals set within an elegantly simplified composition, is a standout from the series. Early prints of this image, such as the one offered here, are exceedingly rare. As of this writing, only two prints have been located in institutional collections, both gelatin silver prints, at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Imagine the days and months of toil and enthusiasm necessary to photograph The Life of the Sunflower, from the germinating seed to the seed pod of potential successive generations. He was registering the facts of natural phenomena and carrying on a quest for art forms and working standards. This is the joining up of artist and naturalist.”
—Carl Sandburg

In addition to his many talents as a photographer, painter, designer, and curator, Edward Steichen was an accomplished horticulturist, breeding a wide array of flowering plants in his gardens in France and, later, in Redding, Connecticut. Many of these became subject matter for Steichen’s art, including his 1920 tempera and oil painting Le Tournesol (The Sunflower) now in the National Gallery of Art, and his now-iconic photograph, Heavy Roses, Voulangis. Steichen began his series of photographs of sunflowers in the early 1920s. Steichen considered Double Sunflower exemplary of the series and included in his first monograph, Steichen the Photographer, published in 1929.

Edward Steichen, Le Tournesol, c. 1920. © 2024 The Estate of Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This photograph offered here, rendered in the lush warm tones of the palladium process, is emblematic of Steichen’s unparalleled skills as a photographic printer. In his expert handling, the sunflower’s profusion of petals seems to glow; the print combines the descriptive power of photography with the expressive potential of palladium. In photographic applications, palladium has many of the same qualities as platinum. When the availability of platinum became limited during and after World War I, photographers had to transition to palladium. Few photographers explored the creative capabilities of palladium printing as successfully as Steichen.

Double Sunflower in Steichen the Photographer (1929)

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, and it is possible that the print offered here was used by Sandburg in preparation for that book. Steichen and Sandburg 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.
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- Description
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- Provenance
  The photographer to Carl Sandburg
  By descent to his daughter, Helga Sandburg
- Literature
  Sandburg, Steichen the Photographer (1929), n.p.
  Joanna Steichen, Steichen's Legacy: Photographs 1895-1973, pl. 299
  Santa Barbara Museum of Art, An Eclectic Focus: Photographs from the Vernon Collection, cover and p. 54