In 1953, upon the request of his friends and colleagues, an ailing Edward Weston chose 830 negatives—a master set--from which his son Brett then made prints. The set, titled The Photographs of Edward Weston, spans Weston’s impressive career and helped to canonize his achievements. It is held complete only at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The Art Institute, meanwhile, received a little under one-quarter of the set as a gift in 1959 from Max McGraw, an early wildlife conservationist who knew Weston well. The pictures on offer here in lots 51, 59, 62-63, 65, and 68-69 all come from that acquisition. Already in 1951, meanwhile, the Art Institute had purchased a number of photographs from Weston using its very first photography purchase fund, established by the wife of an industrialist and amateur photographer named Stuyvesant Peabody (lot 67).

Titles include: Lake Tenaya, 1937; Wonderland of Rocks, Mojave Desert, 1937; Aspen Valley, New Mexico, 1937; Modoc Lava Beds, 1937; Bandon, Oregon, 1939