Dunes, Oceano, 1936

Details

EDWARD WESTON (1886–1958)
Dunes, Oceano, 1936
gelatin silver print, mounted on board, printed c. 1940
initialed and dated in pencil (mount, recto); signed, titled, dated and numbered '37SO' in pencil (mount, verso)
image/sheet: 7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in. (19.3 x 24.1 cm.)
mount: 13 5/8 x 15 5/8 in. (34.5 x 39.6 cm.)

Provenance

Paul M. Hertzmann, San Francisco, California;
acquired from the above by the present owner, 2011.

Literature

James Enyeart, Edward Weston's California Landscapes, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1984, pl. 73.
Amy Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, Center for Creative Photography, 1992, fig. 941/1936.
Jennifer A. Watts (ed.), Edward Weston: A Legacy, The Huntington Library, Los Angeles, 2003, pl. 11.
Kurt Markus, Dune: Edward & Brett Weston, Kalispell, 2003, p. 5.
Judith Hochberg et al., Edward Weston: Life Work, Lodima Press, Revere, 2004, pl. 73.
Brett Abbott, In Focus: Edward Weston, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2005, pl. 74.

Special Notice

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Lot Essay

During the 1930s, the coastal sand dunes in Oceano, California were home to artists, writers and assorted misfits known collectively as the Dunites. Weston and his lover and muse at the time, Charis, stayed within this community as Weston explored the photographic potential within the spectacular dunes. This series of images from 1936 mark his greatest achievement in landscape photography. Of these, the present lot (known colloquially as 'Black Dunes') was selected by photo-historians Beaumont and Nancy Newhall for inclusion in their seminal 1958 book Masters of Photography and has been one of the most celebrated and reproduced dunes in the series.

For more information regarding Weston's dune imagery from Oceano, see lot 303. Other prints of this print reside in institutional collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; George Eastman House, Rochester; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

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