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Lot Essay
'I feel that some of the photography being done in America today is more living, more vital, than the painting and I know that there are other painters who agree with me,' wrote Georgia O’Keeffe in the early 1920s. 'Compared to the painter the photographer has no established traditions to live on... He must gain all the respect he is to have by what he himself can actually do' (Naef, In Focus: Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs from J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995, p. 56).
In 1890, when Stieglitz returned to the United States after his studies in Berlin with acclaimed photochemist Professor Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, the young artist became a partner at the Heliochrome Company, a photoengraving business in New York. Stimulated by his recent studies, he intrepidly experimented with various photographic chemicals, refining his technique for photographic processes including the photogravure. The fine works by Stieglitz that are included in this collection exemplify some of his most accomplished prints in several media, perhaps most notably the photogravure.
Around this time Stieglitz also worked as an editor for several photography journals including American Amateur Photographer and Camera Notes. Eventually, he would resign as editor of these publications and focus his attention on the new, independent quarterly, Camera Work, which he founded in 1902. By this point in Stieglitz's career he was already an internationally famous photographer and supremely adept at the photogravure process. Camera Work famously valued the quality of its reproductions higher than any other journal of the era. In most of the issues that were published, a description of the printing methods employed in the issue was included in the beginning pages.
From the mid-1890s until the mid-1910s Stieglitz created sumptuous photogravures of his photographs, such as the print in the present lot. When this print was offered with Phillips in 1980, it was accompanied by a note stating that, according to the original recipient of this work as a gift from the artist in 1915, Stieglitz had planned for this print to be added to a group that he, Edward Steichen and Georgia O'Keeffe, among others, would contribute works to as a 'time capsule' to be buried on the grounds of the artist's Lake George home. The plan was never fulfilled.
This image was produced by Stieglitz originally as part of an advertisement for Goerz lenses. Greenough locates another photogravure of this image in the Stieglitz Collection at The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Greenough, The Key Set, p. 153).
The layered paper mount and overmat, with Stieglitz's signature and date, make the present lot a unique treatment by the artist for this image.
In 1890, when Stieglitz returned to the United States after his studies in Berlin with acclaimed photochemist Professor Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, the young artist became a partner at the Heliochrome Company, a photoengraving business in New York. Stimulated by his recent studies, he intrepidly experimented with various photographic chemicals, refining his technique for photographic processes including the photogravure. The fine works by Stieglitz that are included in this collection exemplify some of his most accomplished prints in several media, perhaps most notably the photogravure.
Around this time Stieglitz also worked as an editor for several photography journals including American Amateur Photographer and Camera Notes. Eventually, he would resign as editor of these publications and focus his attention on the new, independent quarterly, Camera Work, which he founded in 1902. By this point in Stieglitz's career he was already an internationally famous photographer and supremely adept at the photogravure process. Camera Work famously valued the quality of its reproductions higher than any other journal of the era. In most of the issues that were published, a description of the printing methods employed in the issue was included in the beginning pages.
From the mid-1890s until the mid-1910s Stieglitz created sumptuous photogravures of his photographs, such as the print in the present lot. When this print was offered with Phillips in 1980, it was accompanied by a note stating that, according to the original recipient of this work as a gift from the artist in 1915, Stieglitz had planned for this print to be added to a group that he, Edward Steichen and Georgia O'Keeffe, among others, would contribute works to as a 'time capsule' to be buried on the grounds of the artist's Lake George home. The plan was never fulfilled.
This image was produced by Stieglitz originally as part of an advertisement for Goerz lenses. Greenough locates another photogravure of this image in the Stieglitz Collection at The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Greenough, The Key Set, p. 153).
The layered paper mount and overmat, with Stieglitz's signature and date, make the present lot a unique treatment by the artist for this image.