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Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965)
is recognized as one of the founders of American
modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.
Born in Philadelphia, he attended the Pennsylvania
Museum School of Industrial Art, now the University of the
Arts (Philadelphia), from 1900-1903, and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he
studied under William Merritt Chase. He found
early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in
1908.[1] In
1909, he went to Paris, just
when the popularity of Cubism
was skyrocketing. Returning to the United States, he realized that
he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting.
Instead, he took up commercial photography, focusing particularly
on architectural subjects. He was a self-taught photographer,
learning his trade on a five dollar Brownie.
Sheeler owned a farmhouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania,
about 39 miles outside of Philadelphia. He shared it with artist
Morton Schamberg. He was so fond of the home's 19th century stove
that he called it his "companion" and made it a subject of his
photographs. The farmhouse serves a prominent role in many of his
photographs, including shots of the bedroom and kitchen and
stairway.. At one point he was quoted as calling it "my
cloister."
Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his
photography. He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasized the
linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his
photographic works, his subjects were generally material things
such as machinery and structures. He was hired by the Ford Motor Co. to photograph and make
paintings of their factories.
Photography and film
work
Films
Photographic
works
Paintings
Early
Works
- 1920 Church Street El, (Cleveland Museum of Art).
- 1925 Still Life.
- 1925 Lady of the Sixties, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
MA).
- 1929 Upper Deck, (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA).
- 1930 American Landscape (Museum of Modern Art, New York,
NY).
- 1931 Americana (Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, NY).
- 1931 Classic Landscape, (Mr and Mrs Barney A Ebsworth
Foundation).
- 1931 View of New York, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
MA).
- 1932 Classic Landscape,
(National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
- 1932 Interior with Stove,
(National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
- 1933 River Rouge Plant (Whitney Museum, New York, NY).
- 1934 American Interior, (Yale
University Gallery, New Haven, CT).
- 1936 City Interior (Worcester
Art Museum, Worcester, MA).
Power
series
In 1940, [Fortune (magazine)|Fortune Magazine] published a
series of six paintings of commissioned of Sheeler. To prepare for
the series, Sheeler spent a year traveling and taking photographs.
Fortune editors aimed to “reflect life through forms…[that] trace
the firm pattern of the human mind” and Sheeler chose six subjects
to fulfill this theme: a water wheel (Primitive Power), a steam turbine
(Steam Turbine), the railroad
(Rolling Power), a hydroelectric turbine (Suspended Power),
an airplane (Yankee Clipper) and a dam (Conversation: Sky and Earth) [1].
- 1939 Conversation: Sky and Earth, (Curtis Galleries,
Minneapolis, MN).
- 1939 Primitive Power, (The Regis Collection, Minneapolis,
MN).
- 1939 [2], (Smith College
Museum of Art, Northampton, MA).
- 1939 Steam Turbine, (Butler
Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH).
- 1939 Suspended Power, (Dallas
Museum of Art, Dallas, TX).
- 1939 Yankee Clipper, (Rhode Island School of
Design, Providence, RI).
Later
works
- 1940 Interior (National
Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
- 1940 Fugue, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
- 1948 Amoskeag Canal, (Currier Museum of Art, Manchester,
NH).
- c.1952 Windows, (Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York,
NY).
- 1953 New England Irrelevancies, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, MA).
- 1953 Ore Into Iron, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
MA).
- 1954 Stacks in Celebration,
(Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH)
- 1954 Architectural Cadences Number
4
- 1955 Golden Gate, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
NY).
- 1956 On a Shaker Theme, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
MA).
- 1957 Red Against White, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
MA).
- 1958 Composition Around Red, Pennsylvania (Montgomery Museum of Fine
Arts, Montgomery, Alabama)
Exhibitions
- The National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC organized Charles Sheeler: Across Media, also at
the Art Institute of Chicago from
October 7, 2006 - January 7, 2007
- The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
organized The Photography of Charles
Sheeler: American Modernist, which appeared at various
museums between 2003 and 2005, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the Detroit Institute of Arts,
and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
References
- ^
Borland, Jennifer. Finding Aid to the Charles
Sheeler Papers, circa 1840s-1966, bulk 1923-1965. Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Other
links
External
links
Notes
^ “Power: A
portfolio by Charles Sheeler”, in Fortune. Chicago: Time Inc.,
Volume XXII, Number 6, December 1940.
Further
reading
- Brock, Charles. Charles Sheeler: Across Media.
Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, in association with
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006.
- Friedman, Martin. Charles Sheeler. New York:
Watson/Guptill Publications, 1975.
- Harnsberger, R. Scott. Ten Precisionist Artists: Annotated
Bibliographies. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992.
- Lucic, Karen. Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the
Machine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Mark Rawlinson, 'Charles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and
the Borders of Abstraction.' London: IB Tauris, 2007
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