?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 60,000 - $ 90,000
ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864-1946) Spring Showers -- The Street-Cleaner. 1900-01. Platinum print, the image measuring 5½x2 inches (14x5 cm.), flush mounted.
Provenance Ex-Collection Nancy Newhall
Taken on Madison Avenue near 23rd Street, the image reflects Stieglitz's interest in the tonal effects produced by making photographs in rain or snow. The Alfred Stieglitz Key Set at the National Gallery of Art includes the photogravure and silver print examples of this image (numbers 269, 270, 271, and 272), but not a platinum print. It is alternatively titled Street Sweeper--Little Tree.
Rather than depicting a bustling, hectic urban environment, Stieglitz's composition of the small figure of the worker juxtaposed with the fenced tree seems to convey something of a fragile balance between people, nature, and the rapidly changing urban setting.
