?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
BRETT WESTON (1911-1993) Cactus. 1933. Silver print, the image measuring 9½x5¼ inches (24.1x13.3 cm.), the mount 15x13¼ inches (38.1x33.6 cm.), with Weston's signature and date in pencil on mount recto.
Provenance A California Collection
This rich, vintage silver print is one of Brett Weston's earliest masterpieces. Made when Brett was just 22-years-old, a year after his solo retrospective at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, this image bears all the hallmarks of a pared-down, potently austere Weston photograph. Brett's father, Edward, made similar compositions of palm trunks in Mexico a decade earlier, which likely impressed Brett as a teenager. This important print is accompanied by a sheet annotated by Bob Byers, a good friend and traveling companion of Brett's, from whose collection this print originates. This print is also accompanied by a letter from Brett to Byers confirming that this is a vintage print, made soon after the negative was developed. Around 1990, Byers mounted on museum board many of Brett's contact prints, all of which are vintage despite being mounted later.
