Feb 25, 2020 - Sale 2531

Sale 2531 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 12,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
CHARLES SHEELER (1883-1965)
Buggy in a Barn, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (Christmas card). Sepia-toned silver print, the image measuring 3 1/4x4 5/8 inches (8.3x11.7 cm.), the mount 8x6 1/2 inches (20.3x16.5 cm.), with the printed inscription "Christmas Greetings, 1928, Katharine Sheeler, Charles Sheeler." 1915-17; printed 1928
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Additional Details

From Charles Sheeler; to his friend Earl Horter, an American painter and collector of European Cubist paintings; to an American Collector.

Buggy in a Barn is among Sheeler's earliest photographs and was executed during the same period as his iconic images Side of the White Barn and Doylestown Interior, Bucks County (Open Window). Each of these formal studies have been dated alternatively 1915 and 1917. In this instance, however, Sheeler's photographic composition is more complex. Although the buggy is, ostensibly, the subject of the photograph, the framing devices and illusionistic, repetitive rectilinear forms in the foreground reflect the practice of a sophisticated artist at work. In 1932 Sheeler created a charcoal drawing from this image; the artwork is housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The image is reproduced in Charles W. Millard III, "Charles Sheeler, American Photographer," Contemporary Photographer, vol. 6, no. 1., 1968, n.p.