?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
EDWARD STEICHEN Child Seated in a Garden.
Oil on canvas, 1905. 535x635 mm; 21x25 inches. Signed and dated in Roman numerals in oil, lower right recto.
Provenance: Charles Miller (1843-1927), Franklin, Pennsylvania; thence by descent to current owner, private collection, Seattle.
Miller was a prominent businessman in the oil industry in Western Pennsylvania who organized the Galena Oil Company, which eventually became a subsidiary of Standard Oil, and was also president of numerous railroads. He served in the military throughout his life, first during the Civil War and later with the Pennsylvania National Guard's 2nd Brigade, eventually being promoted to major general. Additionally, Miller was involved in numerous philanthropic pursuits and served as a trustee of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Steichen (1879-1973) was born in Luxemburg and moved with his family in 1889 to Milwaukee, where he attended Pio Nono College, a Catholic boys' high school, and showed an early artistic proclivity. During the early 1900s, Steichen studied art in Paris, becoming more interested in photography than painting (the former would become his preferred medium and eventually bring him international renown) and befriending Alfred Stieglitz, with whom he created the groundbreaking Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, New York, and lead to the 291 Gallery. Notwithstanding his pioneering and significant work in photography, Steichen also produced numerous oil paintings during the early 1900s, combining Symbolist and Neo-Impressionist styles, which he exhibited at the time in both Paris and New York. Oil paintings by Steichen are also in the collections of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, Pasadena; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
