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EDWARD WESTON, (American, 1886-1958), CHARD, signed, dated, initialed and numbered "11/50" in pen...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:50,000.00 - 70,000.00 USD
EDWARD WESTON, (American, 1886-1958), CHARD, signed, dated, initialed and numbered  11/50  in pen...
EDWARD WESTON
(American, 1886-1958)
CHARD
signed, dated, initialed and numbered "11/50" in pencil below image on mount
gelatin silver print
mounted on board
91/2 x 71/4 in. (24.1 x 18.4 cm)
mount: 133/4 x 1615/16 in. (35 x 43 cm)
1927
ESTIMATE: $50,000-70,000
<p>PROVENANCE
Brett Weston
Private Collection, UNITED STATES
Private Collection, EUROPE
<p>LITERATURE
Elizabeth Bingham, "Photographs by Edward Weston," SATURDAY NIGHT, October 15, 1927, n.p. (illustrated)
CREATIVE ART, August 1928, p. xxxiv (illustrated)
Amy Conger, EDWARD WESTON: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, Tucson, Center for Creative Photography, 1992, fig. 547/1927 (illustrated)
Gilles Mora, ed., EDWARD WESTON: FORMS OF PASSION, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1995, p. 138, fig. 4 (illustrated)
Gilles Mora, ed., EDWARD WESTON: FORMES DE LA PASSION, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1995, p. 138, fig. 4 (illustrated)
Weston's modernist vision took a new turn in 1927, when he concentrated on nudes and still-lifes of natural objects such as shells, fruits and vegetables. In her introduction to the second volume of Weston's DAYBOOKS, Nancy Newhall described this development as follows. "In her [Henrietta Shore's] studio he first saw and photographed a chambered nautilus. Its nacreous spiraling beauty blended in his thought with the nudes he was making of a dancer; he felt 'a freshened tide swelling within myself.' He began to see 'finely moving rhythms' everywhere. 'Green peppers in the market stopped me; they were amazing in every sense of the word - the three purchased. But a tragedy took place - Brett ate two of them!' Curving clusters of bananas, subtle ovoids of cantaloupes, melons, gourds, sculptural chard, cabbages - his multitudinous vegetable loves proved anything but inert. They grew or wilted during the long exposures necessary in studio light with the slow films of the time; they showed the strain while they waited day after day, during a rush of business, for him to return" (Nancy Newhall, "Introduction," THE DAYBOOKS OF EDWARD WESTON: VOLUME II: CALIFORNIA, New York, Horizon Press, 1966, p. x).
In his daybook entry for August 12, 1927, Weston made note of his first encounter with the subject of this photograph. "I spotted a Swiss chard in the Japanese Market, so fine in color, form, livingness that I bought it at once, and made two negatives: one is good - but last eve I saw another even finer, which shall serve me today" (DAYBOOKS, p. 35, August 12, 5:00 am 1927). Fortunately, no one else had bought the chard before he returned to claim it the following day. A few days later, on August 16th, he commented approvingly on this photograph. "The second Swiss chard, which was a solid, sculpture-like head, and almost white, I did against a light ground, standing alone with no accessories. It pleases me" (DAYBOOKS, p. 35).
Indeed, so pleased was Weston that he included a print in his exhibition later that year at the Los Angeles Museum. Critic Elizabeth Bingham singled the picture out in her review of the show. "In 'Swiss Chard', ...he has reached a perfection astonishing to all who mistrust photography as an art medium. In form, in delicate tracery of pattern, in the sense of plastic relief and indication of motion, as of a frieze, it might easily be compared to a Greek vase. Yet the photograph indicates in addition to the softness, the living quality of the green and fragile" (Elizabeth Bingham, "Photographs by Edward Weston," SATURDAY NIGHT, October 15, 1927).
Weston's printing log in his archives at the Center for Creative Photography records only 11 prints having been made of this negative.