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WALKER EVANS, (American, 1903-1975), ALLIE MAE BURROUGHS,, WIFE OF A SHARECROPPER,, HALE COUNTY, ...
Currency:USD
Category:Everything Else / Other
Start Price:NA
Estimated At:100,000.00 - 150,000.00 USD
NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Apr 24 @ 19:00UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT
WALKER EVANS
(American, 1903-1975)
ALLIE MAE BURROUGHS,
WIFE OF A SHARECROPPER,
HALE COUNTY, ALABAMA
Lunn Gallery "Walker Evans" stamp
with pencil notations "I" (American Photographs, 1938) and "36" on verso
"#935" and "2 - 3" and "4.4"
inscribed in pencil on verso
gelatin silver print
image: 99/16 x 79/16 in. (24.3 x 19.2 cm)
paper (10 x 8 in. contact print):
915/16 x 715/16 in. (25.2 x 20.2 cm)
1936
ESTIMATE: $100,000-150,000
<p>PROVENANCE
From the artist to George Rinhart
Lunn Gallery/Graphics International, Ltd., WASHINGTON, D.C.
Helios Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
<p>LITERATURE
Walker Evans, AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1938, part I, pl. 14 (variant with flash illustrated)
James Agee and Walker Evans, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1941/1960/1988/2001, pl. 3 (variant tighter cropping
illustrated)
WALKER EVANS: FOURTEEN PHOTOGRAPHS, New Haven, Connecticut,
Ives-Sillman, 1971, p. 12 (illustrated)
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY, New York, Time-Life Books, 1972, p. 69 (illustrated)
WALKER EVANS: PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THE FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, 1935-1938, New York, Da Capo Press, 1973, cat. no. 250 (variant with flash illustrated)
William Stott, DOCUMENTARY EXPRESSION AND THIRTIES AMERICA, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973, portfolio section between pp. 140-141 (illustrated; variant with flash illustrated also)
WALKER EVANS: FIRST AND LAST, New York, Harper & Row, 1978, p. 73
(illustrated)
Lloyd Fonvielle, WALKER EVANS, Millerton, New York, Aperture, 1979,
p. 55 (illustrated)
Jerry L. Thompson and John T. Hill, WALKER EVANS AT WORK, New York, Harper & Row, 1982, p. 127 (illustrated in the lower left; 3 variants illustrated on the same page)
Beaumont Newhall, THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1982, 5th rev. ed., 1994, p. 240 (illustrated)
WALKER EVANS, 1903/1974, Valencia, Conselleria de Cultura, Educacio i Ciencia de la Generalitat Valenciana, 1983, p. 78 (illustrated)
WALKER EVANS: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1988 (50th anniversary reissue of 1938 publication), part I,
pl. 14 (variant with flash illustrated)
WALKER EVANS, Paris, Centre National de la Photographie, 1990, Photo Poche no. 45, pl. 42 (illustrated)
Thomas W. Southall, OF TIME & PLACE: WALKER EVANS AND WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY, Untitled no. 51, San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, 1990, p. 33 (illustrated)
Michael Brix and Birgit Mayer, eds., WALKER EVANS: AMERIKA, Munich, Schirmer/Mosel., 1991, pl. 79, cat. no. 167 (illustrated; variants illustrated as cat. nos. 165 and 166)
Michael Brix and Birgit Mayer, eds., WALKER EVANS: AMERICA, New York, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1991, pl. 79, cat. no. 167 (illustrated; variants illustrated as cat. nos. 165 and 166)
Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, WALKER EVANS: THE HUNGRY EYE, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1993, p. 177, no. 52, and p. 202 (illustrated)
Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, WALKER EVANS: LA SOIF DU REGARD, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1993, p. 177, no. 52, and p. 202 (illustrated)
Judith Keller, WALKER EVANS: THE GETTY MUSEUM COLLECTION, Malibu,
J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995, p. 165, no. 532 (illustrated; variant with flash illustrated as no. 533)
Joel Eisinger, TRACE & TRANSFORMATION: AMERICAN CRITICISM OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE MODERNIST PERIOD, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1995, p. 101 (illustrated)
Maria Morris Hambourg, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Douglas Eklund and Mia Fineman, WALKER EVANS, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, pl. 89 (illustrated)
Jeff L. Rosenheim and Douglas Eklund, UNCLASSIFIED: A WALKER EVANS ANTHOLOGY, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, p. 180
(illustrated; negative envelope with Walker Evans's annotations to print
illustrated)
Peter Galassi, WALKER EVANS AND COMPANY, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2000, p. 62, cat. no. 39 (variant with flash illustrated)
Luc Sante, WALKER EVANS: 55, London, Phaidon, 2001, p. 89 (variant with flash illustrated)
This portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs has been compared to the Mona Lisa. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Walker Evans has captured his subject in a compelling state of ambiguity. Poised between a smile and a grimace, her expression suggests both youthful innocence and wearied age. She was, in fact, only 27 years old, but her face betrays innumerable hardships, including the death of her six-month-old child. Luc Sante has commented, "Her rawboned face matches the clapboard behind her in its strong lines, its premature aging, its atavistic agelessness, its balancing of resilience and fragility, deplorable battering and paradoxical beauty" (Luc Sante, WALKER EVANS: 55, London, Phaidon, 2001, p. 88).
The practice of making a bust-length portrait against a wall with a large-format camera has been likened to pinning a butterfly on a mount. James Agee, for instance, described Evans working with an 8 x 10 camera as follows: "Walker setting up the terrible structure of the tripod crested by the black square heavy head, dangerous as that of a hunchback, of the camera; stooping beneath cloak and cloud of wicked cloth, and twisting buttons; a witchcraft preparing, colder than keenest ice, and incalculably cruel" (James Agee and Walker Evans, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, Boston, Mariner Books, 1941/2001, p. 322).
Despite such chilly calculation, Evans was a superb portraitist who established a special rapport with his subjects. He clearly allowed Allie Mae Burroughs to reveal her inner strength. As Lionel Trilling commented in his review of the book LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, "The gaze of the woman returning our gaze checks our pity.... In this picture, Mrs. Gudger [Allie Mae Burroughs] with all her misery and perhaps with her touch of pity for herself, simply refuses to be an object of your 'social consciousness'; she refuses to be an object at all - everything in the picture proclaims her to be all subject" (Lionel Trilling, "Greatness with One Fault in It," KENYON REVIEW, vol. 4, no. 1 [Winter 1942], p. 100).
In the summer of 1936, Evans took a two-month leave from the work he was doing for the Farm Security Administration. He joined his friend James Agee in preparing a story on Alabama sharecroppers for FORTUNE magazine. The subject was dear to Agee, and Evans welcomed the opportunity to document this subject without restraint. Their combined effort proved too long and unconventional for publication in FORTUNE, but was eventually transformed into LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, a landmark book published in 1941. The book combined text and photographs to document the lives of three tenant farmers and their families. Allie Mae Burroughs, her husband and their children constitute one of these families. The families of her father and aunt form the rest of the study.
Evans made four exposures of Allie Mae. The variant that is often reproduced was made with a flash, close to the camera lens. This approach softened shadows, flattened out the subject's face and added a point of light reflected in the eyes. In opposition to the skewed eyebrows in the present work, her head is tilted so that the eyebrows line up parallel with the lines of the boards behind her head. The flash portrait is also distinguished by a less ambiguous smile on Allie Mae's face. That version was reproduced in Evans's book AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, and the negative was sent to the FSA file. One of the terms of Evans's leave was that he was obliged to send his negatives to the FSA. But Evans saved the negative of the present version and used it for LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN. The basis of this decision is not entirely clear. Perhaps Evans felt that the version with a more obvious smile and more orderly design was more acceptable for the arguably propagandistic purposes of the FSA. It does possess an agreeable pleasantness that seems more superficial than this rich, brooding masterpiece.
Prints from this negative, in excellent condition and with a full tonal range, such as the present work, are extremely rare.
Auction Location:
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Previewing Details:
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