In addition to his many talents as a photographer, painter, designer, and curator, Edward Steichen was an accomplished horticulturist, breeding a wide array of flowering plants in his gardens in France and, later, in Connecticut. Most famously, Steichen began a series of photographs of sunflowers in the early 1920s that he called From Seed to Seed, from which the photograph offered her comes. In 1929, poet Carl Sandburg caught the essence of Steichen’s work during this period: ‘To ramble through fifty or a hundred of his photographs is to come in touch with something of the world of art and the world of science and then something else beyond those worlds, for which we do not have words. . . Imagine the days and months of toil and enthusiasm necessary to photograph The Life of the Sunflower, from germinating seed to the seed pod of successive generations. . . This is the joining of artist and naturalist.’
Provenance
Acquired directly from the photographer; private collector, associated with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, 1930s
George Rinhart, Patterson, North Carolina
Sotheby's, New York, 7 April 1995, lot 22Literature
Steichen, A Life in Photography, pl. 78
Joanna Steichen, Steichen's Legacy Photographs 1895-1973, pl. 303
FIGURE + FORM: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
331
Backbone and Ribs of a Sunflower
circa 1920
Gelatin silver print.
7¾ x 9⅝ in. (19.7 x 24.4 cm)
'Photograph by Steichen, 80 West 40th Street, New York' credit stamp on the reverse of the mount.
Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000
Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com
Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com
Photographs
New York Auction 5 April 2024
244
This lot is no longer available.
270
This lot is no longer available.
277
This lot is no longer available.
