Charles Sheeler - part 4

Charles Sheeler by Alfred Eisenstaedt
The LIFE Picture Collection - Getty Images

Charles Sheeler (1883 - 1965) was born in Philadelphia. His education included instruction in industrial drawing and the applied arts at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia (1900–1903), followed by a traditional training in drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1903–6). He found early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908. He realised that he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting. Instead, he took up commercial photography, focusing particularly on architectural subjects. Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography and has been described as “quasi-photographic". He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasised the linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his photographic works, his subjects were generally material things such as machinery and structures.

This is part 4 of 5-part series on the works of Charles Sheeler.

For more biographical notes see part 1, and for earlier works see parts 1 - 3 also.

1936 Aunt Mary
gelatin silver print 19.7 x 24.1 cm

1936 City Interior aqueous
adhesive and oil on composition board
Worcester Art Museum, MA

1936 Kitchen of Governor's Palace, Williamsburg, VA
conté crayon on paper laid down on board 19.1 x 24.8 cm
Private Collection

1937 Kitchen, Williamsburg
oil on hardboard 35.5 x 25.4 cm
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

1937 Baldwin Locomotive Plant
gelatin silver print 15.9 x 22.9 cm

1937 Blue Ridge Mountains
opaque watercolour (tempera?) with graphite under drawing 24.5 x 35.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1938 Arrangement
gelatin silver print 19.1 x 23.6 cm
MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection

1938 Still Life
oil on canvas 20.3 x 22.9 cm

c1938cStill Life, Zebra Plant Leaves
gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

1938 The Upstairs
gelatin silver print 22.3 x 14.7 cm
Minneapolis Institute of Art

1938 The Upstairs
oil on canvas 50.8 x 32.8 cm
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

1938 William Carlos Williams
gelatin silver print 17.7 x 15.2 cm
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO

c1938-39 Untitled
gelatin silver print 24.2 x 18.8 cm
SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA

1939 Boulder Dam
gelatin silver print 15.9 x 23.8 cm

1939 Boulder Dam
gelatin silver print, printed 1941 17.5 x 23.5 cm
MoMA, New York  © 2020 The Lane Collection

1939 Fortune magazine cover 4 April 1939

1939 Rolling Power
oil on canvas 38.1 x 76.2 cm
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

1939 Wheels
gelatin silver print 16.8 x 24.4 cm
MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection

1939 Suspended Power
oil on canvas 83.8 x 66 cm
de Young museum, San Francisco, CA

1939 Yankee Clipper
oil on canvas 61 x 71.1 cm

1940 Conversation - Sky and Earth

In 1938, Fortune magazine commissioned Sheeler to produce a pictorial essay on the theme of power. Sheeler travelled to Nevada, New York, and Alabama, completing six paintings, including this one of Hoover Dam, located in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River on the border between Arizona and Nevada.

Sheeler first documented the dam photographically from numerous vantage points, selecting a provocatively cropped image on which to base this painting. He portrayed in extreme perspective a transmission tower soaring above the dam, its wires bisecting the blue, crystalline sky. Blazing light, combined with the artist’s nearly indecipherable brushstrokes, results in an astonishing clarity that imparts to the scene a sense of the supernatural and miraculous.

1940 Conversation - Sky and Earth
oil on canvas 58.3 x 71 cm
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

1940 Fugue
tempera and graphite on gessoed Masonite 35.5 x 43.1 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1940 Neighbours
crayon on paper 12.7 x 10 cm (image)

1940s Study of the Brancusi Sculpture 'Portrait of Mrs Eugene Meyer,'
gelatin silver print

1941 Nativity
oil on masonite 43.2 x 35.6 cm

1941 Winter Window
oil on board 76.2 x 60.9 cm

1942 (printed 1982) The Metropolitan Museum of Art
platinum print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1942 Red against the Light
tempera 23.5 x 33 cm

1942 White Sentinels
tempera on board 38.1 x 55.9 cm

c1942 The Lady Teye, Egyptian Statue
gelatin silver print

c1942 The Lady Teye, Egyptian Statue
gelatin silver print

1943 Nation's Capitol
oil on canvas 71.3 x 55.6 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

1944 Bird's Nest
oil on canvas 61 x 76.2 cm

1944 Bird's Nest
watercolour 27.3 x 29.9 cm

1944 Water
opaque watercolour and graphite on paper 18.5 x 23.3 cm 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1945 Autumn Barns
tempera on board 30.5 x 41.9 cm

1945 Shaker Barns
tempera on board 31.8 x 48.2 cm

1945 Water
oil on canvas 61 x 74.3 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1945 Untitled
gelatin silver print 24.1 x 17.7 cm
SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA

1946 Ballardvale
oil on canvas 60.9 x 48.2 cm
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA

1946 Barn Abstraction
tempera on paperboard 21 x 29.3 cm 

1946 Covered Bridge
gelatin silver print 16.2 x 23.8 cm

1946 Incantation
oil on canvas 61.3 x 51.1 cm
Brooklyn Museum, New York

1946 Mechanisation
tempera on cardboard 30.8 x 41.4 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

1946 Prelude to Winter
tempera and pencil on paperboard 30.5 x 41 cm

1947 Cat-walk
oil on canvas 61 x 50.8 cm

1947 On the Theme of Farm Buildings #2
opaque watercolours with graphite underdrawing 20.3 x 30.5 cm (image)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1947 The Blue Roof
tempera on board 12.1 x 15.2 cm

1948 Abstraction
tempera on paper 12.7 x 17.7 cm

1948 Against the sky a web has spun
tempera on paper 15.2 x 11.4 cm

1948 Amoskeag Canal
oil on canvas 56 x 61 cm
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH

1948 Amoskeag Mills #2
oil on canvas 72.4 x 61 cm

1948 Wind, Sea and Sail
oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

1948-52 Copper Beech
gelatin silver print 20.3 x 13.3 cm

1948-52 Copper Beech
gelatin silver print 20.3 x 13.7 cm