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| 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 3 of 5-part series on the works of Charles Sheeler.
For more biographical notes see part 1, and for earlier works see parts 1 & 2 also.
1927-30 Ford Plant:
In 1927, an advertising agency hired Charles Sheeler to photograph the Ford Motor Company’s new River Rouge plant, a vast complex ten miles outside Detroit, Michigan. Covering 2,000 acres and employing 75,000 people, River Rouge was the world’s largest factory and the first to fully manufacture cars on site. After finishing the photography assignment, Sheeler produced a series of paintings of the factory complex, including River Rouge Plant. Here, Sheeler depicted the plant’s coal processing and storage facility, set on the serene waters of a boat slip, using the crisp lines and hard-edge geometries of Precisionism. Although the plant had experienced severe labor disputes in the early years of the Depression, Sheeler repressed the human dimension of manufacturing work and focused instead on the factory as a paradigm of modern rationality and order. For Sheeler, American factories were the contemporary equivalent of the cathedral, “our substitute,” he said, “for religious experience.”
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| 1927 Blast Furnace and Dust Catcher, Ford Plant gelatin silver print 24 x 19.3 cm (image) Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1927 Bleeder Stacks, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company gelatin silver print 23.5 x 18.8 cm SFMoMa, San Francisco, CA |
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| 1927 Coke Ovens - River Rouge gelatin silver print 22.2 19.1 cm |
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| 1927 Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company gelatin silver print, printed 1941 23.9 x 19 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1927 Ford Plant – Stamping Press gelatin silver print Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1927 Ford Plant, River Rouge, Bleeder Stacks, Detroit gelatin silver print 24.1 x 19.1 cm |
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| 1927 Ladle on a Hot Metal Car, Ford Plant gelatin silver print 24 x 19.1 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| c1927 Ford Plant – Ladle Hooks, Open Hearth Building gelatin silver print Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA © The Lane Collection |
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| 1930 American Landscape (Ford Plant) oil on canvas 61 x 78.8 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1932 River Rouge Plant (Ford Plant) pencil and oil on canvas 51.9 x 61.9 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Pulverizer Building silver gelatin print |
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| 1928 Industrial Series #1 lithograph 20.7 x 28.2 cm MoMA, New York |
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| c1928 Office Interior, Whitney Studio Club, 10 West 8 Street gelatin silver print 19.1 x 23.5 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| c1928 Office Interior, Whitney Studio Club, 10 West 8 Street gelatin silver print 19.1 x 23.8 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
c1928 Selected Architectual Studies:
A group of 3 photographs, each mounted, credited, titled, and dated, possibly by the photographer, in crayon and with annotations in pencil, on the reverse, circa 1928.
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| c1928 Selected architectural studies |
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| c1928 Selected architectural studies |
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| c1928 Selected architectural studies |
1929 Chartres Cathedral, France:
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| 1929 Chartres Cathedral - Buttresses gelatin silver print 24.4 x 19.3 cm MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection |
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| 1929 Chartres Cathedral - Flying Buttresses gelatin silver print 24.1 x 19 cm SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA |
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| 1929 Chartres Cathedral gelatin silver print 22.9 x 17.8 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA © The Lane Collection |
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| 1929 Chartres Cathedral gelatin silver print 24.3 x 19.3 cm MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection |
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| 1929 Chartres Cathedral gelatin silver print 24.4 x 19.4 cm |
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| 1929 Chartres, The Mother of Bacon gelatin silver print 24.6 x 19.4 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1929 Chartres, Vendome Chapel Exterior gelatin silver print 34.2 x 26.8 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| 1929 Steam Turbine gelatin silver print 22.2 x 18.2 cm |
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| 1929 Upper Deck gelatin silver print 25.3 x 20.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1929 Upper Deck oil on canvas 73 x 55.3 cm |
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| 1930 Berlin Power Plant under Construction graphite on yellow-beige wove paper 34.4 x 47.8 cm (image) The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| c1930 Modern Progress in Transportation tempera and graphite 20.4 x 45.5 cm (image) The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| c1930 Shaker Stove gelatin silver print 17.9 x 24.3 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1931 Americana oil on canvas 121.9 x 91.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1931 Cactus and Photographer's Lamp, New York gelatin silver print 23.5 x 16.6 cm MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection |
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| 1931 Cactus oil on canvas 114.6 x 76.4 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1931 Home, Sweet Home oil on canvas 91.4 x 73.7 cm Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan |
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| 1931 Industrial Architecture conté crayon and graphite on paper mounted on board 26 x 36.3 cm Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| 1931 View of New York oil on canvas 121.9 x 92.3 cm The Hayden Collection—Charles Henry Hayden Fund Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1931-32 Self-Portrait at Easel gelatin silver print 24.4 x 18.8 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1943 The Artist looks at Nature oil on canvas 53.3 x 45.7 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1932 Interior, Bucks County Barn charcoal on paper 49.7 x 58.4 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| 1932 Portrait of Newtown House oil on gesso board 10.1 x 12.7 cm |
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| 1932 View of Central Park conté crayon on paper 45.4 x 48.6 cm |
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| 1932 Winter gelatin silver print 24.8 x 18.7 cm |
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| 1933 Newhaven silver gelatin print 25 x 19.5 cm |
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| 1933 Of Domestic Utility conté crayon on paper 63.5 x 49.2 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1934 American Interior oil on canvas 84.5 x 76.8 cm Yale University Art Gallery © 2020 The Yale University Art Gallery. All rights reserved |
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| 1934 Connecticut Barns in Landscape oil on canvas 58.7 x 74 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1934 Ephrata oil 19.5 x 23.5 cm D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield Museums, MA |
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| 1934 Ephrata tempera on wood panel 8.8 x 12 cm |
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| c1934c Study for American Interior watercolour, opaque watercolour and pencil on paper 9.8 x 8.8 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1935 Industrial Study No. 2 gelatin silver print 25.7 x 33 cm |
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| c1935 Salt and Pepper Shakers 3.8 x 2.6 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum |
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| 1935 Stairwell, Williamsburg gelatin silver print 23.6 x 15.3 cm MoMA, New York © 2020 The Lane Collection |
