American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

Daniel Gallery, New York, New York.

Ferdinand Howald, New York and Columbus, Ohio, 1919.

Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, a gift from the above, 1931.

Private Collection, New York.

Christie's, New York, Sale of December 7, 1984, Lot 326.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Private Collection.

Exhibited:

(Probably) New York, Gallery of Living Art, "Opening Exhibition", December 13, 1927 – January 25, 1928.

(Probably) Columbus, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, "Inaugural Exhibition", January – February 1931, no. 218.

(Probably) Dayton, Dayton Art Institute, "Paintings by Charles Sheeler", November – December 1944.

(Probably) New York, American Federation of Arts; Dayton, Dayton Art Institute, "Early Twentieth Century American Water Colors," September 1948 – May 1949.

(Probably) New York, American Federation of Arts, "Adventure in Collecting," October 1958 – October 1960, no. 39 (traveling to Wells College, Aurora; Andrew Dickson White Museum, Ithaca; Antioch College, Yellow Springs; Charles and Emma Frye Art Museum, Seattle; J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville; Time Life Reception Center, New York; Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis; Art Center, Miami Beach; John Jacob Astor House, Newport; Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich; Watkins Institute, Nashville; New Britain Museum of Art, New Britain; Quincy Art Club, Quincy; Georgia Technical Institute, Atlanta; Pensacola Art Center, Pensacola; Southwestern University, Georgetown; Art Gallery, Victoria; University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene; Tacoma Art League, Tacoma; Eastern Illinois University, Charleston).

St. Petersburg, Museum of Fine Arts, "The Howald Collection," April 19 – May 18, 1968.

New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., "The Ferdinand Howald Collection," May – July 1970.

New York, Gerald Peters Gallery, "Georgia O’Keeffe and Other Modernists," October 29 – December 18, 2009.

Literature:

L. Dochterman, The Stylistic Development of the Work of Charles Sheeler, vol. 1, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, pp. 27, 217, no. 18.069, illustrated.

M. Tucker, American Paintings in the Ferdinand Howald Collection, Columbus, 1969, p. 102, no. 162.

Constance Kimmerle, Elsie Driggs: The Quick and the Classical, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, 2008, p. 25, fig. 10, illustrated.

Carol Troyen and Erica E. Hirshler, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Boston, p. 70, fig. a, illustrated.

Lot Note:

Zinnias (1918) is an early work by seminal American Modernist Charles Sheeler, whose Precisionist and Realist architectural vistas of modern industrial America remain influential to this day. Here, Sheeler turns his attention to the domestic realm, already employing impeccable form and line towards impactful visual composition.

The still life consists of a single object: the lean, elongated vase hosting the three zinnias soaring out of the vessel’s mouth, prolonging the sharp vertical axis that traverses the painting at its core, crossed in the lower half of the painting by the horizontal plane of the table against the backdrop. The minimalist, grid-like arrangement anticipates Sheeler’s sophisticated precisionist method, which in this case elevates the mundane to essential form.

Yet, just as purity of form apparently dominates the crisp aesthetic, the lines and contours prove whimsical enough to imbue the still life with a playful texture. The high contrast between the vase and the background is slightly attenuated by the deeper tones of the vegetal subject, as well the stems’ capricious curves and the roundly shaped blooms and leaves, an exaggerated continuation of the sinuous outline of the vessel itself. In fact, its body’s verticality, while seemingly intact, is finally aborted as the eye follows the arcs formed by the two stems as they reach for conflicting directions, a visual slant that disrupts the neat, rigid structure previously observed.