Charles Sheeler

Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler standing next to a window. c. 1910.
Born	July 16, 1883(1883-07-16) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	May 7, 1965(1965-05-07) (aged 81) Dobbs Ferry, New York
Nationality	American
Field	Modern art, Photography
Movement	Precisionism

Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.

Early life and career

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, now the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), from 1900 to 1903, and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under William Merritt Chase. He found early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908.^[1] In 1909, he went to Paris, just when the popularity of Cubism was skyrocketing. Returning to the United States, he realized that he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting. Instead, he took up commercial photography, focusing particularly on architectural subjects. He was a self-taught photographer, learning his trade on a five dollar Brownie.

Sheeler owned a farmhouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, about 39 miles outside Philadelphia. He shared it with his longtime friend the artist Morton Schamberg (1881–1918), who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.^[2] He was so fond of the home's 19th century stove that he called it his "companion" and made it a subject of his photographs. The farmhouse serves a prominent role in many of his photographs, including shots of the bedroom and kitchen and stairway. At one point he was quoted as calling it "my cloister."

Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography. He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasized the linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his photographic works, his subjects were generally material things such as machinery and structures. He was hired by the Ford Motor Co. to photograph and make paintings of their factories.

Photography and film work

Films

• 1920 Manhatta (with Paul Strand)

Photographic works

• 1917 Doylestown House: Stairs from Below (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• 1927 Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Paintings

Charles Sheeler, Amoskeag Canal 1948, Currier Museum of Art

Early works

• 1920 Church Street El, (Cleveland Museum of Art).
• 1925 Still Life.
• 1925 Lady of the Sixties, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1929 Upper Deck, (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA).
• 1930 American Landscape (Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY).
• 1931 Americana (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY).
• 1931 Classic Landscape, (Mr and Mrs Barney A Ebsworth Foundation).
• 1931 View of New York, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1932 Classic Landscape, (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
• 1932 Interior with Stove, (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
• 1933 River Rouge Plant (Whitney Museum, New York, NY).
• 1934 American Interior, (Yale University Gallery, New Haven, CT).
• 1936 City Interior (Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA).

Power series

In 1940, Fortune Magazine published a series of six paintings of commissioned of Sheeler. To prepare for the series, Sheeler spent a year traveling and taking photographs. Fortune editors aimed to “reflect life through forms … [that] trace the firm pattern of the human mind,” and Sheeler chose six subjects to fulfill this theme: a water wheel (Primitive Power), a steam turbine (Steam Turbine), the railroad (Rolling Power), a hydroelectric turbine (Suspended Power), an airplane (Yankee Clipper) and a dam (Conversation: Sky and Earth) ^[1].

• 1939 Conversation: Sky and Earth, (Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, MN).
• 1939 Primitive Power, (The Regis Collection, Minneapolis, MN).
• 1939 Rolling Power, (Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA).
• 1939 Steam Turbine, (Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH).
• 1939 Suspended Power, (Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX).
• 1939 Yankee Clipper, (Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI).

Later works

The monument of Charles Sheeler in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

• 1940 Interior (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
• 1940 Fugue (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1948 Amoskeag Canal (Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH).
• c.1952 Windows (Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY).
• 1953 Aerial Gyrations (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA).
• 1953 New England Irrelevancies (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1953 Ore Into Iron (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1954 Stacks in Celebration (Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH)
• 1954 Architectural Cadences Number 4
• 1954 Lunenburg (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1955 Golden Gate (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY).
• 1956 On a Shaker Theme (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1957 Red Against White (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
• 1958 Composition Around Red, Pennsylvania (Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama)

Exhibitions

• "Charles Sheeler: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs" - Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 4 - November 1, 1939.^[3]
• "Paintings by Charles Sheeler" - Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, November 2 - December 2, 1944.^[3]
• "Charles Sheeler: A Retrospective Exhibition" - Art Galleries, University of California at Los Angeles, October 11 - November 7, 1954. Toured November 18 - June 15, 1955 at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego; and Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, New York.^[3]
• "Charles Sheeler Retrospective Exhibition" - Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania, November 17 - December 31, 1961.^[3]
• "Charles Sheeler" - National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, DC, October 10 - November 24, 1968. Toured January 10 - April 27, 1969 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.^[3]
• "Charles Sheeler: Across Media" - National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, May 7 - August 27, 2006. Toured at the Art Institute of Chicago, October 7, 2006 - January 7, 2007; and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, February 10 – May 6, 2007. 50 works included, including paintings, photographs, works on paper, and a film.^[4]
• "The Photography of Charles Sheeler" - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Toured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 3 - August 17, 2003; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Nearly 100 works, including 90 photographs.^[5]

Notes

^ “Power: A portfolio by Charles Sheeler”, Fortune magazine (December 1940) Time Inc., Volume XXII, Number 6

References

1. ^ Borland, Jennifer. Finding Aid to the Charles Sheeler Papers, circa 1840s-1966, bulk 1923-1965. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
2. ^ Grace Glueck review of Morton Schamberg, NY Times, 1982 Retrieved August 11, 2010
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Roberts, Norma J., ed. (1988), The American Collections, Columbus Museum of Art, p. 198, ISBN 0-8109-1811-0 .
4. ^ "NGA - Charles Sheeler: Across Media (5/2006)". National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/past/data/exh867.shtm. Retrieved September 19, 2011. 
5. ^ "The Photography of Charles Sheeler". Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Charles_Sheeler/photography_more.htm. Retrieved September 19, 2011. 

Other links

• 1958 interview with Charles Sheeler from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
• 1959 interview with Charles Sheeler from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Further reading

• Brock, Charles (2006), Charles Sheeler: Across Media, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, in association with University of California Press, Berkeley, ISBN 978-0520248724 .
• Friedman, Martin (1975), Charles Sheeler, New York: Watson/Guptill Publications .
• Harnsberger, R. Scott (1992), Ten Precisionist Artists: Annotated Bibliographies, Westport: Greenwood Press, ISBN 9780313276644 .
• Lucic, Karen (1991), Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ISBN 9780674111110 .
• Rawlinson, Mark (2008), Charles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction, London: IB Tauris, ISBN 9781850439028 .

External links

Biography portal

• Charles Sheeler: Across Media, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Charles Sheeler Art Gallery
• Charles Sheeler at Find a Grave

Persondata
Name	Sheeler, Charles Rettew
Alternative names
Short description	American artist
Date of birth	July 16, 1883
Place of birth	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Date of death	May 7, 1965
Place of death	Dobbs Ferry, New York