Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler was an American painter and commercial photographer. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism, developing a "quasi-photographic" style of painting known as Precisionism and becoming one of the master photographers of the 20th century.
Early life and career
Charles Rettew Sheeler Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art 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. Most of his education was in drawing and other applied arts. He went to Italy with other students, where he was intrigued by the Italian painters of the Middle Ages, such as Giotto and Piero della Francesca. Later, he was inspired by works of Cubist artists like Picasso and Braque after a trip to Paris in 1909, when the popularity of the style 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. Early in his career, he was dramatically impacted by the death of his close friend Morton Livingston Schamberg in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Schamberg's painting had focused heavily on machinery and technology, a theme which would come to feature prominently in Sheeler's own work.Sheeler owned a farmhouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, about 39 miles outside Philadelphia, which he shared with Schamberg until the latter's death. 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 itself serves a prominent role in many of his photographs, which include shots of the bedroom, kitchen, and stairway. At one point he was quoted as calling it his "cloister."
On April 2, 1939, Sheeler married Musya Metas Sokolova his second wife, six years after the death in 1933 of first wife Katharine Baird Shaffer. In 1942 Sheeler joined the Met museum as a senior research fellow in photography, worked on a project in Connecticut with the photographer Edward Weston, and moved with Musya to Irvington-on-Hudson, some twenty miles north of New York. Sheeler worked for the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Publications from 1942 to 1945, photographing artworks and historical objects.
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 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 created by Charles Sheeler
- 1921 ]
Photographic works
- 1917
- 1927
Selected paintings
Early works
- ' – The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
- ' – M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA
- ' – Museum of Modern Art, New York City
- ' – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
- ' – Barney A. Ebsworth collection
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- ' – Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
- ' – Yale University Gallery, New Haven
- ' – D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA
- – Worcester Art Museum, Worcester
Power series
- Conversation: Sky and Earth – Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth
- Primitive Power – The Regis Collection, Minneapolis
- ' – Smith College, Northampton
- ' – Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown
- ' – Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
- ' – Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Later works
- ' – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago
- ' – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- ' – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- ' – Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn
- ' – Currier Museum of Art, Manchester
- ' – Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York City
- ' – Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem
- ' – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Dayton Art Institute, Dayton
- ' – Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth
- Lunenburg – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- ' – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
- ' – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- ' – Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- ' – Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Composition Around White – Collection of Deborah and Ed Shein
Exhibitions
- "Charles Sheeler: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 4 – November 1, 1939.
- "Paintings by Charles Sheeler" – Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, November 2 – December 2, 1944.
- "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.
- "Charles Sheeler Retrospective Exhibition" – Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania, November 17 – December 31, 1961.
- "Charles Sheeler Retrospective Exhibition" - March 17 – April 14, 1963 - State University of Iowa, Department of Art.
- "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.
- "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.
- "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.
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Other links
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- 1959 -