Edward Steichen

gelatin silver print, flush-mounted, mounted again to thick brown board, the number '92.5' in pencil on the mount, credit, numbers, and annotations '32' (circled) and 'Platinum and Ferroprussiate print' in pencil on the reverse, 1904, probably printed in the 1950s

Collection of Joanna Steichen

Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Acquired by the present owner from the above

Other prints of this image:

Camera Work No. 14, April 1906

Steichen the Photographer (The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), p. 29

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, 1963), pl. 32

Dennis Longwell, Steichen: The Master Prints 1895 - 1914, The Symbolist Period (New York and Boston, 1978), cover and pl. 56

Joel Smith, Edward Steichen: The Early Years (Princeton and New York, 1999), pls. 18-20

Barbara Haskell, Edward Steichen (New York, 2000), pl. 26

Todd Brandow and William A. Ewing, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography (New York and London, 2007), pl. 103

Weston J. Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978), pl. 58

William Innes Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession (Boston, 1983), pl. 61

This attractive print, with a range of gray tones, is on paper with a semi-glossy surface. It has been flush-mounted, and the edges are rubbed, with tiny losses at the image edges. When examined in high raking light, the following are visible: a linear indentation that does not break the emulsion near the center of the print and 2 small soft creases that likely occurred prior to or during flush-mounting. The heavy brown board mount is soiled on the front and back, with areas darkened from handling, particularly on the reverse. Its edges are rubbed, and the upper right corner is creased. '92.5' is written in pencil in the upper right corner of the mount. The following notations appear in pencil on the reverse: the photographer's name; '32' (circled); '8 3/4'; '3945/30-5/133'; '9099/11-3'; and 'Platinum and Ferroprussiate print.' The notations, '32' and 'Platinum and Ferroprussiate print' on the reverse of this print's mount reference the plate number and process-related notation in Steichen's book, A Life in Photography, as this image appears on page 32. There are two one-inch remnants of cloth tape along the upper edge of the mount on the reverse. This print appears to fluoresce very slightly when examined under ultraviolet light.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Edward Steichen's The Flatiron—Evening is an image that ranks among the photographer's most important achievements.  Prints of this image from any decade are scarce.  In addition to the print offered here, the following have been located at the time of this writing: three early, celebrated gum-bichromate-over-platinum prints, each a different interpretation of the negative, in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; two gelatin silver prints made in the 1960s, previously offered at auction; and a gelatin silver print from the 1950s, now in a private collection.

Situated on a wedge between Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23^rd Street, just seven blocks south of Steichen's studio, the Flatiron Building was the only skyscraper north of 14^th Street at the time of its completion in 1902.  A symbol of New York's architectural and commercial pre-eminence, the 22-story Renaissance Revival/Beaux Arts-style building was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and designer Frederick P. Dinkelberg for the Fuller Company, a general contractor specializing in erecting skyscrapers.  It inspired both praise and controversy from the time it was built.  Modernist poet and critic Sadakichi Hartmann, himself the subject of a 1903 Steichen portrait, championed the rapidly-evolving New York cityscape in his essay 'The "Flat-Iron" Building—an Esthetical Dissertation,' published in Camera Work Number 4 in October 1903.  'I, for my part, do not only believe in the possibility of architectural originality,' he wrote, 'but am convinced that it will first reveal itself prominently in America.'  About the Flatiron Building in particular, he observed,

'It is typically American in conception as well as execution.  It is a curiosity of modern architecture, solely built for utilitarian purposes, and at the same time a masterpiece of iron-construction.  It is a building without main façade, resembling more than anything else the prow of a giant man-of-war. And we would not be astonished in the least, if the whole triangular block would suddenly begin to move northward through the crowd of pedestrians and traffic of our two leading thoroughfares, which would break like the waves of the ocean on the huge prow-like angle.'

It is this streamlined shape of the building at dusk, with traffic flowing on either side, that figures so prominently in Steichen's The Flatiron, an image that functions simultaneously as both Pictorial and modern.  Taken in 1904, when the prevailing Pictorialist aesthetic mandated atmospheric effects, the photograph was first printed in the painterly gum-bichromate processes of the day, of which Steichen was the undisputed master.  Yet the image retains its Modernist impact as a gelatin silver print of the mid-20^th century, exemplified by the print offered here.  The emphasis on stark silhouettes of branches and figures in the foreground recall the photographer's apprenticeship in graphic design; the shimmering streets and dots of light, his training as a painter.  No photographer understood the elegance of the metropolis at night better than Steichen, as evidenced by his city views made upon his return to the United States after World War I.  Those very modern pictures have their origin in The Flatiron—Evening, which is every bit as modern in conception as his later city photographs.  Presented here as an expertly-rendered gelatin silver print, in which the details of the scene are revealed to an extent that eluded his Pictorial printing style, one sees that Steichen's vision was always a fundamentally modern one.

The Flatiron—Evening was featured in a number of early exhibitions and publications of his work.  A print of The Flatiron was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in November 1905, as well as Steichen's one-man show there in 1906, and in the highly important International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1910, among others.  It was first published in Camera Work Number 12 (cf. Lot 57) in April 1906, and in the sumptuously-produced Steichen Book of the same year.