Clarence H. White 1871-1925

platinum print, mounted to tissue, signed by the photographer in pencil on the tissue mount, the tissue tipped into the original heavy paper mat, titled, dated, and annotated ‘platinum print’ and ‘Property of Mrs. Clarence H. White,’ possibly by the photographer’s widow, in ink and with the Museum’s collection stamp, label, and accession number and other annotations in unidentified hands in pencil and crayon on the reverse, 1899

Gift of Mrs. Clarence H. White, October 1933

Chicago, The Century of Progress International Photographic Salon, 1933 and 1934

Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Imagination to Image, April – September 1999; and traveling thereafter to The Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, September – December 2000; and The Montclair, New Jersey, Art Museum, January – April 2001

Other prints of this image:

Camera Notes, Volume 4, Number 4 (April 1901)

Camera Work Number 3 (New York, July 1903)

William Innes Homer et al., Symbolism of Light: The Photographs of Clarence H. White (Delaware Art Museum, 1977), pl. 19 

Aperture History of Photography Series, Clarence H. White (Millerton, 1979), p. 51

William Innes Homer, Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession 1902 (New York, 2002), unpaginated

This early Clarence White study, one of the photographer’s most important non-figurative works, was donated to the Museum of Science and Industry by the photographer’s widow, Jane Felix White, in 1933.  Like Steichen’s photograph of the George Washington Bridge and the Laura Gilpin dune image (Lots 104 and 109), the print was shown in Chicago’s Century of Progress exhibition in 1933, and was one of several works from that exhibition actively solicited by the Museum for its nascent collection.  According to Museum records, Mrs. White was persuaded to donate her late husband’s photograph to the Museum by Pirie MacDonald, the Chicago native who went on to become a successful New York portrait photographer. MacDonald’s own photographs were also included in the Century of Progress salon.      

The present print was exhibited in 1933 as ‘The Old Ohio Canal,’ following the manuscript title on the reverse of the photograph’s heavy paper mat.  A platinum print of this image in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art is titled ‘The Old Canal, Newark, Ohio,’ and is dated ‘circa 1899.’  In other exhibitions, and in both Camera Notes and Camera Work, where the image was reproduced in 1901 and 1903, respectively, the composition is named with the familiar, shorter title, ‘Telegraph Poles.’  The more descriptive title of the print offered here, ‘The Old Ohio Canal,’ may reflect the photographer’s original intent.

The location of the photograph is Newark, Ohio, where White lived from 1887 to 1906, when he moved to New York City.  Completely self-taught as a photographer, White’s early career was spent as a bookkeeper for Fleek & Neal, the Newark grocery wholesaler where his father was employed.  The Cleveland Museum of Art owns a Camera Work photogravure of the image which is titled and inscribed on its verso as follows:

 ‘”Along the Canal” by Clarence H. White, Newark, Ohio.  This canal was behind the wholesale grocery store of Fleek Company where Clarence White worked as a bookkeeper.’

This annotated photogravure was presented to the Cleveland Museum by the family of Julia Hall McCune Florey, a White student and model, and the inscription is likely in her hand. 

‘The Old Ohio Canal,’ or ‘Telegraph Poles,’ occupies a special place in White’s oeuvre.  It is one of ten images by Clarence White chosen by Stieglitz and his co-editors for publication in Camera Notes; and one of the first five Clarence White images chosen by Stieglitz for an early issue of Camera Work (Number 3, July 1903). It is the most well-known of the photographer’s non-figurative studies, and arguably his best. With its minimalist depiction of subject matter that is neither picturesque nor sentimental, ‘The Old Ohio Canal’ is marked by a prescient modernism.  The image bears a resemblance to similar studies made by Paul Strand in the second decade of the 20th century.  Strand’s images from the 1910s were made after he had been exposed, through Alfred Stieglitz and the Armory Show of 1912, to the most progressive European and American art of the day.  The strikingly early date of White’s ‘Old Ohio Canal,’ made at the end of the 19^th century, makes White’s instinctive grasp of modernism all the more significant. 

As of this writing, only three other vintage prints of this image have been located, all in institutions: the aforementioned platinum print in The Museum of Modern Art; a platinum print in the Licking County Historical Society, Newark, Ohio; and a hand-coated gum bichromate print in the Princeton University Art Museum.  The Princeton Museum also owns a pigment print of the image made from the original negative by the White student mentioned above, Julia Hall McCune Florey. 

Sotheby’s wishes to thank Peter Bunnell of Princeton, Linda May Wacker of The Museum of Modern Art, Emily Larson of the Licking County Historical Society, and Verna Curtis of the Library of Congress for their assistance with this entry.