Edward Weston 1886-1958

mounted, initialed and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, numbered '31SO,' dated ''36,' and titled, signed and dated '1936' by him in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1936, probably printed in the 1940s; accompanied by a old backboard inscribed 'To: Harry, Best wishes for years to come,' signed 'Edward,' and dated '4-16-'48' by the photographer in ink, and with a Museum of Modern Art exhibition label on the reverse

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston before 1984

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Edward Weston, February - March 1946; and traveling to:

San Francisco Museum of Art, June - July 1946

Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September - October 1946

Worcester, Massachusetts, Art Museum, November - December 1946

Waterville, Maine, Colby College, December 1946

Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, January - February 1947

Cleveland Museum of Art, February - March 1947

Louisville, Kentucky, J. B. Speed Art Museum, March - April 1947

University of Texas at Austin, April - May 1947

Colorado Springs, Taylor Museum of Art, June 1947

Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft, Anton Josef Trcka, Edward Weston, Helmut Newton: The Artificial of the Real, March - May, 1998

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center/Friends of Photography, Defining Modernism: Group f.64, September 2000 - June 2001; and traveling to Gainesville, Florida, Samuel P. Harn Museum, January - May 2001

Monterey Museum of Art, Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston, January - April 2003

 

Carl Haenlein, Anton Josef Trcka, Edward Weston, Helmut Newton: The Artificial of the Real (Kestner Gesellschaft, 1998, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 121 (this print)

Other prints of this image:

Conger 939

Beaumont Newhall, Supreme Instants (Boston, 1986, in conjunction with the exhibition originating at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson), cover and pl. 68

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Karen Quinn, and Leslie Furth, Edward Weston: Photography and Modernism (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1999), pl. 81

Jennifer A. Watts, ed., Edward Weston, A Legacy (The Huntington Library, Los Angeles, 2003, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 28

Kurt Markus, Dune: Edward & Brett Weston (Kalispell, Montana, 2003), p. 91

Manfred Heiting, ed., Edward Weston (Köln, 2004), p. 145

This masterfully-printed study of the dunes at Oceano was exhibited in Edward Weston, the photographer's first major retrospective exhibition, at The Museum of Modern Art in 1946.  The exhibition set forth a broad cross-section of his work and included landscapes, still life studies, nudes, and portraits.  It included at least 7 of his Oceano dune studies, including the print offered here.  Curator Nancy Newhall chose the prints for the exhibition with Weston himself, during a visit with the photographer at his home in Carmel in 1944.  Weston originally was adamant about including 500 prints in the exhibition.  He wrote to Newhall, 'If the public can't see five-hundred photographs let them come twice... I am a prolific, mass-production, omnivorous seeker.  I can't be represented by one or two or even three hundred photographs to cover forty-four years of work!' (Beaumont Newhall, Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography, Boston, 1993, pp. 143-44). 

Weston ultimately consented to being represented by 251 photographs.  When the exhibition opened in February of 1946, it was the largest showing of his work to date, and a very popular one, as well.  Nancy Newhall wrote to photographer Paul Strand, 'Edward's show a wow; every Sunday three or four thousand people cram themselves into those narrow spaces with the guards telling them to keep moving' (ibid., p. 144).  The show generated significant buzz, and Weston, who had come to New York City for the exhibition, was featured in a Talk of the Town piece in The New Yorker magazine.  After its closing at The Museum of Modern Art, the entire exhibition traveled to numerous venues across the country in 1946 and 1947.