Ansel Adams 1902-1984

mounted to card, signed and dated '1939' by the photographer in pencil on the mount, titled and numbered '5' by the photographer and credited and numbered '39.204' in an unidentified hand in pencil and with a Museum of Modern Art letterpress loan label, with typed credit and accession number, on the reverse, matted, 1937 

The photographer to David McAlpin

Collection of Mrs. David McAlpin

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above, 1995

Carmel, Center for Photographic Art, Ansel Adams: From the Private Collection of Margaret Weston, July - September 1995

San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, Ansel Adams: From the Private Collection of Maggi Weston, May - September 1996

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

This photograph, along with that in Lot 49, was given originally by Adams to David McAlpin, an important figure in the history of 20^th-century American photography.  A philanthropist, patron, and friend to Adams, McAlpin donated the funds used to found the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art in 1940; and to endow the first chair for teaching photography at an American university, his alma mater, Princeton University, in 1972.  His 1971 donation to Princeton of 500 photographs from his personal collection formed the basis for the university's photographs collection.

The photographs in Lots 48 and 49 were made during a month-long September 1937 trip to New Mexico that Adams made with McAlpin to visit Georgia O'Keeffe. Using O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, as a base, the three drove throughout the area in search of visual subjects.

Another print of this image of Pedernal, one of O'Keeffe's favorite peaks, and the stark New Mexico highway, was included in the Center for Creative Photography's 1976 Ansel Adams exhibit, Photographs of the Southwest.  The print in that exhibition, from the Ansel Adams archives at the Center, is dated 1937 and is the basis for the dating of the print offered here, believed to be one of only 3 prints of the image extant.