Ansel Adams 1902-1984

Gift of the photographer to a private collector, Oakland, California, late 1930s

Sotheby's New York, 17 April 2002, Sale 7777, Lot 31

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above

Another print of this image:

Ansel Adams, The Four Seasons in Yosemite National Park: A Photographic Story of Yosemite's Spectacular Scenery (Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1936), unpaginated

The photograph offered here was originally given by Adams to a close friend of the Curry family, whose Yosemite Park and Curry Company was the primary concessionaire in Yosemite National Park for 70 years.  It was among a group of 32 early Ansel Adams photographs offered in these rooms on 17 April 2002 (Sale 7777, Lots 14-39).  Lot 11 in this catalogue also comes from this group.

It is believed that most of the photographs in the group were printed in the late 1930s. Sleigh Team, Yosemite is printed on lustrous double-weight paper and mounted on white Bristol board, which has a slick white clay or baryta coating on its front and a matte surface on the reverse.  The Zeiss-Contax label is a slight variant of the label designed by Lawton Kennedy for Adams's 1936 exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's American Place gallery in New York.

Another print of this image was reproduced in the 'Winter' section of Four Seasons in Yosemite, published in 1936 by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company.