Alfred Stieglitz 1864-1946

The photographer to Dorothy Norman

The Collection of Dorothy Norman, New York

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Zürich

Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, 15 April 2002, Sale NY863, Lot 9

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above

Zürich, Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Trees, July - August 1995

Another print of this image:

Greenough 1500

In Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs, Sarah Greenough locates only 2 other prints of this image: at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

With its clear-eyed depiction of a stand of trees and telephone wires set against a deep gray sky, Poplars, Lake George, is a prime example of Alfred Stieglitz's late work.  In the 1920s and '30s, Stieglitz spent an increasing amount of time away from New York City at his family's house at Lake George.  It was here that he began his series of Equivalents in the early 1920s, as well as the landscapes and nature studies he would concentrate on in the 1930s.  Just as he had trained his camera on the view outside his New York City gallery windows, he set out to document his more pastoral surroundings at the lake.  Any sentimentality had left his work long ago, and he approached what would be the last decade of his work deliberately and objectively.  The resulting images are remarkable for their visual clarity and their calm, compelling depiction of the trees, grasses, and skies that were part of his daily life at Lake George.