Crafting Modernism: Masters of the American Studio Design Movement from the Pinnacle Art Collection
Crafting Modernism: Masters of the American Studio Design Movement from the Pinnacle Art Collection
Wharton Esherick
Three-Piece "Content" Daybed
Auction Closed
June 10, 03:47 PM GMT
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Wharton Esherick
Three-Piece "Content" Daybed
1932-1933
comprising one daybed, one 3-drawer cabinet and one 8-drawer cabinet
padouk, walnut, fabric cushion (not illustrated)
daybed monogrammed WE and dated MCMXXXII; 8-drawer cabinet signed WHARTON ESHERICK and dated MCMXXXII; 3-drawer cabinet twice signed WHARTON ESHERICK and dated MCMXXXIII
daybed: 19⅜ x 77⅞ x 40¼ in. (49.2 x 197.8 x 102.2 cm)
8-drawer cabinet: 34⅛ x 40 x 44 in. (86.7 x 101.6 x 111.8 cm)
3-drawer cabinet: 29¾ X 30½ X 23½ in. (75.6 x 77.5 x 59.7 cm)
Marjorie Content, New York, commissioned directly from the artist
Moderne Gallery, Philadelphia
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2015
Moderne Gallery, Philadelphia
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2015
Gertrude Benson, "Wharton Esherick," Craft Horizons, January-February 1959, vol. 19, no. 1, p. 33 (for period photographs of the present lot illustrated)
Lee Nordness, Objects: USA, New York, 1970, p. 253 (for a related 3-drawer cabinet)
Paul Eisenhauer and Lynne Farrington, eds., Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern, exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania, Atglen, PA, 2010, pp. 40, 102 and 149-150 (for period photographs of the present lot illustrated)
Mansfield Bascom, Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind, New York, 2010, pp. 124-125 (for period photographs of the present lot illustrated)
Lee Nordness, Objects: USA, New York, 1970, p. 253 (for a related 3-drawer cabinet)
Paul Eisenhauer and Lynne Farrington, eds., Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern, exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania, Atglen, PA, 2010, pp. 40, 102 and 149-150 (for period photographs of the present lot illustrated)
Mansfield Bascom, Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind, New York, 2010, pp. 124-125 (for period photographs of the present lot illustrated)
Even the most pioneering artists – and Wharton Esherick certainly fits that description – require great patronage to realize their potential. That is what Esherick found in Marjorie Content, who commissioned the present, historically eminent assembly of furniture from him over the course of the 1930s.
Foremost in the group is a daybed made for her New York apartment. Flanked by tiered graduated drawers which pivot outward on corner hinges, creating a cascade of curves, it is an exemplar of the complex geometric thinking that distinguished Esherick’s early career, comparable to the prismatic fireplace created for Curtis Bok which is on permanent view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (It has been persuasively argued that these faceted forms reflect the influence of Anthroposophical design, inspired by the visionary teachings of Rudolf Steiner.)1 Among other highlights in the Content collection are examples of Esherick’s well-loved chairs made from found hickory hammer handles and wagon wheels, which demonstrate his ability to bridge vernacular and modernist idioms; and a shallow-carved tray in walnut, with an affectionate inscription to Content and her fourth husband, the Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer.
That Content (a well-to-do white woman) married Toomer (a mixed-race man), at a time when segregation was still rigidly observed across America, only begins to suggest the contours of her remarkable life. A leading photographer in her own right, Content was an intimate of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; her first husband, Harry Loeb, published such giants of literary modernism as e. e. cummings, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams. As Laura Turner Igoe explains in an essential recent study, Content’s patronage of Esherick fit into this pattern of artistic involvement.2 Theirs was a profoundly creative friendship, a collaboration really. She made photographs of him, of his house, and of the works he furnished for her. When Content and Toomer moved to a farm in Doylestown – an area they first experienced while visiting Esherick – he made further pieces for their use there. They also brought the daybed with them. Content slept in it for the rest of her long life, slumbering nightly in a masterpiece, perhaps dreaming of her part in one of the most generative artistic encounters of early twentieth-century America.
[1] Roberta A. Mayer and Mark Sfirri, “Early Expressions of Anthroposophical Design in America: The Influence of Rudolf Steiner and Fritz Westhoff on Wharton Esherick,” Journal of Modern Craft 2/3 (July 2009), 299-323.
[2] Laura Turner Igoe, “Marjorie Content and Wharton Esherick,” in Laura Turner Igoe and Mark Sfirri, Daring Design: The Impact of Three Women on Wharton Esherick’s Craft (James A. Michener Art Museum, 2021).
GLENN ADAMSON
Foremost in the group is a daybed made for her New York apartment. Flanked by tiered graduated drawers which pivot outward on corner hinges, creating a cascade of curves, it is an exemplar of the complex geometric thinking that distinguished Esherick’s early career, comparable to the prismatic fireplace created for Curtis Bok which is on permanent view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (It has been persuasively argued that these faceted forms reflect the influence of Anthroposophical design, inspired by the visionary teachings of Rudolf Steiner.)1 Among other highlights in the Content collection are examples of Esherick’s well-loved chairs made from found hickory hammer handles and wagon wheels, which demonstrate his ability to bridge vernacular and modernist idioms; and a shallow-carved tray in walnut, with an affectionate inscription to Content and her fourth husband, the Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer.
That Content (a well-to-do white woman) married Toomer (a mixed-race man), at a time when segregation was still rigidly observed across America, only begins to suggest the contours of her remarkable life. A leading photographer in her own right, Content was an intimate of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; her first husband, Harry Loeb, published such giants of literary modernism as e. e. cummings, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams. As Laura Turner Igoe explains in an essential recent study, Content’s patronage of Esherick fit into this pattern of artistic involvement.2 Theirs was a profoundly creative friendship, a collaboration really. She made photographs of him, of his house, and of the works he furnished for her. When Content and Toomer moved to a farm in Doylestown – an area they first experienced while visiting Esherick – he made further pieces for their use there. They also brought the daybed with them. Content slept in it for the rest of her long life, slumbering nightly in a masterpiece, perhaps dreaming of her part in one of the most generative artistic encounters of early twentieth-century America.
[1] Roberta A. Mayer and Mark Sfirri, “Early Expressions of Anthroposophical Design in America: The Influence of Rudolf Steiner and Fritz Westhoff on Wharton Esherick,” Journal of Modern Craft 2/3 (July 2009), 299-323.
[2] Laura Turner Igoe, “Marjorie Content and Wharton Esherick,” in Laura Turner Igoe and Mark Sfirri, Daring Design: The Impact of Three Women on Wharton Esherick’s Craft (James A. Michener Art Museum, 2021).
GLENN ADAMSON