Photographs
Photographs
Paul Strand
'New Mexico' (Grazing Horses, Taos)
Lot Closed
April 13, 08:27 PM GMT
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Paul Strand
1890 - 1976
'New Mexico' (Grazing Horses, Taos)
toned platinum print, flush-mounted, mounted again to card, credit and date in pencil on the mount, 1930; accompanied by a piece of backing board signed, titled, dated, and annotated 'November - 1931- There was another white horse - but alone - on a little road over the mesa from Llano to Cordova - this summer - one white horse - two seen in the whiteness - To Gina from the other one.' in pencil (2)
image: 3 ¾ by 4 ¾ in (9.5 by 12.1 cm.)
Gift from the photographer to Gina Schnaufer Knee, circa 1931
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York
Prakapas Gallery, New York
Mark Kelman Works of Art, New York, 1982
Collection of John and Lou Glasse, Poughkeepsie
By descent to the present owner
Paul Strand, A Retrospective Monograph: The Years 1915-1946, Volume One (Millerton, 1972), p. 99
James Enyeart, Land, Sky, and All That is Within: Visionary Photographers in the Southwest (Santa Fe, 1998), front cover
Peter Barberie and Amanda Bock, Paul Strand, Master of Modern Photography (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014), pl. 90
Paul Strand inscribed this photograph to Gina Schnaufer Knee, a 20th century American painter inspired to move to New Mexico after seeing an exhibition of John Marin’s watercolors in 1930. She and her husband, artist Ernest Knee, arrived in 1931 and quickly became acquainted with other artists active in Santa Fe, including Strand and his wife Rebecca, who had started coming to New Mexico in 1930.
According to Strand authority Anthony Montoya, this image was one of the last that the photographer made with his 4x5-inch camera before switching to a tripod-mounted 5x7-inch Graflex in 1931. Two other vintage platinum print of this image has been identified: one in a private collection, and another in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Strand made gelatin silver enlargements from this negative in the 1950s and 60s, none of which demonstrate the lust, velvety appearance of the present print.