Charles Sheeler
Encyclopedia
Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism
American modernism
American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic...

 and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.

Early life and career

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, he attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, now the University of the Arts (Philadelphia)
University of the Arts (Philadelphia)
The University of the Arts is one of the United States' oldest universities dedicated to the arts. Its campus makes up part of the Avenue of the Arts in Center City, Philadelphia...

, from 1900 to 1903, and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...

. He found early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908. In 1909, he went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, just when the popularity of Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 was skyrocketing. Returning to the United States, he realized that he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting. Instead, he took up commercial photography, focusing particularly on architectural subjects. He was a self-taught photographer, learning his trade on a five dollar Brownie
Brownie (camera)
Brownie is the name of a long-running and extremely popular series of simple and inexpensive cameras made by Eastman Kodak. The Brownie popularized low-cost photography and introduced the concept of the snapshot. The first Brownie, introduced in February, 1900, was a very basic cardboard box camera...

.

Sheeler owned a farmhouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Doylestown is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 8,380. The borough is the county seat of Bucks County.- History :...

, about 39 miles outside Philadelphia. He shared it with his longtime friend the artist Morton Schamberg (1881–1918), who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. He was so fond of the home's 19th century stove that he called it his "companion" and made it a subject of his photographs. The farmhouse serves a prominent role in many of his photographs, including shots of the bedroom and kitchen and stairway. At one point he was quoted as calling it "my cloister."

Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography. He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist
Precisionism
Precisionism, also known as Cubist Realism, was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period...

, a term that emphasized the linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his photographic works, his subjects were generally material things such as machinery and structures. He was hired by the Ford Motor Co. to photograph and make paintings of their factories.

Films

  • 1920 http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/artists_view/manhatta_main.htmlManhatta
    Manhatta
    Manhatta is a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand.-Production background:Manhatta documents the look of early-20th-century Manhattan...

    (with Paul Strand
    Paul Strand
    Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century...

    )]

Photographic works


Paintings

Early works

  • 1920 Church Street El, (Cleveland Museum of Art).
  • 1925 Still Life.
  • 1925 Lady of the Sixties, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1929 Upper Deck, (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA).
  • 1930 American Landscape (Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY).
  • 1931 Americana (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY).
  • 1931 Classic Landscape, (Mr and Mrs Barney A Ebsworth Foundation).
  • 1931 View of New York, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1932 Classic Landscape, (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
  • 1932 Interior with Stove, (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
  • 1933 River Rouge Plant (Whitney Museum, New York, NY).
  • 1934 American Interior, (Yale University Gallery, New Haven, CT).
  • 1936 City Interior (Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA).

Power series

In 1940, Fortune Magazine
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

published a series of six paintings of commissioned of Sheeler. To prepare for the series, Sheeler spent a year traveling and taking photographs. Fortune editors aimed to “reflect life through forms … [that] trace the firm pattern of the human mind,” and Sheeler chose six subjects to fulfill this theme: a water wheel
Water wheel
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface...

 (Primitive Power), a steam turbine
Steam turbine
A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into rotary motion. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884....

 (Steam Turbine), the railroad (Rolling Power), a hydroelectric turbine
Water turbine
A water turbine is a rotary engine that takes energy from moving water.Water turbines were developed in the 19th century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now they are mostly used for electric power generation. They harness a clean and renewable energy...

 (Suspended Power), an airplane
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...

 (Yankee Clipper) and a dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...

 (Conversation: Sky and Earth) .
  • 1939 Conversation: Sky and Earth, (Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, MN).
  • 1939 Primitive Power, (The Regis Collection, Minneapolis, MN).
  • 1939 Rolling Power, (Smith College
    Smith College
    Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

     Museum of Art, Northampton, MA).
  • 1939 Steam Turbine, (Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH).
  • 1939 Suspended Power, (Dallas Museum of Art
    Dallas Museum of Art
    The Dallas Museum of Art is a major art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In 1984, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Arts District, Dallas, Texas...

    , Dallas, TX).
  • 1939 Yankee Clipper, (Rhode Island School of Design
    Rhode Island School of Design
    Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...

    , Providence, RI).

Later works

  • 1940 Interior (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
  • 1940 Fugue (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1948 Amoskeag Canal (Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH).
  • c.1952 Windows (Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY).
  • 1953 Aerial Gyrations (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA).
  • 1953 New England Irrelevancies (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1953 Ore Into Iron (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1954 Stacks in Celebration (Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH)
  • 1954 Architectural Cadences Number 4
  • 1954 Lunenburg (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1955 Golden Gate (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY).
  • 1956 On a Shaker Theme (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1957 Red Against White (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA).
  • 1958 Composition Around Red, Pennsylvania (Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
    Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
    The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is a museum located in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, featuring several art collections. For seventy years, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts has been a showcase for the visual arts in Central Alabama...

    , Montgomery
    Montgomery, Alabama
    Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...

    , Alabama
    Alabama
    Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

    )

Exhibitions

  • "Charles Sheeler: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs" - Museum of Modern Art
    Museum of Modern Art
    The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

    , New York, October 4 - November 1, 1939.
  • "Paintings by Charles Sheeler" - Dayton Art Institute
    Dayton Art Institute
    The Dayton Art Institute is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The Dayton Art Institute was rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for kids. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art museums in North America in 3 of 4 factors...

    , Dayton, Ohio, November 2 - December 2, 1944.
  • "Charles Sheeler: A Retrospective Exhibition" - Art Galleries, University of California at Los Angeles, October 11 - November 7, 1954. Toured November 18 - June 15, 1955 at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
    M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
    The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, commonly called simply the de Young Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H...

    , San Francisco; Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego; and Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
    Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
    The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...

    , Philadelphia; Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, New York.
  • "Charles Sheeler Retrospective Exhibition" - Allentown Art Museum
    Allentown Art Museum
    The Allentown Art Museum is an art museum located in the city of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It was founded in 1934 by a group organized by noted Pennsylvania impressionist painter, Walter Emerson Baum. With its collection of over 13,000 works of art, the Allentown Art Museum...

    , Allentown, Pennsylvania, November 17 - December 31, 1961.
  • "Charles Sheeler" - National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, DC, October 10 - November 24, 1968. Toured January 10 - April 27, 1969 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
    Philadelphia Museum of Art
    The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year...

    , and the Whitney Museum of American Art
    Whitney Museum of American Art
    The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

    , New York.
  • "Charles Sheeler: Across Media" - National Gallery of Art
    National Gallery of Art
    The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

    , Washington, DC, May 7 - August 27, 2006. Toured at the Art Institute of Chicago
    Art Institute of Chicago
    The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

    , October 7, 2006 - January 7, 2007; and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
    M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
    The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, commonly called simply the de Young Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H...

    , February 10 – May 6, 2007. 50 works included, including paintings, photographs, works on paper, and a film.
  • "The Photography of Charles Sheeler" - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
    The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...

    . Toured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
    Metropolitan Museum of Art
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

    , New York, June 3 - August 17, 2003; the Detroit Institute of Arts
    Detroit Institute of Arts
    The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...

    ; and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
    Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
    The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is a museum devoted to the work of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. It opened on 17 July 1997, eleven years after the artist's death, and is located at 217 Johnson Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.-History:...

    . Nearly 100 works, including 90 photographs.

Other links


External links

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