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Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler standing next to a window. c. 1910.
Born(1883-07-16)July 16, 1883
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DiedMay 7, 1965(1965-05-07) (aged 81)
Dobbs Ferry, New York
NationalityAmerican
Known forModern art, Photography
MovementPrecisionism

Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist. Sheeler is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism, and was a successful painter as well as one of the master photographers of the 20th century. His work is primarily identified with the Precisionism movement that focused on industrial subjects.

Early life and career[edit]

Charles Rettew Sheeler Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1883 to Mary Cunningham Sheeler and Charles Rettew Sheeler.[1] He attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1903, where he studied industrial drawing and the applied arts.[2] He then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1903 to 1906, where he studied traditional painting and drawing under William Merritt Chase.[2] It was there he met fellow student Morton Schamberg, with whom he would be close friends until Schamberg's death in the influenza epidemic of 1918.[3] Sheeler and Schamberg also participated in Chase's classes in Europe in the summers of 1904 and 1905.[4]

Sheeler exhibited his paintings at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908.[1] From 1908 to 1909, Sheeler, his parents, and his friend Schamberg traveled a second time to Europe, first to Italy, where the late medieval masters such as Giotto made a strong impression on Sheeler, and then to Paris in 1909.[2][4] There Sheeler visited Michael and Sarah Stein, who were early patrons of Picasso and Braque, and Sheeler was inspired to work in a Cubist style for several years.[2]

After returning to the U.S., Sheeler and Schamberg rented studios in the same downtown Philadelphia building.[4] They also rented a 19th century stone farmhouse in Doylestown, located in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania for use on weekends and during the summer.[2][4] 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 took up photography around 1910.[1] 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. By 1912, his photography of Philadelphia buildings for local architects was financially supporting him.[1]

In 1913, Sheeler participated in the landmark Armory Show in New York, showing six paintings.[1]

Sheeler started collecting American antiques in the mid 1910s, and by the 1920s was collecting Shaker crafts and furniture.[1]

Sheeler was hired in 1916 by Marius de Zayas of the Modern Gallery in New York City to photograph artwork in 1916, and worked as the Modern Gallery staff photographer from 1917 to 1924.[1] Sheeler finally moved to New York in 1918.[1] In 1920, Sheeler was hired as a still photographer for The Arts Magazine.[1]

In 1926, Sheeler was hired by Edward Steichen to work for Conde Nast Publications as a fashion and celebrity photographer.[1] Sheeler's photographs were regularly published in Vogue and Vanity Fair.[1] He also continued to work as a still life photographer for numerous advertising agencies.[1]

In 1927, Sheeler was commissioned by the advertising firm N.W. Ayer and Son to photograph Ford Motor Company's new plant at River Rouge.[1]


In 1931, Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery became his primary art dealer, and regularly exhibited his paintings and drawings until 1966.[1] Sheeler also followed Halpert's advice [beginning in 1931] to spend more time painting and less time on photography.[1]

Later career[edit]

Sheeler married his second wife, Musya Metas Sokolova (1908-1981), in 1939.[1]

In 1942, Sheeler and his wife moved to Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.[1]

Sheeler was appointed the Senior Research Fellow in Photography from 1942 to 1945 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[5] He was an artist-in-residence at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts in 1946 and at the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1948.[5]

In 1954, the UCLA Art Gallery hosted a retrospective of Sheeler's work, and he made his first trip to Caifornia for the show.[5] He returned to California a second time in 1956 to visit his friend, Ansel Adams.[5] He made paintings and photographs on both trips.[5]

He suffered a stroke in 1959 that forced him to stop painting.[5] He continued working in photography, but with reduced output, during the early 1960s.[5] Sheeler died from a second stroke on May 7, 1965,[5] in Dobbs Ferry, New York.[1]

Work[edit]

"Sheeler virtually defined the Precisionist idiom and he was one of the few American artists to enjoy distinguished careers in both painting and photography."[5]

Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography. He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasized the linear precision he employed in his depictions.

Subjects:

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. He painted a series of industrial scenes in New England in the late 1940s while he was serving as an artist-in-residence at two New England museums.[5] He returned to depicting New York skyscrapers in the early 1950s, in a series of a paintings and photographs.[5] He created works in California during his two visits there in 1954 and 1956.[5]


Style:

His painting style in the 1940s varied between photographic realism and more abstract depictions.[5] He experimented with other styles later in the decade, including magic realism.[5]

In the 1950s, he shifted more towards abstraction, and he often created compositions through the manipulation of overlapping photographs.[5] His color palette also became more intense.[5]


Select works[edit]

Films[edit]

Photographic works[edit]

Paintings[edit]

Early works[edit]

  • 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[edit]

In 1940, Fortune Magazine 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 (Primitive Power), a steam turbine (Steam Turbine), the railroad (Rolling Power), a hydroelectric turbine (Suspended Power), an airplane (Yankee Clipper) and a dam (Conversation: Sky and Earth) [1].

Later works[edit]

The monument of Charles Sheeler in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
  • 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, Alabama)

Exhibitions[edit]

Notes[edit]

^ “Power: A portfolio by Charles Sheeler”, Fortune magazine (December 1940) Time Inc., Volume XXII, Number 6

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Borland, Jennifer (2011), "Biographical Information", Finding Aid to the Charles Sheeler Papers, circa 1840s-1966, bulk 1923-1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, retrieved November __, 2011 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help).
  2. ^ a b c d e Murphy, Jessica (November 2009), "Charles Sheeler (1883–1965)", Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, retrieved November ___, 2011 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help).
  3. ^ Glueck, Grace (November 12, 1982), "The Pioneering of Morton Schamberg", The New York Times, retrieved August 11, 2010.
  4. ^ a b c d Harnsberger 1992, p. 215.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Harnsberger, R. Scott (1992), Ten Precisionist Artists: Annotated Bibliographies, Westport: Greenwood Press, p. 231, ISBN 9780313276644.
  6. ^ a b c d e Roberts, Norma J., ed. (1988), The American Collections, Columbus Museum of Art, p. 198, ISBN 0-8109-1811-0.
  7. ^ "NGA - Charles Sheeler: Across Media (5/2006)". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved September 19, 2011.
  8. ^ "The Photography of Charles Sheeler". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved September 19, 2011.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

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