Electric Power

Details

Charles Sheeler (1883-1965)
Electric Power
pencil on paper
7¾ x 7½ in. (19.7 x 19.1 cm.), sheet size; 5½ x 5½ in. (14 x 14 cm.), image size
Executed circa 1941.

Provenance

The Downtown Gallery, New York.
James Maroney, Inc., New York.
Richard York Gallery, New York.
Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York.
Linda Hyman Gallery, New York.
ACA Galleries, New York.

Literature

C. Troyen and E.E. Hirshler, exhibition catalogue, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, Boston, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 174.

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Lot Essay

On assignment for Fortune magazine in the 1930s, Charles Sheeler completed "an extraordinary photographic series contrasting the manmade and natural wonders at Boulder Dam [Hoover Dam]." Sheeler's studies of the scene culminated in extraordinary works such as the gelatin-silver print Boulder Dam--Transmission Towers and the painting Conversation--Sky and Earth. "About ten years after the Fortune series was published, Sheeler turned again to this composition to produce a cover illustration on the theme of electric power for Reader's Digest (February 1941). The design survives in the form of a small pencil drawing [the present work] recording the central core of the composition. To further emphasize the awe-inspiring scale of the dam, Sheeler, with characteristic economy of means, extracted a figure from Suspended Power (Dallas Museum of Art) and placed him, head bowed, between the insulators." (C. Troyen and E. Hirshler, exhibition catalogue, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, Boston, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 174)

More from Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture

View All