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Lot Essay
Elsie Driggs successfully navigated the male-dominated New York art scene in the 1920s, rising to prominence with her renowned Precisionist paintings alongside contemporaries such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. The present work, Leaf Forms of 1918, is among Driggs' earliest pictures to exemplify her acclaimed personal style, uniquely incorporating delicate beauty and the dynamic "livingness" of her subjects within the Precisionist canon.
Paula Brisco writes, “Elsie’s earliest surviving paintings, Lilacs and Leaf Forms, which date to 1918, are closely aligned to the contemporaneous still lifes of Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth in their modernist design. In these early still lifes, duality of space and matter give way to a continuously modulated picture surface as Driggs flattens space by severely limiting spacial perspective. She focuses on plants’ organic structure and expansive potential as she depicts their outwardly probing leaves with sparse definition.” (Elsie Driggs: The Quick and the Classical, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2008, p. 13, p. 23)
Significantly, Driggs exhibited alongside Sheeler and Demuth in the 1920s at the Daniel Gallery. Despite fears that buyers might be prejudiced against a female artist, Driggs attracted interest from major clientele such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, solidifying her place among the ranks of the more widely recognized male artists of the period. Like Sheeler and Demuth who worked with industrial subject matter, Driggs also explored the machine aesthetic through her own unique lens. Her major work Pittsburgh of 1927 in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibits the hallmarks of the great Precisionist works of the period, while also set apart through the artist's signature duality between the formal and the mystical. She said of creating Pittsburgh, "All the other Precisionists made exact records of what they saw, but…whenever I have done something Precisionist or formal or classical, I have always wanted to introduce movement too." (Ibid., p. 15)
Her subjects from nature, such as Leaf Forms, particularly allowed Driggs to focus on growth, motion and development. With this approach, her work also closely relates to her Modernist contemporaries O'Keeffe and Dove, who each delighted in the rhythmic patterns and spiritual beauty of natural objects and dedicated significant series within their oeuvres to the subjects. In fact, the trajectory of O'Keeffe's work may have been been influenced significantly by exposure to Driggs' major work Chou of 1923. Painted only a few years following Leaf Forms and with a similar palette, Chou is a larger-scaled close up of an Italian cabbage, which, due to the opening leaves and intimate perspective, resembles a rose. Thomas C. Folk writes, "It is possible that Chou may have influenced the art of Georgia O'Keeffe significantly. Before 1924, O'Keeffe's flower paintings were relatively small… Driggs' triumph with Chou may have encouraged O'Keeffe to work on a larger scale, for soon after Chou was exhibited, the scale of O'Keeffe's flower paintings increased substantially." (Elsie Driggs: A Woman of Genius, exhibition catalogue, 1990, Trenton, New Jersey, p. 13)
For Driggs herself, paintings such as Leaf Forms reveal an interest in the transitory nature of things, their innate movement and the inherent magic of the appearance of the world around her. Whether still lifes of plant forms or towering smoke stacks, Driggs' works radiate with her ambition, as she described, "I want chemistry—something happening." (Ibid., p. 13)
Paula Brisco writes, “Elsie’s earliest surviving paintings, Lilacs and Leaf Forms, which date to 1918, are closely aligned to the contemporaneous still lifes of Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth in their modernist design. In these early still lifes, duality of space and matter give way to a continuously modulated picture surface as Driggs flattens space by severely limiting spacial perspective. She focuses on plants’ organic structure and expansive potential as she depicts their outwardly probing leaves with sparse definition.” (Elsie Driggs: The Quick and the Classical, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2008, p. 13, p. 23)
Significantly, Driggs exhibited alongside Sheeler and Demuth in the 1920s at the Daniel Gallery. Despite fears that buyers might be prejudiced against a female artist, Driggs attracted interest from major clientele such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, solidifying her place among the ranks of the more widely recognized male artists of the period. Like Sheeler and Demuth who worked with industrial subject matter, Driggs also explored the machine aesthetic through her own unique lens. Her major work Pittsburgh of 1927 in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibits the hallmarks of the great Precisionist works of the period, while also set apart through the artist's signature duality between the formal and the mystical. She said of creating Pittsburgh, "All the other Precisionists made exact records of what they saw, but…whenever I have done something Precisionist or formal or classical, I have always wanted to introduce movement too." (Ibid., p. 15)
Her subjects from nature, such as Leaf Forms, particularly allowed Driggs to focus on growth, motion and development. With this approach, her work also closely relates to her Modernist contemporaries O'Keeffe and Dove, who each delighted in the rhythmic patterns and spiritual beauty of natural objects and dedicated significant series within their oeuvres to the subjects. In fact, the trajectory of O'Keeffe's work may have been been influenced significantly by exposure to Driggs' major work Chou of 1923. Painted only a few years following Leaf Forms and with a similar palette, Chou is a larger-scaled close up of an Italian cabbage, which, due to the opening leaves and intimate perspective, resembles a rose. Thomas C. Folk writes, "It is possible that Chou may have influenced the art of Georgia O'Keeffe significantly. Before 1924, O'Keeffe's flower paintings were relatively small… Driggs' triumph with Chou may have encouraged O'Keeffe to work on a larger scale, for soon after Chou was exhibited, the scale of O'Keeffe's flower paintings increased substantially." (Elsie Driggs: A Woman of Genius, exhibition catalogue, 1990, Trenton, New Jersey, p. 13)
For Driggs herself, paintings such as Leaf Forms reveal an interest in the transitory nature of things, their innate movement and the inherent magic of the appearance of the world around her. Whether still lifes of plant forms or towering smoke stacks, Driggs' works radiate with her ambition, as she described, "I want chemistry—something happening." (Ibid., p. 13)