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SOTHEBY'S
Press Release
SOTHEBY'S TO OFFER DUPLICATE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM
GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
AUCTION FEATURES WORKS BY ANSEL ADAMS, ALVIN LANGDON COBURN AND FREDERICK
EVANS AND WILL TAKE PLACE ON APRIL 23, 2003
On April 23, 2003 Sotheby's New York will offer for sale duplicate
photographs from George Eastman House International Museum of Photography
and Film in Rochester, New York. Included in the choice selection are works
by twentieth-century masters Ansel Adams, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and
Frederick Evans, as well as select nineteenth-century photographs. The
offering, which will be included in Sotheby's regular sale of Photographs,
is estimated to bring $170/250,000.
George Eastman House was founded in 1947. The eminent photographic
historian Beaumont Newhall was chosen as the Eastman House's first curator
in 1948, and his deep understanding of photography, as well as his
friendships with many of the most important photographers of the day,
enabled him to build the Museum's superb collection. As curator, and after
1958 as director, Newhall focused on acquiring masterworks by master
photographers, and under his stewardship, the Eastman House became a
world-class exhibition venue and a resource for scholars. The Museum's vast
collection now spans the medium's history, from early works dating to the
birth of the medium, to cutting-edge images made by contemporary
photographers.
Therese Mulligan, Curator of Photography at George Eastman House, said, "In
January, the Museum's Board of Trustees approved the sale of unaccessioned
duplicates to raise funds for the purchase of historical and contemporary
photography. The majority of these duplicate images were received as part
of larger gifts and purchases, such as the archive of Alvin Langdon Coburn.
They were acquired by the Museum's first curator and second director
Beaumont Newhall, whose friendships with Coburn, Ansel Adams and collector
Alden Scott Boyer contributed to significant holdings of their work in the
photography collection. Through the sale and exchange of unaccessioned
duplicates, the Museum builds upon its past in order to strengthen the
future of the photography collection, and fulfill its mission of
preservation, presentation, and interpretation."
Ansel Adams was one of the photographers with whom Newhall, along with his
wife Nancy, had a close friendship. Adams and the Newhalls were
instrumental in the creation of the Photography Department at The Museum of
Modern Art, and they shared a deep belief in the power of photography. At
the Eastman House, Newhall purchased Adams's photographs for the collection,
and the photographer, in turn, made several gifts of his work. Sotheby's
will offer a number of Adams's photographs in the April sale, including
Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Kaweah Gap, Sierra Nevada (1927, est. $10/15,000),
White Tombstone (1933, est. 8/12,000), and Leaf Pattern, Glacier Bay
National Monument, Alaska (1948, est. $6/9,000). Several Adams photographs
in the sale were part of The Eloquent Light exhibition, curated by Nancy
Newhall in 1967, that traveled from the Eastman House to Boston's Museum of
Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum. The
Eastman House's offering will also include selected images from Adams's
portfolios, as well as portraits of photographers Alfred Stieglitz and
Edward Weston.
In the early 1950s, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall forged a friendship with the
photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn. One of the founding members of Alfred
Stieglitz's seminal Photo Secession group in the early 1900s, Coburn was
known for his evocative city views of New York and London, as well as for
his majestic American landscapes. Coburn bequeathed his considerable
archive of photographs, negatives, and photogravures to the Eastman House
upon his death in 1966. Of this group, the Museum is selling two
significant large-scale photographs of North America. In 1910, Coburn
sailed from England to America and embarked upon a cross-country trip that
led him to the West Coast and Yosemite. One of the early photographs from
this trip is his impressive view of Niagara Falls (circa 1910, est.
$20/30,000). In Yosemite, Coburn was deeply inspired by the powerful
natural forms he encountered and made a series of images, including The High
Sierra, Yosemite Valley (circa 1911, est. $30/50,000, pictured bottom of
page 2). In addition to his skills as a photographer and photographic
printer, Coburn was adept at making photogravures of his images. This
demanding process involved the transfer of a photographic image to a metal
plate from which prints were made by hand. Among the offerings from the
Eastman House will be four rare signed large-format photogravures, as well
as selected photogravures from his celebrated London and New York series
(1909 and 1910).
Also from Coburn's bequest is the Portrait of Alvin Langdon Coburn in
Eastern Costume (1901, est. $10/15,000) by Frederick Henry Evans. Coburn,
Evans, and their fellow photographer F. Holland Day were members of the
Linked Ring, the London-based photographic society. Of this portrait,
Coburn recounted that Day had recently been to Algiers and 'had returned
with a number of Arabic costumes, and so one evening we dressed up in some
of them, and went to call on Evans . . . Evans's housekeeper nearly fainted
away when she opened the door and beheld us. Evans, however, rose to the
occasion and did the obvious and entirely correct thing - he photographed
us!'
The nineteenth century is represented by several photographs by David
Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, the early Scottish photographic duo known
for their penetrating portraits made in the 1840s, as well as by a selection
of plates from the Wheeler survey of the American West by Timothy O'Sullivan
and William Bell (1872). Other twentieth-century offerings include Wynn
Bullock's signature image, Child in Forest (1951, est. $4/6,000), as well as
photographs by Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and Annie Brigman.
IMAGES AVAILABLE VIA EMAIL & ALL RELEASES ARE PUBLISHED ON WWW.SOTHEBYS.COM
Met vriendelijke groet,
Diana Ridderikhoff
Press Office / Marketing
Sotheby's Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 30, 1083 HJ Amsterdam
T. +31 20 550 2205 F +31 20 550 2310
E: diana.ridderikhoff@sothebys.com
www.sothebys.com
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