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PROPERTY OF VARIOUS OWNERS

STUDY OF A NUDE

measurements note
5 by 9 1/2 in. (12.7 by 24.1 cm.)

platinum print, signed by the photographer in pencil on the image, tipped to a buff-colored mount, initialed and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, with notations in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, 1922

PROVENANCE

The collection of Van Deren Coke

Sotheby's New York, 8 May 1984, Sale 5176, Lot 350

Acquired by the present owner from the above

NOTE

This startling nude by Edward Weston is unique within the photographer's oeuvre. Immediate, unsentimental, and radically posed, it would appear to have no direct correlation to the nude studies Weston made in the years before or after. While other Weston nudes from this period hint at the modernist direction he would soon wholeheartedly pursue, none break so completely as this from his earlier Pictorial work. In its frank physicality, the study offered here represents something wholly new in the photographer's approach to the female form.

This photograph is not reproduced in the Weston literature, nor has another print of the image been located as of this writing. Aside from this print's initial appearance at auction in 1984, no print of the image has been offered at auction until the present time. The photograph offered here may well be one of the few prints, or possibly the only print, of this image extant.

This photograph is dated 1922, an important year for Weston and the evolution of his photographic vision. It was in this year that Weston made the two nude studies of an unknown sitter, 'Refracted Sunlight on Torso' and 'Breast (with window)' (Conger 81 and 82), that are regarded as a departure from his earlier Pictorialist mode. Although it is not known if the image offered here was made prior to, or after, these two studies in 1922, the photograph shows an even more advanced Modernist aesthetic. The image's sharply delineated detail, with its almost solarized outlines, is a decisive step away from the softer focus characteristic of Weston's other photographs at this time. Weston's decision, in the present image, to concentrate solely on the hands and breasts of his subject -- to the exclusion of all other contextual information -- is unprecedented in his work up to this point. Further, Weston has cropped the print dramatically from its contact-printed 8-by-10-inch format, to strengthen the composition. The resulting image, lushly printed in warm-toned platinum, is one of undeniable impact.

This photograph was originally in the collection of photographer, educator, curator, and author Van Deren Coke (1921 -- 2004). It is unknown when or where Coke acquired it, although it is possible that he purchased it from Los Angeles bookseller Jacob Zeitlin. Zeitlin was a friend of Weston, and had exhibited Weston's photographs during the photographer's lifetime; he continued to sell photographs by Weston after the photographer's death.

According to the notations on the reverse of the present print, Van Deren Coke believed that the subject was Miriam Lerner, who met Weston in Los Angeles in the early 1920s and became one of his many lovers. If Coke's source for the photograph was Zeitlin, then it should be noted that Zeitlin also sold a small group of Lerner's personal papers and photographs to the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. It is impossible to identify the model conclusively, however. Miriam Lerner was, indeed, an important model for Weston, and he produced a series of nudes of her in 1925 (cf. Conger 168 and 169). Although Weston met Lerner in 1921, there is no record of his having photographed her before 1925. In the photographer's negative log, now in the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, he does not identify her as a sitter before 1925. Further, in January 1925, just after the two had begun their affair, Weston wrote Lerner a letter which suggests that he had not, up to that point, photographed her:

'So hail to you lovely Miriam! For you have given me a new beauty to dream upon -- I eagerly await the hour when I shall attempt to catch concretely this very loveliness of face and form and attitude long felt by me in you' (Letter, 16 January 1925, from Edward Weston to Miriam Lerner, BANC MSS 67/143 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

There is also a strong possibility that the model of the present photograph is Tina Modotti, given her importance in Weston's life, as a model and a lover, in the early 1920s. Two of Weston's studies of Modotti, both made in 1924 -- two years after the image offered here -- present some interesting similarities: the well-known Hands Against Kimono (Conger 117) and another image, made during the 'kimono' session, in which Modotti holds her hands just below her breasts (Edward Weston: La Mirada de la Ruptura, cover and catálogo 23). Another candidate for the subject of this photograph is the unknown woman who appears in the aforementioned nude studies in 1922 (Conger 81 and 82). It is believed, however, that Weston made only two negatives of this sitter.