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'THE BREAST'

measurements note
7 3/8 by 9 3/8 in. (18.8 by 23.9 cm.)

warm-toned platinum print, tipped to a large buff-colored mount, signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, signed, inscribed 'For Jack -- remembering a gay party at Ito's' and dated '1923' by the photographer in pencil on the reverse, matted framed, 1921

PROVENANCE

The photographer to John ('Jack') Taylor, 1923

Sotheby's New York, 6 November 1976, Sale 3918, Lot 352

Private collection

Ehlers Caudill Gallery, Ltd., Chicago

Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1992

EXHIBITED

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Photography Rediscovered: American Photographs, 1900-1930, September -November 1979; traveling to The Art Institute of Chicago, December 1979 - February 1980

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center and Stanford, Connecticut, Twentieth-Century Master American Photographers,1987

LITERATURE

David Travis and Anne Kennedy, Photography Rediscovered: American Photographs, 1900-1930 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979), pl. 218 (this print)

Other prints of this image:

Peter C. Bunnell, ed., Edward Weston on Photography (Salt Lake City, 1983), unpaginated

Edward Weston: La Mirada de la Ruptura (Mexico City, 1994), p. 34

NOTE

The subject of this rare, early nude study is the young Italian actress and photographer, Tina Modotti, who would later become Weston's lover and partner during the photographer's sojourn in Mexico in the 1920s.

At the time of this writing, there are believed to be only three other prints of this image extant: in a private collection in California; one sold in these rooms on 16 October 1990 (Sale 6073, Lot 427); and one in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., donated by Weston himself in 1923. Two of these prints, in the private California collection, and in the Smithsonian, are alternatively titled 'The Source.' A print of this image, bearing the title 'The Breast' was exhibited in the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles salon in 1921-22. A print was also exhibited in 1923 at the Art Center in New York.

When Weston visited Alfred Stieglitz in New York City in 1922, he showed the elder photographer a number of his prints, The Breast included. According to a letter Weston sent to his friend, the photographer Johan Hagemeyer, Stieglitz was impressed by the image and said, 'If I was still publishing Camera Work I would ask for The Source (Tina's Breast)' (Edward Weston on Photography, p. 37).

This print offered here was originally given by Edward Weston to the painter John Taylor (1897 -- 1983). Taylor sold advertising for the Los Angeles Times, and studied under Stanton MacDonald Wright. He moved to New York City around 1922 and married the painter Andrée Ruellan. Taylor's sister, Maude Emily Taylor, was a friend of Margrethe Mather and appears as the subject of a number of her photographs (cf. Beth Gates Warren, Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration, pp. 45, 46, 51, and 52).

Weston personalized the print offered here with a warm inscription on the reverse of the mount. While it is unknown who 'Ito' is, it is possible that the inscription refers to Michio Ito, a Japanese-born dancer who toured with Adolf Bohm's dance company in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Ito worked both in New York and Hollywood and was friends with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, and other members of the bohemian Los Angeles circle in which Weston, Mather, and Taylor were included.

Sotheby's wishes to thank Beth Gates Warren for sharing her information on John Taylor and this photograph.