Lot 177: EDWARD WESTON 1886-1958 NUDE STUDY

DETAILED DESCRIPTION platinum print, copyrighted by the photographer in ink on the image, copyrighted, signed, and dated by the photographer in pencil on the reverse, matted, framed, 1914 PROVENANCE A descendant of Sarah Bixby Smith, a close friend and patron of Edward Weston CATALOGUE NOTE A descendant of Sarah Bixby Smith, a close friend and patron of Edward Weston This nude study is one of the earliest dated photographs by Edward Weston to appear at auction. In its pose and its lighting, the image is characteristic of the early Pictorialist phase of Weston's career. In 1914, the year the present photograph was taken, Weston and his partner Margrethe Mather were among the eleven founding members of the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. As with the following lot, the identity of the sitter is unknown. Weston photographed many dancers during the 1910s, among them Violet Romer, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, and it is possible that the subject of the present study is also a dancer. The print offered here was originally owned by Sarah Bixby Smith, an important figure in the Los Angeles arts community in the early 1900s (see Lot 174). Conger has noted that what was likely the earliest show devoted exclusively to Weston's photographs was held in November 1914 at the Friday Morning Club, where Bixby Smith was the director. A second show of Weston's work was held at the Club in 1917, and he continued to exhibit there in the years following ( cf. Conger 46). The present print, removed from what may have been a larger exhibition mount, could well have been included in one of these early Friday Morning Club shows.

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