Flower Forms

Charles Sheeler was a prolific artist, producing work throughout his career that ranged in media from photography to film to painting. Known best for his carefully composed photographs and sharp, precise paintings, Sheeler’s work across media shared common features—crisp lines, graphic volumes, blocked colors, and smooth surfaces—and a thematic exploration of American landscapes, whether industrial, domestic, urban, or pastoral. A leading painter in the Precisionist movement, Sheeler’s artwork presented a clean, pared down vision of regional America while embracing the tensions between the efficiency of industrial progress, mounting concern over its social implications, and age-old traditions of artisanal craft.

  Sheeler made this photograph of his 1917 painting, Flower Forms (TFAA 1987.33), likely for John Quinn, a significant twentieth-century collector, who purchased the painting from Sheeler soon after it was completed. Quinn was also a committed collector of ethnographic art, and in 1918 he hired Sheeler to photograph his collection. How much of Quinn’s work Sheeler photographed is unknown, but pictures survive of his African and Indian art collections. These photographs, held at institutions as varied as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Archives de Zayas in Seville, Spain, reveal Sheeler’s artistic eye for making striking depictions of masks, ceremonial objects, and sculptures from Quinn’s collection. It is probable that Sheeler photographed his own painting in Quinn’s collection as part of this visual inventory. This photograph of Flower Forms, therefore, potentially documents not only an artwork that for the young Sheeler marked a transition from an interest in abstraction to the Precisionist paintings for which he would eventually become known. It also offers a testament to the multi-faceted relationship between Sheeler and Quinn. The posthumous 1926 publication of Quinn’s collection, titled John Quinn, 1870-1925: Collection of Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings, and Sculpture featured Sheeler’s Flower Forms with an accompanying illustration. The image reproduced in the book is possibly Sheeler’s photograph.  

Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (organizer); Venue: James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, March 18–July 9, 2017. [exh. cat.]

John Quinn, 1870–1925: Collection of Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings and Sculpture. Huntington, New York: Pidgeon Hill Press, 1926. ill. p. 181 (black & white, as Flowers and Forms). (possibly reproduced).

Jensen, Kristen, ed., Charles Sheeler: Fashion Photography, and Sculptural Form. (exh. cat. James A. Michener Art Museum) Doylestown, Pennsylvania: James A. Michener Art Museum, 2017. Checklist p. 219.