Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Exhibited:

Edward Steichen, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 5, 2000 - February 4, 2001.

Born Eduard Jean Steichen in 1879 in Luxembourg, Edward Steichen came to the United States in 1881, settling first in Hancock, Michigan and then in Milwaukee in 1889. With the encouragement of his mother, Steichen decided upon a career in art by the age of fourteen, when he was first exposed to contemporary art at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The following year he became a lithographer’s apprentice and then studied at the Milwaukee Art Students League from 1894 to 1898.

Steichen is perhaps best known for his photography, a medium he began to explore in 1895. He simultaneously painted and produced photographs for more than two decades, until 1922 when he made the radical decision to burn all of his paintings that remained in his possession and devote himself completely to photography. Steichen lost his faith in his ability to effectively make art out of painting, believing that photography would allow him to better make contact with life. Due to that decision, few of Steichen’s paintings are extant.

Ironically, his initial photographs were done in the soft-focus Pictorialist style and closely resemble the paintings he was producing at the same time. Pictorialism was based on the tenet that photography should strive to look like painting and derived its aesthetics from the Tonalist movement. Tonalism, in turn, with its roots in the work of George Inness and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, was an American movement that strove to turn its back on the sun-dappled images of French Impressionism and create a unique style based on “tones” in an understated palette. Originally popular as an academic movement in the late nineteenth century, Tonalism appealed to early twentieth century modernists, as well.

A masterpiece of this style, Moonlit Landscape, contains the various elements that epitomize the objectives of the movement: a landscape painting in a subdued, uniform tone—in this case, a soft teal—conveyed with a dreamlike quality. Four figures at lake’s edge anchor the painting near its bottom; they are rendered deftly but faintly, dwarfed by the enormous weeping willow at right, which is blurred but still distinguishable. Steichen’s palette, his subtle, light brushwork and the brooding moon reflected across the lake’s surface combine to create an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere. Steichen adds to the richness of mood by his choice of perspective: the moon appears to be level with the viewer, the lake and the figures below. Only the tree at right traverses the entire composition. This elevated viewpoint, possibly obtained from a balcony, effectively conveys a mystical aura to the painting: the sense that the viewer is aloft in the air.

Painted in 1907, the year after Steichen returned to Paris, Moonlit Landscape is one of several works depicting the idyllic scenery of Lake George that he painted from memory, or possibly from his own photographs. Alfred Stieglitz, his friend and business partner in the gallery ‘291’ owned a summer home at Lake George and his view inspired Steichen to create numerous dream-like nocturnal landscapes.