Edward Weston

on a tan mount, with a hand-ruled pencil border, signed, dated, initialed and editioned '6/50' in pencil on the mount, titled, dated, and numbered '2C' and with annotation in pencil on the reverse, 1930 (Conger 589)

Acquired from the photographer by Benjamin H. Lehman, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, circa 1930

By descent to Hal and Nora Lehman

This impressive early print, on semi-glossy paper and on a hand-ruled tan mount, is in generally excellent condition. In raking light, silvering is visible in the dark areas at the periphery of the print. The tan mount is lightly soiled and age-darkened. The edges are rubbed, and the corners, which have pinholes in each, are bumped. There is a small loss at the lower right tip. There is evidence of a droplet-like deposit of indeterminate nature at the upper right corner of the mount. There is a 3/4-inch band of slight fading on the mount around the edge of the photograph. The reverse of the mount is age-darkened and lightly soiled. The title, '-Succulents-', '2C,' and '1930' are in Weston's hand. 'Leahman [sic] 3/8' are in unidentified hands in pencil. While Weston recorded 8 prints of '2C' in his negative log, Conger locates only 3 prints in these institutional collections: Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Art Institute of Chicago; and the University of California, Santa Cruz, this last a Project Print. Prints from this series rarely appear at auction, and at the time of this writing it is believed that only two prints of '2C' have previously been offered. Additional literature: Conger 589 Beaumont Newhall, Supreme Instants: The Photography of Edward Weston (Boston, 1986), fig. 187, p. 185 Ben Maddow, Edward Weston: Fifty Years (Aperture, 1973), p. 137 Manfred Heiting, ed., Edward Weston, 1886-1958 (Köln, 2004), p. 115
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Benjamin Harrison Lehman, professor of English at Berkeley and founder of its department of Dramatic Art, spent most of his leisure time in Carmel beginning in the late 1920s.  He became a member of the area’s large artistic community, which also included Edward Weston, Robinson Jeffers, Albert Bender, and Langston Hughes, among others.  Lehman wrote the introduction to Jeffers’s 1928 volume, Poems.