Edward Weston

mounted, initialed and dated '1938' in pencil on the mount, signed, titled, dated, and 'NC-CC-10g' in pencil on the reverse, 1939; accompanied by an 'Art Lending Service' label, with typed credit, title, price '$55.00,' and annotations (Conger 1462) (2)

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Penthouse Exhibitions: Photographs and Sculpture, May–June 1963

In addition to a print of this image in the Edward Weston Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Conger locates 7 other prints: The International Center of Photography at George Eastman House; Lehigh University; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Huntington Library, San Marino; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Special Collections, University of California, Santa Cruz. This early print, on semi-glossy paper with a slightly warm tonality, is in generally excellent condition. Upon close examination, the following are visible: original retouching in the lower central portion of the image, and a few very minor scuffs. There is very subtle, uneven fading and yellowing at the extreme left and right edges of the print. This does not detract from the overall fine appearance of this tonally rich print. On the reverse of the mount, there is scattered soiling, faint foxing, fingerprints, and a few stray graphite marks on the reverse. There are two tape remnants at the upper left and upper right. '10' is written in an unidentified hand on the verse in pencil. When examined under ultraviolet light, this print does not appear to fluoresce.
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Of her trip with Weston to Crescent Beach, just south of the Oregon border, Charis Wilson wrote: 'One memorable day we came out to the coast in thick fog to drive between rows of ghostly chimneys, white skeletons of buildings, black skeletons of trees. . . Edward hadn't expected to work but he found a wrecked car that needed doing and a stump to end all stumps' (quoted in California and the West, p. 183). 

Weston included a print of this image in his 1946 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art.  The commercial viability of the image at the time that it was made, however, perhaps accounts for the scarcity of extant copies.  Only three prints of this image have appeared at auction since 1990, all in these rooms. 

This photograph was originally offered as part of The Museum of Modern Art's 'Art Lending Service,' a fundraising enterprise launched in 1951 by the Museum's Junior Council.  In addition to renting works of art to Museum members, the Art Lending Service also organized approximately five exhibitions per year in the Museum’s Penthouse Restaurant, from which works could be purchased.  Sales of photographs began in 1960 and ceased in 1982.