A Grand Vision: The David H. Arrington Collection of Ansel Adams Masterworks
A Grand Vision: The David H. Arrington Collection of Ansel Adams Masterworks
Ansel Adams
'Mt. Williamson from Manzanar, California'
Auction Closed
December 14, 10:16 PM GMT
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Ansel Adams
1902 - 1984
'Mt. Williamson from Manzanar, California'
gelatin silver print, mounted, signed in pencil on the mount, signed, inscribed 'For the Sidney Liebes with the warm regards of Ansel Adams', titled, and annotated 'Courtesy FORTUNE Magazine, Must not be Reproduced' in pencil and with the photographer's San Francisco studio stamp (BMFA 4) on the reverse, framed, an Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, label on the reverse, 1944, probably printed in the early 1950s
image: 15 by 18 1/2 in. (38.1 by 47 cm.)
frame: 31 1/4 by 35 1/2 in. (79.4 by 90.2 cm.)
By descent in family, 2006, Andrea Stillman and Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, as agents
Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), pl. 46
Ansel Adams, The Camera (Boston, 1980), fig.1-1
Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1983), p. 66
James Alinder, Ansel Adams 1902-1984, (The Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA, 1984), p. 16
James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 40
Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916-1984 (Boston, 1988), p. 388
Liliane de Cock Morgan, ed., Ansel Adams (Hastings on Hudson, 1972), pl. 80
Michael Read, ed., Ansel Adams, New Light: Essays on His Legacy and Legend (San Francisco, 1993), p. 20
John P. Schaefer, The Ansel Adams Guide Book 1: Basic Techniques of Photography (Boston, 1992), cover and p. 267
Rebecca Senf, Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (New Haven, 2020), fig. 6.3
Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 261
John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001), pl. 97
Unable to serve in the military due to his age and familial responsibilties, Ansel Adams instead volunteered for civilian war effort assignments during World War II, including escorting American troops around Yosemite and printing top-secret photographs for the military. He was still also taking commissions for other work, including a project from Fortune Magazine to photograph at Manzanar War Relocation Camp in Lone Pine in the Owens Valley. The project affected him deeply, and he would later describe the internment of thousands of Japanese-American citizens as a 'nightmare situation' (Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, p. 260). The present image was taken during this period, shot away from the camp and toward the nearby Sierra Mountains:
'The grand view of the Sierra from Manzanar visually excited me, and I know I must make some inner-assigned photographs, though it took an extensive search to find the image that clearly communicated what I saw and felt. Behind and to the west of the camp was a huge field of boulders, extending several miles to the base of Mount Williamson. One day I sensed the conditions to be right: there was a glorious storm playing across the crest of the Sierra and I watched as it approached the peak of Mount Williamson. I drove out to the boulders and set up my 8x10 camera on the car's rooftop platform. This perspective allowed me to compose the photograph with the boulders in the foreground, progressing to Mount Williamson in the midst of a dramatic mix of shafts of sunlight and storm clouds.' (Autobiography, pp. 260-1)
The inscription on the reverse of this photograph is to Marjorie and Sidney Liebes, family friends of Ansel and Virginia Adams, who had previously acquired an early print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, now also in the Arrington Collection [see Lot 29].