CHARLES SHEELER | STUDY FOR 'BUCKS COUNTY BARN'

The artist

Edith Halpert, New York, circa 1932 (gift of the above)

Estate of the above (sold: Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, March 15, 1973, lot 102)

Private collection (acquired at the above sale; sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 3, 2008, lot 76)

Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

An excerpt from the Bruce Museum's object label, where the present work was exhibited in 1997, stated: "Charles Sheeler turned to modernism for a new vocabulary to express the qualities of modern life. In his famous series of Bucks County Barns he reduced this typical American scene to the essential structure of line and plane. He wrote of this series: 'I sought to reduce natural forms to the borderline of abstraction, retaining only those forms which I believe to be indispensable to the design of the picture ...' The wavy black line in this example is unique in the series and is intended to be an abstract simplifier of the accidental properties of weather."