Photographs

Frederick Sommer

'Chicken Entrails #7A' (Eight Young Roosters)

Lot Closed

April 7, 05:17 PM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 25,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Frederick Sommer

1905 - 1999

'Chicken Entrails #7A' (Eight Young Roosters)

gelatin silver print, mounted, signed, titled, dated, and annotated 'Box 262 Prescott Arizona' in pencil and stamped on the reverse, 1938

image: 7 ⅝ by 9 ½ in. (19.4 by 24.1 cm.)

Collection of Charles and Florence Tracy, Prescott, Arizona

By descent to the present owner

Frederick Sommer (Philadelphia College of Art, 1968), p. 16

Cynthia Wayne, Dreams, Lies, and Exaggerations: Photomontage in America (College Park: The Art Gallery, University of Maryland, 1991), p. 61

Keith F. Davis, The Art of Frederick Sommer: Photography, Drawing, Collage (Prescott and New Haven, 2005), p. 75

This early print of Frederick Sommer’s Chicken Entrails #7A(Eight Young Roosters), as well as the photographs in Lots 79 and 81, comes originally from the collection of fellow Prescott, Arizona, resident, Charles Tracy (1881-1955), and has remained in the family since. For further information regarding the provenance and an in-depth discussion of this series, please see the catalogue entry for Lot 79.

Chicken Entrails #7A (Eight Young Roosters) is one of the earliest images in Sommer's chicken parts series. As of this writing, the Frederick Sommer Foundation records no more than 6 other prints of this image. Early prints are exceedingly rare.