The American Scene including Important Photographs from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation
The American Scene including Important Photographs from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation
Property Sold To Benefit The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Of New Mexico
Ansel Adams
Taos Pueblo, Church
Lot Closed
May 24, 05:34 PM GMT
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property Sold To Benefit The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Of New Mexico
Ansel Adams
1902 - 1984
Taos Pueblo, Church
signed Ansel Adams (on the mount); signed Ansel Adams, titled Taos Pueblo, Church, dated 1942 and annotated Made for U.S.D.I. Must not be reproduced (on the reverse)
gelatin silver print, mounted
7 ½ by 9 ½ in.
19 by 24 cm.
Executed in 1942 and probably printed in the early 1940s.
Helene Wurlitzer, Taos (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired by bequest from the above circa 1963 by the present owner
Ansel Adams, The Print: Contact Printing and Enlarging (Hastings-on-Hudson, 1968), p. 11
Alice Gray, Ansel Adams: National Park Service Photographs (London, 1994), pl. 59
Elaine M. Bucher, eds., America's Wilderness: The Photographs of Ansel Adams With the Writings of John Muir (Philadelphia, 1997), p. 70
Lauris Morgan-Griffiths, Landscapes of the American West (London, 2008), pp. 188-9
In 1941, Adams was commissioned by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and the National Park Service to create images for an elaborate photomural series that was intended to hang in the U. S. Department of the Interior building in Washington, D. C. Correspondence between Adams and E. K. Burlew, First Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior, indicates that Adams began printing from those negatives in late 1941 or early 1942 following his recent trip through the Southwest. The scale of the photograph offered here, its photographic paper, and presentation are consistent with the prints Adams made for the Department of the Interior. Those prints, delivered by Adams to Washington, D. C., in early March 1942, remain in the National Archives.
This photograph comes from the collection of The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. The print of this image in the National Archives is there titled ‘Church, Taos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico, 1941’ (79-AAQ-3).