Self-portrait with brush and palette
Artist
Edward Steichen
(American, born Luxembourg, 1879 - 1973)
Date1901; printed ca. 1960
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 3/4 × 10 5/16 inches (34.93 × 26.19 cm)
Sheet: 13 15/16 × 10 9/16 inches (35.4 × 26.83 cm)
Mount: 14 1/4 × 10 13/16 inches (36.2 × 27.46 cm)
Sheet: 13 15/16 × 10 9/16 inches (35.4 × 26.83 cm)
Mount: 14 1/4 × 10 13/16 inches (36.2 × 27.46 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.2183
SignedSigned on image recto, lower left, in negative: "STEICHEN / MDCCCCII";
SIgned on image recto, lower right, in negative: "STEIC" [sic], and on top of print: "STI" [sic];
Signed on window mat recto, lower right, in pencil: "STEICHEN";
Signed and dated on mat verso, center, in pencil: "Edward Steichen / 1901".
InscribedOn mount verso, top, in black pen: "Self portrait with brush & palette 1901"
MarkingsOn mat verso, upper left corner, in pencil: "1-1-69;
On mat verso, center, in pencil: "8847 / 7 [circled] / (+mat)";
On mount verso, top, in green pencil: "14".
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionPortrait of a man (Edward Steichen) wearing a dark jacket with a white scarf; he is holding an artist's palette and paintbrush.Exhibition History
Faces: an Exhibition from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Bellingham WA, September 15 - 14 November 14, 1983, no cat.
Photographic Abstraction. Utah State University, Logan, UT, Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV, Fine Art Center/Cheekwood, Nashville, TN, Montgomery Museum of Art, AL, January – September 1987, no cat.
Rotation 15. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 19, 2013 – January 5, 2014, no cat.
In this early self-portrait, Edward Steichen presents himself as an artist, holding a paintbrush and palette. By the time he made this photograph, he had achieved international recognition as both a painter and a photographer. Steichen eventually gave up painting to pursue a remarkably varied career behind the camera. He served as a military photographer in both world wars, a fashion and commercial photographer for the publisher Condé Nast in the 1920s and 1930s, and as curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1947 to 1962.
Purchased from the artist by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1969;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963), 18 (repro).
Copyright© The Estate of Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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