Eleanor

Artist Harry Callahan (American, 1912 - 1999)

Date1948; printed ca. 1980

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 9 1/4 × 12 9/16 inches (23.5 × 31.91 cm)
Sheet: 10 7/8 × 13 7/8 inches (27.62 × 35.24 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.166

SignedSigned on sheet recto, lower right, in pencil: "Harry Callahan"

Inscribednone

MarkingsOn sheet verso, top, in pencil: "S-55"; On sheet verso, bottom, in pencil: "8-5-80", "68%"

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionImage of a silhouette of a female form cropped at the stomach; her arms are raised and folded behind her head.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Harry Callahan: Photographs. Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, January 17 - March 1, 1981, no cat.

Harry Callahan: Photographs. University Museum, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, August 15 - September 26, 1982, no cat.

Harry Callahan: Photographs. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, August 28 - October 16, 1983, no cat.

Photographs: Harry Callahan. Gallery of Fine Arts, Daytona Beach Community College, Daytona Beach, FL, October 8 - November 7, 1990, no cat.

Harry Callahan: New Color. Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, November 5, 1992 - January 12, 1993, no cat.

Harry Callahan. Les Rencontres d'Arles, July 6 - August 15, 1993, no cat.

Harry Callahan. Fundación “la Caixa,” Madrid, June - July 2000, Instituto de América, Centro Damiàn Bayón, Granada, September-October 2000, San Esteban, Murcia, Spain, November-December 2000, Fundación “la Caixa” en las Islas Baleares, Palma, Spain, February-April 2001, unnumbered.

Harry Callahan. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 9 - October 21, 2007, no cat.

Rotation 22. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 10, 2016- January 8, 2017, no cat.

Gallery Label

Harry Callahan took up photography seriously in 1941, influenced equally by the purism of Ansel Adams and the experimental approach of László Moholy-Nagy. Central to all his work is a respect for the integrity of the photographic process itself, and a desire to explore the many ways in which the camera is capable of interpreting—and inventing—the world.

Callahan frequently photographed his wife Eleanor, who was his greatest muse. She figures prominently in many of his photographs. Rendered in double exposures, intimate nudes and silhouetted forms, alone or with their daughter Barbara, Eleanor’s image served as an anchor throughout Callahan’s oeuvre.

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1980;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.

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