Edward SteichenAmerican, 1879–1973Rodin, Le Penseur
May one see it?
Not receiving at present
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the work
“What is true of the oil or watercolor is equally true of the photograph,” Edward Steichen once said, aptly expressing the overt pictorial intent of Rodin, Le Penseur. This romantic silhouette portrait depicts Auguste Rodin seated in his studio opposite his famous work Le Penseur, with his sculpture of Victor Hugo in the background. In 1902, the year he made this photograph, Steichen believed he would become a painter, and he visited Rodin and his circle of artists and admirers often. But as a founding member of Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession group, Steichen increasingly created photographs that were the artistic equivalents of his paintings, in the hope of winning artistic credibility for the newer art form.
Read on
Here the artist expertly manipulated the elastic and expressive gum-bichromate method, in which the application of water and brushwork in the printing process can soften or omit details, reduce dark spaces, and even change light into dark (and vice versa). The result is a combination of two separate images, both dramatically posed and lit, into a striking, painterly photograph.
For more on Edward Steichen’s work in the Art Institute’s collection visit the website: Edward Steichen's World War I Years.
For more on the Alfred Stieglitz collection at the Art Institute, along with in-depth object information, please visit the website: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1949.825
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago: the museum's own open data · fetched 7 days ago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of Edward Steichen
The whole life1900
Meets Stieglitz on the way to Paris
He leaves Milwaukee for Paris to study art; on a letter of introduction from Clarence H. White he meets Alfred Stieglitz in New York, who praises his background in painting and buys three of his photographic prints. He will spend several years in Paris and discover avant-garde art there.
1900
American citizenship
He becomes a US citizen and signs the naturalization papers as Edward J. Steichen, but goes on using his birth name, Éduard, until after the First World War.
1902
The Camera Work logo and the Photo-Secession
When Stieglitz is planning the magazine that becomes Camera Work, he asks Steichen to design its logo with a custom typeface; Steichen becomes the most frequently shown photographer in the journal. In the same year he is one of the founders of the Photo-Secession in New York.
1904
First experiments with colour photography
He begins experimenting with colour photography and becomes one of the earliest in the United States to use the Autochrome Lumière process.
1 July 1904
Daughter born: Mary Calderone
