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Dimensions: measurements note 9¼ by 6 5/8 in. (23.5 by 16.8 cm.)

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Provenance: The estate of the photographerHis wife, Jane Felix White, inherited from the aboveBy descent to Clarence H. White, Jr.His wife, Ruth R. White, inherited from the above Acquired by George Rinhart from the above, 1986Acquired by Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, from the above, 1986Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

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Literature: Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 54 (this print)

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Notes: Unlike other key members of Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession, Clarence H. White grew up, and matured as a photographer, far from New York City, in the small town of Newark, Ohio. Self-taught, he worked as a clerk at a wholesale grocery while photographing his family and friends, in and out of doors, creating a body of work notable for both its technical and aesthetic sophistication and its quiet depiction of the inner lives of his subjects. White exhibited his work frequently from the very start of his career, and his photographs were widely admired. While prints of The Canopied Bed are scarce, White included the image in at least two important early exhibitions: in the Photo-Secession exhibition at the Art Galleries of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in 1904; and the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, in 1910. The print offered here--monogrammed on the image and double-mounted--is characteristic of White's classic presentation style. In this expertly-rendered platinum print, White's sensitive handling of the dominant dark tones creates an image that is moody, but not brooding, and captures a quiet domestic moment in a manner that is both evocative and unsentimental.