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Artist or Maker: EDWARD STEICHEN (1879-1973)

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Provenance: Gift of the photographer to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961;
Sotheby's, New York, April 25, 2001, cover and lot 111;
to the present owner

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Exhibited: Steichen: The Master Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February-March, 1978
Edward Steichen, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 2000-February 2001
Photography collection galleries of The Museum of Modern Art after a reinstallation that opened in January 1990.
Rose c'est la vie: On Flowers in Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, July-October 2004

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Literature: Steichen the Photographer, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961, p. 33; Steichen, A Life in Photography, Doubleday, 1963, pl. 62; Steichen, Longwell, Steichen: The Master Prints 1895-1914, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, pl. 72 (this print); Steichen's Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, pl. 308

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Notes: Heavy Roses is thought to be the last photograph made by Steichen before he left France at the outbreak of World War I. These voluptuous blooms picked and slowly dying in a sense mirror the changes that the "war to end all wars" was going to have on the world and Steichen himself. After returning to Voulangis in 1923, Steichen gave up all aspirations of being a painter, burned all his canvases and concentrated solely on photography. Gone were the highly manipulated and pictorial photographs of his pre-war work and replaced by a more stark and modern approach to light and shadow. Heavy Roses bridges the gap between these two periods in Steichen's oeuvre. While romantic and painterly in feel, it is a precisely executed, straight print without his earlier darkroom manipulations.

Only three other early prints of this image have been located. A similar photograph to the one offered here was sold at Christie's New York, May 15, 1980 as lot 36. The other two are palladium prints of which one is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

In recent history, substantial efforts have been made to establish a precise print date for this work. While there is no documentation in the archives of The Museum of Modern Art to indicate a print date and paper analysis have proved to be inconclusive, it seems likely that this print dates from the 1920s or 1930s.