Telling Stories Edith Halpert and Her Artists October 9 through December 11, 2020

Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Hydro Electric Power, Hoover Dam, 1950 tempera and ink on paper board, 14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches

Hydro Electric Power, Hoover Dam, 1950, was not the first time Charles Sheeler had addressed the subject of the Hoover Dam. In the fall of 1939, Sheeler visited the Hoover Dam and painted the closely related Conversation—Sky and Earth, 1940 as part of a Fortune magazine commission to illustrate the concept of power through American technology marvels. He returned to his image of the Hoover Dam ten years later to produce Hydro Electric Power for the February 1951 cover of Reader’s Digest.

Never one to miss an opportunity to promote one of her artists, Edith Halpert mounted a show of Sheeler’s original “Power” series paintings at the Downtown Gallery in December 1940. She cleverly timed the exhibition to coincide with the publication of the series in Fortune magazine, a publicity strategy she utilized the following year, after urging a Fortune art director to publish a selection from Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration” series. Halpert recognized that Sheeler’s “Power” series was the perfect opportunity to advocate modern art for a modern America. As she wrote in the exhibition press release (Downtown Gallery Records, AAA):

Charles Sheeler, "Conversation—Sky and Earth" 1940, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

During the two years Sheeler devoted to this series of paintings, he sustained the excitement, the drama, the emotional uplift these man-made wonders inspired in him, and translated these qualities from motor phenomena to visual phenomena with a technique and extraordinary color organization which so eminently fitted him for this task of recording the latest developments in our machine age . . . Sheeler, in his art, gives us the symbols of modern living, and perpetuates our era for future generations.

Halpert insisted that Sheeler’s paintings are the ideal way to visualize contemporary life in America. She explained, “In the various implements of power offered Sheeler for subject matter, he selected forms most harmonious with his visual approach... His architectural sense was stimulated to a high peak by Boulder Dam as seen from the Nevada side,” making it clear that Sheeler was not simply fulfilling a commercial commission, but painting with a well-honed, innate aesthetic sensibility.

Downtown Gallery exhibition catalogue for Sheeler's "Power" series. Courtesy of the Archives of American Art.

Sheeler’s photograph Boulder Dam—Transmission Towers, 1939, which he took when he first visited the Hoover Dam for the Fortune commission, is likely the source image for both Hydro Electric Power and Conversation. Painting from his photographs was common practice for Sheeler, who had a background as a successful commercial photographer. However, this was an aspect of Sheeler’s creative process that Halpert did not promote. She had been Sheeler’s dealer since his inaugural solo show at the Downtown Gallery in 1931, and had invested a great deal of energy into developing the public perception of him as a painter.

Charles Sheeler, "Boulder Dam – Transmission Towers" 1939, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

After Sheeler’s death in 1965, Halpert was determined to safeguard that hard-won reputation. Yet, she may have foreseen the possibility that Sheeler’s photographs would one day achieve the value and importance of his paintings when she sold 2,500 photographs to collectors William and Saundra Lane, with the understanding that they be kept from the public eye until the appropriate moment. The Lanes eventually gave the photographs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sources Downtown Gallery Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Oral history interview with Edith Gregor Halpert, 1962-1963, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Lindsay Pollock, The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market (2006). Rebecca Shaykin, Edith Halpert, The Downtown Gallery, and the Rise of American Art (2019), Exhibition catalogue, The Jewish Museum, New York.

We are pleased to present the online exhibition Telling Stories: Edith Halpert and Her Artists. Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing stories about Halpert and her artists told through artworks at Meredith Ward Fine Art.