Variations in Red

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Images(2)

Variations in Red

Artist Charles Sheeler American, 1883-1965

Date1949

DimensionsPainting: 15 1/8 × 23 in. (38.3 × 58.4 cm)
Frame: 25 3/4 × 33 3/4 × 2 1/2 in. (65.4 × 85.7 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1949.107

Not on View

Collections

Paintings

Published ReferencesLee, Katherine C., "Modern Art," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 11, no. 4, Autumn 1968, p. 85, repr.

Butler, Joseph T., "The American Way with Art," Connoisseur, vol. 170, no. 683, Jan. 1969, repr. p. 65.

Friedman, M., Charles Sheeler, New York, 1975, p. 141, repr. (col.) p. 196.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 98, pl. 228.

Roberts, Marie MacDonnell, The Artist's Design: Probing the Hidden Order, Walnut Creek, CA, 1993, p. 84, repr. (col.).

Exhibition HistoryNew York, Downtown Gallery, The Artist Speaks, 1951, no. 18.

Toledo Museum of Art, 36th Annual, 1949, no. 68.

Houston, Contemporary Arts Association, 1951.

Toledo Museum of Art, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings Acquired by the Toledo Museum 1901-1951, 1951.

Akron Art Institute, Artists in Architecture, 1952.

Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Light and the Painter, 1952, no. 60.

New York, Downtown Gallery, Paintings, 1949 to 1951, by Charles Sheeler, A Retrospective Exhibition, 1954, no. 33.

M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA. 1954.

Los Angeles, University of California Art Galleries, Charles Sheeler, A Retrospective Exhibition, 1954, no. 33.

Fort Worth Art Museum, Ft. Worth, TX. 1955

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. 1955.

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA. 1955.

Munson, Williams, Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y. 1955.

Des Moines Art Center, 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Current Painting Styles and Their Sources, 1958, repr. on cover.

Des Moines Art Center, The Painting of Light, 1960, no. 68.

East Lansing, Michigan State University, Kresge Art Center, American Art Since 1960, no. 68.

Allentown (PA) Art Museum, Charles Sheeler, Retrospective Exhibition, 1961, no. 39.

Washington, D. C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Charles Sheeler, 1968, no. 119, repr. p. 133.

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1968.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA. 1968.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y.

Chicago, IL., Terra Museum of American Art. 1985-86.

Andover, MA, Addison Gallery of American Art, Charles Sheeler in Andover: The Ballardvale Series, 1996.

Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art; Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, M.H.de Young Memorial Museum, Charles Sheeler: Across Media, 2006-2007, no. 44, p. 127, repr. p. 136 (col.).

Label TextFor about 20 years, beginning in 1912, Charles Sheeler worked as a commercial photographer specializing in architecture. In the1920s he was commissioned by the Ford Motor Company to take a series of photographs of Ford’s River Rouge plant outside Detroit, Michigan. The photographs captured oddly beautiful views of pristine industrial structures, a subject that was to define his work as a painter as well. Sheeler became a leading proponent of Precisionism, an American style characterized by hard-edged, flattened views of machine-age subjects like factories, skyscrapers, and locomotives. Variations in Red is one of many views of an abandoned flannel mill in Ballardvale near Andover, Massachusetts, that Sheeler painted from 1946 to 1949. During this period, his work became more abstract, with simplified geometric forms and bright colors.