Le Tournesol (The Sunflower)

c. 1920

Edward Steichen

Painter, American, 1879 - 1973

Geometric shapes and mostly flat areas of color suggest an abstracted sunflower in a vase against a background made of vibrant bands of color in this vertical painting. A spring-green oval shape takes up the middle of the lower half of this composition. Cut straight cross the top and bottom, it recalls a wide-mouthed vase. The head of the stylized flower seems to rest propped over or on the top edge of the vase. A pine-green circle is outlined with celery green, and then surrounded by a larger, yellow disk to represent the head and petals of the flower. The yellow lightens from canary to goldenrod around the green disk within. Then, the yellow disk is outlined with a darker, honey color. The head of the flower is surrounded by a pale pink disk. A stylized green stem curves from the blossom into the vase on our left. Bands and blocks of color make up the background in flat areas of crimson red, black, eggplant purple, pumpkin orange, white, and shades of blue and green.
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Having spent World War I as an army major responsible for pioneering the use of aerial photography during World War I, Edward Steichen suffered bouts of depression, endured a bitter divorce, and faced serious financial challenges. In 1923, at his beloved house and garden in Voulangis, France, Steichen destroyed his backlog of paintings in a bonfire and abandoned the medium in favor of a lucrative career in commercial photography with Condé Nast.

Le Tournesol, made sometime between 1920 and 1922 and given to a friend shortly thereafter, is a product of this volatile moment in Steichen’s artistic evolution. It is the only finished canvas of its kind to survive from this period. Featuring vibrant color, sharp lines, streamlined forms, and a carefully calibrated, dynamic design based on the Golden Section, the painting places Steichen among the artists who invented the modernist machine style of the 1920s that would come to be known as precisionism. The most vivid expression of Steichen’s ambition to synthesize nature, photography, and painting is the circular burst of yellow in Le Tournesol that simultaneously evokes the sun, the sunflower, and flash photography.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera and oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of the Collectors Committee

  • Dimensions

    overall: 92.1 x 81.9 cm (36 1/4 x 32 1/4 in.)
    framed: 95.9 x 85.9 x 2.4 cm (37 3/4 x 33 13/16 x 15/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1999.43.1

  • Copyright

    © Estate of Edward Steichen

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Le Tournesol (The Sunflower), c. 1920

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Gift c. 1920/1922 from the artist to Francis Jourdain [1876-1958], France; by descent in his family; acquired 1985 by (Robert Miller Gallery, New York);[1] purchased 18 May 1999 by NGA.
[1] Provenance provided by Robert Miller.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1922

  • Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1922, no. 2163, as Tournesol.

1988

  • From Tonalism to Modernism: The Paintings of Eduard J. Steichen, Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C., 1988, no. 34, repro., as Le Tournesol.

1999

  • The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-2000. Part I, 1900-1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1999, not in catalogue.

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2018

  • America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2018, no. 74, repro.

Bibliography

1985

  • The Paintings of Eduard Steichen. Exh. cat. The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York, 1985: 41, repro. 39.

1997

  • Niven, Penelope. Steichen: A Biography. New York, 1997: 495.

2000

  • Haskell, Barbara. Edward Steichen. Exh. cat. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2000: 28, color pl. 30.

2001

  • Weinberg, Jonathan. "The Family of Stieglitz and Steichen." Art in America 9 (September 2001): 54, color repro.

2021

  • Brock, Charles, Jay Krueger, Suzanne Quillen Lomax, Kathryn Morales, and Linda Owen. "Back to the Garden: Edward Steichen's Sunflower Paintings." Facture: conservation, science, art history 5 (2021): 4-29, 5 unnumbered fig. (detail), fig. 1, fig. 8, fig. 9 (detail).

Inscriptions

on stretcher: Edward J. Steichen / Voulangis par Crécy-en-Brie S. et M. / (Agént Lucien Foinet 19 rue Vavin)

Wikidata ID

Q20192303

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