The Last Load
1890, printed 1895/1896
Artist, American, 1864 - 1946
Artwork overview
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Medium
platinum print
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
sheet (trimmed to image): 15.5 × 12.2 cm (6 1/8 × 4 13/16 in.)
page size: 34.4 × 27.2 cm (13 9/16 × 10 11/16 in.) -
Accession
1949.3.62
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Stieglitz Estate Number
76B
Part of Stieglitz Key Set Online Edition
Learn more -
Key Set Number
70
Associated Artworks
See all 34 artworks
Sun Prints, 4
Alfred Stieglitz
1887
From the Höheweg, Interlaken
Alfred Stieglitz
1894
On the Piazza, 6 a.m.
Alfred Stieglitz
1894
Alfred Stieglitz
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Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
2002
Alfred Stieglitz: Known and Unknown, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 2–September 2, 2002; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 6, 2002–January 5, 2003
Bibliography
2002
Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 70.
Inscriptions
by Alfred Stieglitz, on interleaving tissue, lower right, in graphite: The Last Load / 1890
Wikidata ID
Q64037635
Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data
Remarks
In August 1890 Stieglitz travelled to Cortina d’Ampezzo, located at the base of the Dolomite mountains in Italy, and Sterzing in the Tyrol, near Innsbruck, Austria. He later wrote: “After a severe and long term of experimental laboratory work, I managed to get a few days of vacation in order to run down to that picturesque and at the same time grandly situated village, Cortina, the headquarters of mountain tourists in the Ampezzo Valley.” Although plagued by poor weather, he made a day trip to Lago di Misurina and on returning to Cortina, “met a crowd of peasants working in the fields, the result, which gives one an idea of the beauty of the surrounding country” (“Cortina and Sterzing,” in Sun Pictures from Many Lands [London, 1892], 60–61).
Lifetime Exhibitions
A print from the same negative—perhaps a photograph from the Gallery’s collection—appeared in the following exhibition(s) during Alfred Stieglitz’s lifetime:
1891, New York, Fourth Annual Joint Exhibition (no. 313, as Loading Hay, Ampezzo Valley)
1891, New York, Society of Amateur Photographers (no. 229, as Loading Hay, Ampezzo Valley)
probably 1892, New York, The Society of Amateur Photographers of New York (as Cortina (Ampezzo Valley), lantern slide)
Lifetime Publications
A reproduction of this work appeared in the following publication(s) during Alfred Stieglitz’s lifetime:
“Art in Photographs,” The Sun (24 May 1891): 16 (ill., The Last Load)
John Brisben Walker, “Alfalfa Farming at the Foot of the Rocky Mountains,” The Cosmopolitan 12:1 (November 1891): 92 (ill., The Last Load)
William George Oppenheim, “Distinguished Photographers of To-Day,” The Photographic Times 23 (1 December 1893): 691 (ill., The Last Load, photogravure)
The American Amateur Photographer 6:1 (January 1894): opp. 3 (ill., The Last Load)