Charles Duncan
probably 1916
Artist, American, 1864 - 1946
Artwork overview
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Medium
platinum print
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
image: 23.1 x 18 cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/16 in.)
sheet: 25.2 x 20.2 cm (9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
mat: 50.6 x 38 cm (19 15/16 x 14 15/16 in.) -
Accession
1949.3.302
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Stieglitz Estate Number
80D
Part of Stieglitz Key Set Online Edition
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Key Set Number
434
Alfred Stieglitz
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Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.
Associated Names
Bibliography
2002
Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 434.
Inscriptions
by Alfred Stieglitz, on mount, upper left verso, in graphite: Charles Duncan 1909 / Exhibition 1921
by later hand, on mount, lower left verso, in graphite: 80 D
Wikidata ID
Q64034812
Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data
Remarks
A painter and poet, Charles Duncan studied in Europe around 1909 and may have met Stieglitz through his friendship with John Marin or Charles Demuth. Stieglitz showed his work at 291 in an “Exhibition of Drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe of Virginia; Watercolors and Drawings by Charles Duncan of New York; and Oils, by Réné Lafferty of Philadelphia,” from 23 May to 5 July 1916. A contributor to both Camera Work and Marcel Duchamp’s publication Blind Man, Duncan may also have encouraged Stieglitz to exhibit Duchamp’s work at 291. In the 1920s Duncan supported himself as a sign painter, writing to Stieglitz in a letter of 2 October 1920 that “. . . young life slips away as I dance on scaffolds to the heavy turns of loaded brushes” (YCAL). In the later 1920s he was the subject of one of Charles Demuth’s “Poster Portraits”; Demuth wrote Stieglitz on 12 July 1926 that he “saw Duncan this spring in New York and he seemed the maddest of us all. Oh, lord” (YCAL).
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:
1921, New York (no. 39, as Charles Duncan, 1915)