The Steerage

1907, printed 1911

Alfred Stieglitz

Artist, American, 1864 - 1946

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    photogravure

  • Credit Line

    Alfred Stieglitz Collection

  • Dimensions

    image: 19.3 × 15.1 cm (7 5/8 × 5 15/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1949.3.1278.37

  • Copyright

    Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

  • Key Set Number

    310

Associated Artworks

See all 16 artworks

Camera Work: Vol.9: Numbers 33, 34/35, 36

Alfred Stieglitz

1911

City of Ambition

Alfred Stieglitz

1910

The Swimming Lesson

Alfred Stieglitz

1906

Alfred Stieglitz

Curious for more Alfred Stieglitz scholarship?

Discover over 1,000 artworks that the artist’s wife Georgia O’Keeffe termed his “Key Set” of prize photographs. Museum scholars have illuminated each work, his career, practices, and lifetime achievements.


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1992

  • Stieglitz in the Darkroom, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 4, 1992–February 14, 1993

Bibliography

2002

  • Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 310.

Wikidata ID

Q64037820

Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data

Remarks

On 14 May 1907 Stieglitz and his family sailed to Europe aboard the fashionable Kaiser Wilhelm II. This photograph was most likely taken several days later while the ship was moored in Plymouth, England (see Beaumont Newhall, “Alfred Stieglitz: Homeward Bound,” Art News 87:3 [March 1988], 141–142).

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:

1913, New York (no. 21, as The Steerage, 1907)
1915, New York (as The Steerage (from 291)
1916, New York (no. 100, as The Steerage)
1917, New York (no. 217, as The Steerage)
1918, New York (no. 4, as The Steerage, 1907)
1921, New York (no. 19, as The Steerage, 1907)
1924, New York (no. 61, as The Steerage, 1907)
1931, New York (as Steerage)
1932, New York (no. 44, as The Steerage, 1907, gelatin silver print)
1937, New York, MoMA (no. 336, as The Steerage, 1907, photogravure from 291)
1937, New York, American Place (no. 19, as The Steerage, 1907)
1939, San Antonio (no. 130, as The Steerage, 1907, photogravure)
1940, New York (as The Steerage)
1944, Philadelphia (no. 20, as Steerage, 1907, photogravure)

Lifetime Publications

A reproduction of this work appeared in the following publication(s) during Alfred Stieglitz’s lifetime:

Camera Work 36 (October 1911): pl. 9 (ill., The Steerage, 1907)

Saturday Evening Mail (20 April 1912): cover, magazine section (ill., The Steerage)

291 7–8 (September–October 1915): insert (ill., The Steerage, photogravure)

Marius de Zayas, “The Steerage,” American Photography 10 (March 1916): 121 (ill., The Steerage)

Artlover 2:1 (1924): unpaginated (ill., The Steerage, 1907)

“American Photography Honored,” The Outlook 136 (20 February 1924): 297 (ill., The Steerage)

Vanity Fair 21 (August 1924): 54 (ill., Beyond the Quota—in the Steerage)

Waldo Frank et al., America & Alfred Stieglitz (New York, 1934): pl. 26b (ill., The Steerage, 1907)

Louis Adamio, “An Immigrant Who Made Good in America: How Corsi, Who Arrived in the United States at the Age of Ten, Became Boss of Ellis Island,” The New York Herald Tribune Books (27 January 1935): section 7, 3 (ill., The Steerage, 1907)

Thomas Craven, “Stieglitz—Old Master of the Camera,” Saturday Evening Post 216:28 (8 January 1944): 15 (ill., The Steerage)

Georgia Engelhard, “Alfred Stieglitz: Master Photographer,” American Photography 39 (April 1945): 11 (ill., The Steerage)

Note

Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art


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