Doylestown House--Stairwell
1917
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 24.5 × 16.9 cm (9 5/8 × 6 5/8 in.) sheet: 25.3 × 19.8 cm (9 15/16 × 7 13/16 in.) mount: 40.6 × 30.6 cm (16 × 12 1/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
New Century Fund
Accession Number
1998.19.2
Art Historical Context
Step into the intimate geometry of Charles Sheeler'sDoylestown HouseStairwell* (1917), a silver print that captures the stark beauty of early American vernacular architecture. Sheeler, a pioneering American photographer and painter, turned his lens on the humble farmhouses and barns of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, during the 1910s. This image zeroes in on a simple wooden stairwell, its clean lines and shadows transforming everyday domestic space into a study of form and light. As a master of Precisionism—a modernist movement celebrating machine-age clarity and American industry—Sheeler's photogr...
About the Artist
Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), born Charles Rettew Sheeler Jr. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, began his artistic training at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1903, where he studied industrial drawing and applied arts. He continued at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1903 to 1906, studying under the Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase. Trips to Europ...