Oscar Bluemner

1913

Alfred Stieglitz

Associated Names
Alfred Stieglitz

Artist, American, 1864 - 1946

The image features a man from the waist up, seated in a chair. He wears a dark bowler hat, a three-piece suit, a light-colored shirt, and a tie. He has a mustache and short, wavy hair. The man holds a pipe in one hand and a document in the other. The background shows a dimly lit indoor setting with a piece of furniture partially visible on the left side.

Media Options

This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.
Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    platinum print

  • Credit Line

    Alfred Stieglitz Collection

  • Dimensions

    image: 23.5 x 19.4 cm (9 1/4 x 7 5/8 in.)
    sheet: 25.3 x 20.2 cm (9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1949.3.340

  • Stieglitz Estate Number

    87C

    Part of Stieglitz Key Set Online Edition

    Learn more

  • Key Set Number

    382

The image shows a man leaning his head on his hand, positioned with his face resting on his left hand. He has a mustache, thin-framed eyeglasses, and thick, greying hair that curls slightly at the edges. He is dressed in a formal jacket, a white shirt, and a black bow tie. The background is a soft, dark blur.

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.

Learn about the Key Set

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. 382.

Inscriptions

by Alfred Stieglitz, on mount, center left verso, in graphite: Oscar Bluemner 1913 / by Stieglitz
by Georgia O'Keeffe, on mount, lower left verso, in graphite: 87 C
by later hand, on mount, lower right verso, in graphite: 7-1944-346; center right: 7-1944-346

Wikidata ID

Q64034852

Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data

Remarks

Born in Prenzlau, Germany, Bluemner immigrated to the United States in 1892. He began to frequent 291 in 1910 and was so deeply influenced by the 1911 Cézanne exhibition that he abandoned his profession as an architect and traveled in Europe for a year and a half to study the latest developments in art. His work was included in the 1913 Armory Show and the 1916 “Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters” at the Anderson Galleries. In 1915 Stieglitz gave him a one-person show at 291. In 1928 Stieglitz exhibited Bluemner’s paintings at the Intimate Gallery, proclaiming him to be “the first painter to introduce red in America, the first who really dared to paint red” (18 December 1926, in Herbert Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking [New Haven, 1966], 118).

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:

1944, Philadelphia (no. 173, as Oscar Bluemner, 1913)

You may be interested in

Loading Results