Plum Tree, Lake George or Rain Drops, Apple Tree, 1920

Key Set Entry

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Remarks

In 1921 Stieglitz misidentified this as an apple tree. It is, in fact, a plum tree.

“That—what you see—is not an apple tree nor raindrops nor a barn. It is shapes in relationship, the imagination playing within the surface. Perhaps the raindrops are tears. And perhaps that dark entrance that seems to you mysterious is the womb, the place whence we came and where we desire when we are tired and unhappy to return, the womb of our mother, where we are quiet and without responsibility and protected. That is what men desire, and thinking and feeling and working in my own way I have discovered this for myself” (Stieglitz, 22 February 1926, as quoted by Herbert Seligmann in Alfred Stieglitz Talking [1966], 61–62).

Other Collections

A print corresponding with this photograph can also be found in the following collection(s):

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 2018.84.9 [platinum or palladium]

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. 82, as Rain Drops, Apple Tree, 1920)
1932, New York (possibly no. 89, as Barnside, 1920)

Inscription

by Alfred Stieglitz, on mount, upper left verso, in graphite: Lake George 1920 / Exhibition 1932; upper right verso, in red pencil, circled: Plum Tree

by Georgia O'Keeffe, on mount, center, in graphite: Tree with rain drops / Barn behind it; lower left: Treated by Steichen for stain 5/49; upper left verso: 20 E

by later hand, center verso, in graphite: RA

Provenance

Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.

Bibliography

2002

Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 649.

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