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Preview image of work. Tempera on paper,  Companions #2 15461

2007.12

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Companions #2

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Artist

Charles Sheeler (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 7/16/1883 - 5/5/1965, New York, New York)

Title

Companions #2

Creation Date

1950

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

6 1/4 in. x 4 1/4 in. (15.88 cm x 10.8 cm)

Object Type

painting

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

Tempera on paper

Credit Line

Gift of Linda Horvitz Roth '76 and David Roth

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2007.12

As a central figure of the New York avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century, Charles Sheeler contributed to a specifically American modernist style—Precisionism. This view of a modern farm foregrounds two silos for livestock feed that tower over a large stable and adjacent outbuildings. Set against a dusky pink sky, their twin silhouettes are doubled by abstract pink and light green planes “behind” the architecture. The complexity and monumentality of this small-scale tempera are the result of a pictorial operation Sheeler explored in 1946–53, prompted by two artist residencies in New England that provided opportunities to record and experiment with photographic images as source material for painting. At the time, Sheeler began to superimpose photographic negatives, generating images that were simultaneously representational and abstract.