EDWARD WESTON'S PHOTOGRAPHS | March 29th 2008

Sotheby's

Edward Weston and his sister Mary were close, enjoying a constancy in each other they failed to find elsewhere. Now Weston's moving gifts to his "little sis" are being sold, writes Fiammetta Rocco, Books and Arts editor of The Economist ...

From ECONOMIST.COM*

Edward Weston's mother died when he was five years old. His father remarried soon after. Throughout Weston's boyhood his first defence against loneliness (and against an unwanted stepmother and stepbrother) would be his sister Mary. She was nine years older than him and always called her brother Eddie or Buddy.

Weston divorced twice, and had multiple mistresses, but always remained devoted to his sister, Mary Weston Seaman. Her belief in his talent as a photographer was unwavering; she helped advance his career.

In 1922, when he was 35 years old and still struggling, she persuaded him to travel to New York, where he had an audience with Alfred Stieglitz, then already a well-known photographer. He also met Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, two of the founders of American modernism. At his first exhibition, Mary attended in his stead, afterwards writing breathless accounts of who visited and what they said about his photography.

For more than 30 years Weston, in appreciation of her loyalty, gave Mary many photographs inscribed to his "little sis". Now, more than half a century after her death, Weston's gifts to his sister are being sold.

The 40 pictures are neither the most famous of Weston's images nor the most expensive. One of those, "Nautilus", was sold in 1989 to Alexandra R. Marshall, a Texan collector, for a record $115,500. When Ms Marshall resold the photograph last October, it again made a record price, the first time a Weston broke the million-dollar mark.

The market for Westons is about to be tested again in two auctions at Sotheby's. In the first, a minimalist early nude from 1925 (pictured) that represents the moment when Weston moved from pictorialism to modernism and abstraction, may well set a fresh record.

The photographs Weston gave his sister won't reach anything like record prices. They are not iconic images, nor are they in the most pristine condition. But much about them is special, beyond just their provenance.

The photographs offer a unique view of the work for which Weston himself felt the strongest personal connection. For example, he avoided giving his sister any of his famous nudes, the one exception being a study taken discreetly from behind of his assistant (later his lover and second wife) Charis Wilson lying among the sand dunes at Oceano in California.

Wilson had met Mary several times, and would later write of their first encounter. "I saw at once...she had the same inner fire and vitality that her brother possessed, the same glowing brown eyes that must have been their mother's legacy." It is hard to imagine that the love affair between Weston and Wilson would ever have flourished without Wilson's crucial appreciation of the role Mary played in her brother's life.

The sale also includes a large selection of Weston's later work; ironically, given how well known he became in his own lifetime, that is his least known period. He developed Parkinson's disease, and as he aged he took fewer pictures. He did, however, continue giving photographs to Mary. Some of these have never come onto the market, and many have rarely (if ever) been seen.

Among the most interesting are a series of pictures taken as part of a commission received in 1941 to illustrate a new edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". Whitman's exaltation of the body and of sexual love, much of it written in free verse, was badly criticised when he first published it, at his own expense, in 1855. However, he brought out a further eight editions before he died, and it became one of America's most famous poetry collections.

Originally published in an edition of 1,500 copies, the Limited Editions Club version that used Weston's photographs is now rare enough to sell for more than $1,000 a copy, if you can find one at all. The 14 images Weston sent his sister represent the largest selection of these "Leaves of Grass" photographs to come up at auction.

Only when you see them together can you recognise the modernist imagination that Weston brought to bear on Whitman's poetry. The long grass set against white headstones in a New Orleans cemetery perfectly epitomises "the beautiful uncut hair of graves" that Whitman described in "Song of Myself". And the oil refinery at Port Arthur, Texas, is indeed, "Mightier than Egypt's tombs...Thy great Cathedral sacred industry."

Weston was, in every way, the exemplary American modernist. Mary would have been proud.

"Nude" is part of the Quillan collection of 19th and 20th-century photographs, which will be sold at Sotheby's in New York, on April 7th (Lot 19, estimate $600,000-900,000). Edward Weston's gifts to his sister will be sold, also at Sotheby's, on April 8th (estimates $2,000-180,000).

(*Fiammetta Rocco writes the Art.view column on Economist.com, and is the author of "The Miraculous Fever-tree".)