MARGRETHE MATHER (1886-1952) Jetta Goudal and Harold Grieve. Silver print, the image measuring 6 3/4x8 1/2 inches (17.1x21.6 cm.), the mount 18x14 inches (45.7x35.6 cm.), with Mather's signature and date in pencil on mount recto. 1930 Provenance: Collection of Clyde Nolan, Jr., Greensboro, North Carolina; to Leland Little Auction in Hillsborough, North Carolina, 2012; to the Present Owner
MATHER, MARGRETHE (1885-1952) A pair of variant images of a fan strip. Silver prints, 2 7/8x3 and 3 7/8x3 inches (7.3x7.6 and 9.8x7.6 cm.), the first mounted to paper and the second flush mounted to card, the first with Billy Justema's inscription and date "Margrethe Mather & I photographed this in S.F. in 1930," on mount recto, and with a copyright, a date, and the notation "The Estate of William Justema/Richard Lortenz, Executor," in pencil, on mount verso. 1930
MARGRETHE MATHER (American, 1885-1952) Edward Weston, 1921 Vintage platinum 7-3/8 x 9-1/2 inches (18.7 x 24.1 cm) Signed and titled in pencil on the mount recto; annotated 'rare photo of / Edward Weston / by Margrethe Mather' verso. PROVENANCE: Private collection, New York.
MATHER, MARGRETHE (1886-1952) Eva Gauthier. Silver print, 5 1/2x4 inches (14x10.2 cm.), with Mather's credit, in Gertrude Barrett's hand, in pencil, on verso. 1924
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 04, 2013
Est: -
Attributed to MARGRETHE MATHER (1885-1952) Edward Weston in Shadow, c. 1919-1920 platinum print credit 'Mather' in an unknown hand in pencil (on the verso) image/sheet: 9 3/8 x 7½in. (23.7 x 19cm.)
Margrethe Mather (Am., 1885-1952), Photograph portrait of Jetta Goudal and Harold Grieve, platinum print, signed and dated in pencil on the mount. Unframed. Image 6 7/8 x 8 5/8 in.; Mount 17 7/8 x 14 1/8 in. Jetta Goudal and Harold Grieve were married in 1930 - she an actress from the silent film era and he an art director and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Collection of Clyde Nolan, Jr., Greensboro, NC
MARGRETHE MATHER 1886-1952 JETTA GOUDAL AND HAROLD GRIEVE platinum print, mounted, signed and dated in pencil on the mount, caption in pencil on the reverse, 1930 6 7/8 by 8 1/2 in. (17.5 by 21.5 cm.)
Two matte gelatin silver prints on tan mounts, 3 9/16" x 4 9/16" and 3 ½" x 4 5/8", vintage ca. 1943. Grieve was a Hollywood set designer who became an important interior decorator. Among his celebrated interiors was Bing Crosby's home. These show interiors and furniture Grieve designed for offices on Hollywood Boulevard. They are signed in pencil with the location and other details on the verso.
MATHER, MARGRETHE Office in Hollywood. Vintage gelatin silver print, undated [circa 1930], inscribed in pencil by Mather on the reverse of the mat; image 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches (90 x 114 mm). In excellent condition, on original mat. Part of a series of photographs of the decorator Harold Grieve's office, appointed in a California modernist style, at the corner Hollywood Blvd. and Ashland Ave.
MATHER, MARGARETHE (1885-1952) Harold Grieve interior * Harold Grieve interior with chairs. Together, 2 photographs. Silver prints, each 3 1/2x4 1/2 inches (8.9x11.4 cm.), with Mather's credit, and notations, in Grieve's (?) hand, on mount verso. 1929-1930
PORTRAIT OF EDWARD WESTON measurements note 8 3/4 by 7 5/8 in. (22.4 by 19.5 cm.) platinum print, mounted to a large sheet of buff paper, signed and titled by the photographer in pencil on the mount, signed and inscribed '715 West Fourth Street, Los Angeles -- California' by her in pencil on the reverse, matted, circa 1921; accompanied by a backboard from an earlier frame, with a Gilman Paper Company label on the reverse PROVENANCE Graphics International, Ltd., Washington, D.C. Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above, 1978 NOTE This portrait of Weston by his lover and business partner Margrethe Mather was probably made around 1921, the time of their formal collaboration on a number of jointly-signed works. Beth Gates Warren, in her Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (Santa Barbara, 2001), reproduces from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art another portrait likely made at the same sitting, showing Weston in what appears to be the same cape and glasses (pl. 87). Warren points out that the cape belonged to Johan Hagemeyer, who had posed for Weston in it (cf. Conger 51). The cape and louche hat in the image offered here is the garb of the artiste, a persona Weston aspired to at that time. Appropriately, it was Mather who had introduced Weston to the world of the avant-garde, such as it was in 1920s Los Angeles. A self-portrait of Weston wearing another brimmed hat and a coat with turned-up collar, also striving for effect, is reproduced in Weston Naef and Susan Danley's Edward Weston in Los Angeles (San Marino, 1986), figure 18. As Naef observes of Weston's transformation in appearance in the late teens and early 1920s, 'Destiny has begun to leave its mark, and plainness is replaced by costume' (ibid., p. 17). Mather authority Beth Gates Warren knows of no other extant prints of the image offered here.
'PIERROT' measurements note 9 1/2 by 7 1/2 in. (24.1 by 19 cm.) platinum print, tipped to a large sheet of heavy buff paper, signed and titled by the photographer in pencil on the mount, matted, 1920 PROVENANCE Margaret Levy The Weston Gallery, Carmel, California Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above, 1982 LITERATURE Another print of this image: Beth Gates Warren, Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001), pl. 29 NOTE The photograph offered here, believed to be one of only two prints of the image extant, is included in a group of works that Mather authority Beth Gates Warren classifies among the photographer's masterpieces. Along with the photographer's Moon Kwan studies and a double portrait of Edward Weston and Johan Hagemeyer, Warren cites the Pierrot pictures as the best examples of Mather's prescient modernism. As Warren observes, in her Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (Santa Barbara, 2001), to which this entry is indebted, Mather's 'ruthlessly reductive eye' led her to a number of bold compositional choices that often preceded similar choices by her better-known lover Edward Weston. Warren has identified the sitter in Pierrot as the Danish-born actor Otto Mathiesen, one of a group of theatre people in which Mather mingled, an extended circle that included the young Charles Chaplin, among many others. Warren charts Mather's involvement with the budding cinema communities around Burbank, Hollywood, and Edendale in the 1910s, and her portrait sittings with such stage luminaries as Lillian Gish, Nijinsky, and Leon Bakst. The Pierrot figure is a time-honored subject in the visual arts, used by generations of painters as well as photographers in the decades, and even centuries, preceding Mather's photograph. With its elements of costume, clown make-up, and expressive lighting, the Pierrot follows in a long tradition of portraits of the sad clown, and like Weston's Scene Shifter of Lot 17, has the theatre as its ostensible theme. In Mather's Pierrot, however, as in paintings of Pierrot, from Watteau to Picasso, the work transcends its nominal subject. Within the Mather oeuvre, the Pierrot photographs comprise part of a group of pictures that work with shadows as a primary compositional device; the early work of Arthur Kales, Louis Fleckenstein, Johan Hagemeyer, Edward Weston (cf. the Scene Shifter of Lot 17), and others are a part of this tradition. Although many of these photographs are now forgotten, reproduced only on the pages of the camera magazines of the time, they represent a crucial step in the transition from pictorialism to modernism for both Mather and Weston. Warren posits Mather as one of the most innovative photographers working in this 'high-key' mode, as the light-and-shadow pictures were then described. Other than the photographer's own Moon Kwan pictures of circa 1918, Warren finds no compositional antecedents for Mather's Pierrot series, which, like the Moon Kwan photographs, are fearless in their paring down of extraneous detail and their rigorous use of empty space. Beth Gates Warren has located only one other extant print of the image offered here, in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Portrait of Noel Sullivan. Silver print, 9 1/2x7 1/4 inches (24.1x18.4 cm.), with Mather's signature and date, in pencil, and signed and inscribed by Sullivan, in ink, on mount recto. 1930
platinum print, mounted, signed and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, captioned in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1930
Edward Weston Platinum-palladium print. 1921. Signed and dated 1922 in pencil on the mount. 9 5/8 x 71/2in. (24.5 x 19cm.) PROVENANCE Edward Weston; to his sister, Florence Seaman; with Daniel Wolf, New York; to the present owner, late 1970s. LITERATURE Warren, Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston, A Passionate Collaboration, p. 90, pl. 51. NOTES The work of Margrethe Mather has often been overshadowed by her contemporary, Edward Weston, with whom she shared a professional and personal relationship. The two met in 1913 and with a group of local photographers formed the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles in 1914, one of the most influential camera clubs of the period. By the early 1920s they became partners in a Glendale, California studio. Mather and Weston collaborated on many works during this period, and today Mather is regarded as one of the most significant influences on Weston's development, both through her own photography and her sittings as his model. It was not until the recent publication of Beth Gates Warren's book, Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston, A Passionate Collaboration that Mather's own history as a photographer and her relationship with Weston were fully investigated and understood. Warren observes the significant role played by Mather in Weston's emergence as a photographer as well as the considerable work done by Mather which for so long has been lost or overlooked. She writes, "Throughout this period, however, Mather was not simply Weston's lover and muse. She was also his teacher. She influenced his vision and broadened his outlook, artistically and socially. She provided for him a context in which he was exposed to radical new ideas about politics, aesthetics, sexual mores, and life in general. And not only did she parry his every idea with one of her own, she frequently initiated the match. To be sure, she was a consummate foil for Weston's creativity, but, more important, she was a wellspring of inventiveness herself. A meticulous and exacting artist, with an instinctively rigorous sense of proportion and design, she was well known among her artist friends for invoking the axiom, 'If it doesn't look right, it isn't right.'" (Warren, p. 12.) By 1920 Mather was enjoying great personal success as a photographer, measured not only by her commercial successes, but also by the accolades of her colleagues through her inclusion in the salons and journals of the period. Close to the time this portrait was made Weston began a relationship with Tina Modotti, with whom he would travel to Mexico in 1923. His relationship with Modotti would prove to be a similarly tumultuous partnership, both romantically and artistically, as the one he shared with Mather. But while this bond with Modotti has been well documented we are only beginning to grasp the significance of his early relationship with Mather. While Weston and Mather grew apart personally, their professional partnership strengthened. In 1921 they produced nearly a dozen works which they jointly signed - the only time in his career that Weston would concede joint authorship - a tribute to Mather's position as his artistic co-equal. Ultimately Weston's departure for Mexico saw the demise of their Glendale studio in 1925 and the end of their personal and professional partnership. This remarkable example of Mather's mastery of portrait making is believed to be unique. One reason for the belated rediscovery of Mather's importance has been the scarcity of her work in major collections and in the photography market, particularly her early work in platinum. According to Warren's research early platinum prints are considered rare and duplicate prints of any one image are very rare. It is ironic that Edward Weston, a revolutionary portraitist, suffers from an absence of worthy likenesses of himself. With the exception of this example, portraits of Weston by his colleagues, sons or his lovers do not capture the powerful personality sketched out in his Daybooks or biographies. It is suggested that this image was the final work in a 1921 sitting. In Warren's book she reproduces those in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, J. Paul Getty Museum and George Eastman House, in which Mather presents Weston in strong yet conventional renderings. (pl. 48-50) This portrait is completely reductive compared to those made possibly minutes before. Here, Mather pushes the subject to the forefront of picture plane arresting the viewer with Weston's intense gaze. Warren observes, "That approach would be one she would use several times during the early twenties, portraying the human face as a psychological map, with its swells and shallows and curves, emphasized by somber shadows, broad washes of light, and unconventional cropping, to reveal the topography of the individual's personality." (Warren, p. 29.) Unlike portraits of the time - including her own and Weston's - there are none of the clich‚d props, no fans or vases, no romantic shadows so often used as a visual element. Here there are no distractions from the immediacy of the subject. The only artifact allowed in the frame is his pince-nez pressed against his lips, in a reflective gesture that must have been habitual. The intimacy of the sitting is reflected in the total unguardedness and unposed appearance of Weston. This image should be seen in the context of the canons of photographic portraiture in the early 20th century. Even the rich portraiture of the Photo Secessionists, such as Edward Steichen and Clarence White, while experimental, rarely reached the psychological insight and modernity seen here. Even Weston would not show this kind of command of the genre until later, such as in his portraits of Modotti, an equally intimate subject. Only Alfred Stieglitz's celebrated close-up portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe and Paul Strand's of his wife Rebecca rival this work in intensity and modernity, and it is virtually certain that Mather was not aware of these highly personal series. This print originates from the collection of Weston's sister, Florence Seaman. Seaman's collection was celebrated in a 1978 exhibition organized by the Dayton Art Institute, "Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister". "This collection is indeed a very special one: unique because Edward personally selected photographs sent as a continual renewal of the closeness that he and his sister shared. It is important...because of the many rare photographs it contained..." (Kelsey, "Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister".) The collection included many iconic images by Weston such as an "attic" picture, portraits and a pepper. Florence Seaman was nine years older than Weston and virtually raised him. He often looked to her for guidance and support. For example, he moved in with Seaman and her husband when he first arrived in California and her husband found him his first job as a surveyor.
