Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946)
Winter, Fifth Avenue (from the portfolio 'Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies'), 1893
Large-format photogravure, printed 1897; 'Copyright 1897 by Alfred Stieglitz' printed in the upper margin, framed.
11 1/8 x 8 ¾ in. (28.3 x 22.2 cm.)
sheet 17 x 13 7/8 in. (43.2 x 35.2 cm.)
Footnotes:
Provenance
Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe
Private collection, acquired from the above in 2011
Christie's New York, 18 February 2016, Lot 254
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Literature
Alfred Stieglitz, Camera Work, no. 12 (October 1905), plate II
William Innes Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1983), p. 20, pl. 11
Sarah Greenough and Juan Hamilton, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs and Writings (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1999), pl. 12
Sarah Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, Volume One 1886-1922 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002), p. 50, cat. no. 83
Phyllis Rose, Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters (New Haven: Yale UP, 2019), pp. 42-5.

Note
This large-format photogravure of Alfred Stieglitz's seminal image Winter, Fifth Avenue rarely appears on the market. Stieglitz included this particular version in his 1897 portfolio of 12 photogravures, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies, printed in a small edition of 25. He chose to release the portfolio as photogravures not only because the mechanical etching technique conveyed a depth of tone and remarkable detail, but also because the process highlighted his own artistry.

Stieglitz took the negative on 22 Febraury 1893 while a blizzard descended upon New York City, delivering 15 inches of snow. Standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 35th Street facing north, he waited for three hours for the coach, horses, and driver to appear in the right spot. The making of Winter, Fifth Avenue presented Stieglitz with a particular technical challenge, since the low light of the weather conditions made it very difficult to capture the image.

This particular photogravure presents Stieglitz's original cropping of the horizontal negative: unlike later prints of Winter, Fifth Avenue, railroad ties that were put down on snowy days to help passengers descend from the coaches can be seen at the far left of the image. Stieglitz continued to alter the cropping of the negative over the course of his life, choosing to eliminate the ties and streamline the image into a more stark, vertical composition in later prints.

Complete portfolios of Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies. are held in institutional collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Individual prints of Winter, Fifth Avenue are in the collections of Princeton University Art Museum and Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

This large-format photogravure is in generally excellent condition. The margins are very faintly soiled. The margin edges are slightly age-darkened, and there is minor margin edge and corner wear. Sold framed.