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Still Life
Still Life

Still Life

Primary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1883–Dobbs Ferry, New York, 1965)
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date1931
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 29 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. (74.9 x 54.6 cm)
Canvas: 22 13/16 x 15 3/4 in. (58 x 40 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Michener Acquisitions Fund, P1969.11.2
Keywords
Rights Statement
Collection AreaModern and Contemporary Art
Object numberP1969.11.2
On View
Not on view
Collection Highlight
Label Text
A stark white vase and its single yellow lily, both painted in sharp focus, sit in a window that echoes the surrounding frame. Beyond the deeply set window lies a desert landscape, its strange forms adding to the non-referential, timeless quality of Charles Sheeler’s Still Life. Sheeler was the primary creator of Precisionism, a distinctly American hybrid of modern painting that married French Cubism’s system of planes and flattened perspective with a photographic-like painting style. As its title suggests, Still Life is an example of Sheeler’s Precisionist method as applied to a centuries old genre of painting, but the work also recalls the dream imagery of Surrealists like Max Ernst and René Magritte.