Untitled [Sunflower], from the series "Plant Forms"

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Artist/Maker Silvia Saunders (American, 1901 - 1994)

Datec. 1930s

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 4 5/8 × 6 5/8 in. (11.7 × 16.8 cm) Sheet: 4 15/16 × 6 15/16 in. (12.5 × 17.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Edward W. Root, W1905, P1944, H1952

Object number1969.7.7

Not on view

DescriptionSilvia Saunders—a daughter of Arthur Percy Saunders, longtime professor of chemistry and dean of Hamilton College—was an important cultural presence on the Hill. In 1925, after graduating from Radcliffe College, she worked in New York City as a commercial artist. At the onset of the Great Depression, in 1930, she returned to Clinton and began to make photographs of her father’s famous hybrid peonies. She went on to create an extensive series of images of plant life. She also took a large-format (5-by-7-inch) camera into the countryside surrounding Clinton, where she recorded elements of the landscape along with cemeteries and dilapidated buildings. In 1933, Saunders and her fellow up-and-coming photographer Walker Evans traveled to Saratoga Springs, New York, for a day of shooting. Her resulting pictures of the United States Hotel were published in 1934 in Lincoln Kirstein’s Hound and Horn, a short-lived avant-garde literary journal. Saunders returned to New York City around 1935, freelancing as a photographer for such magazines as Vogue (1936) and House and Garden (1937–40). These assignments took her to Mexico, France, and Great Britain. In 1947, she moved to New Mexico before returning, in 1951, to Clinton, where she remained until the end of her life. The Wellin Museum holds a collection of nearly one hundred of Saunders’s photographs, all of which were donated in 1969 by Grace Root, H1952, the widow of Edward W. Root, Class of 1905, H1952, or by the artist herself, three years after the Emerson Gallery mounted an exhibition of her work. (SOURCE: Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS, 2017)

Collections

Additional Details

Exhibition History 2017
Clinton, NY (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College). "Innovative Approaches, Honored Traditions: The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Five Years, Highlights from the Permanent Collection," September 9 - December 10, 2017 (cat. no. 72, illus.);

2007
Clinton, NY (Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College). "Photographs by Silvia Saunders," June 21 - September 16, 2007 (no catalog);

Clinton, NY (Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College). "Selections from the Permanent Collection," April 7 - December 30, 2006 (no catalog).

Provenance 1969: Hamilton College by gift of Grace C. Root.

Markings None noted.

Published References Katherine D. Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS: THE RUTH AND ELMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF ART AT FIVE YEARS, HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION (Clinton, NY: Wellin Museum of Art, 2017), p. 172.

Signature Not signed.

Inscribed None noted.