Untitled [United States Hotel, Saratoga], from the series "Architecture"

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

Date1933

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 6 9/16 × 9 7/16 in. (16.7 × 24 cm) Sheet: 7 5/8 × 9 11/16 in. (19.4 × 24.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of the artist

Object number1969.11.5

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. 71, illus.);

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

2005
Clinton, NY (Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College). "Hamilton Collects, A Century of Curiosities: The Story of the Hamilton College Collection," September 29 - December 30, 2005 (unnumbered cat.);

2003
Clinton, NY (Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College). "Hamilton Collects Photography," August 25 - November 23, 2003 (unnumbered catalog, illus. 23).

Provenance 1969: Hamilton College (Edward W. Root Art Center), by gift of Silvia Saunders.

Markings Stamp: "PHOTOGRAPH BY / SILVIA SAUNDERS / 37 EAST 28TH STREET / NEW YORK CITY" on verso at lower left in ink.

Label: Adhesive Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY exhibition label with typewritten information including "Silvia Saunders / ARCHITECTURE, No. 40 / [size] / photograph / HC. 236 Gift of Miss Silvia Saunders" on verso.

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. 170;

Charles Flato, "The United States Hotel: Saratoga," HOUND & HORN (September 1934), p. 648.

Signature Not signed.

Inscribed "Architecture - 40 [40 encircled]" on verso at upper left in pencil; "HC 236" at lower left; "40 [encircled]" at lower center; "SS" at lower right.