Charles Sheeler’s sharp painting aesthetic was directly informed by his photography practice. Self-taught, Sheeler honed his photography skills by documenting local architecture and the interior of his own residence in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The artist turned to his photographs as sources for his paintings beginning in the 1910s and shortly thereafter became associated with the Precisionists, an informal group of American artists known for their exacting approach, highly reduced geometric compositions, and smooth surfaces. The group shared stylistic similarities with concurrent avant-garde movements in Europe, such as Futurism’s glorification of technological and scientific advancements of the modern world. Sheeler’s artistic investigations, however, are rooted in a deeply American identity as seen in his choice of subject matter, often portraying mills, mines, and factories with stately elegance.

The subject of Fugue, for instance, is a power plant in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that Sheeler came across during a road trip through New England in 1939 after he received a commission from Fortune magazine to create a series of paintings on the motif of power. Sheeler photographed the plant extensively for the project. “It was a breath-taking sight,” he described. “I walked around it for several hours.”[1] Soaring cylindrical smokestacks punctuate the vivid blue sky while intersecting geometric planes define the architecture of the foreground. The visual echo created by the repetition of these overlapping forms across the canvas evokes the intertwined melodies of a fugue, for which the work is titled. Sheeler’s strong use of contrast between light and shadow contributes to the compelling rhythm of the composition. In the present work, Sheeler removed narrative details from both his source photograph (Untitled; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, c. 1938-39) and his earlier painting Fugue (1940; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), such as the oil drums in the foreground and the siding on the white building in the center of the composition. The present work was painted at a transitional moment in Sheeler’s artistic development and anticipates his creative evolution toward superimposed imagery to create a dynamic layered effect, as seen in his later related painting Stacks in Celebration (1954; Dayton Art Institute).

[1] Charles Sheeler to W. G. Constable, Curator of Paintings, December 20, 1940, Art of the Americas files, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, quoted in Carol Troyen and Erica E. Hirshler, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987, p. 176.