Charles Sheeler (1882-1965)
Bird’s Nest, 1944
Charles Sheeler (1882-1965), a contemporary of fellow Pennsylvania Precisionist Charles Demuth (1883-1935), portrayed the plain structure of Bucks County barns and the Ephrata Cloister in Reading with the scientific precision of observation of the Machine Age. While he did not paint Pennsylvania industry, his images of factories and mills were quintessential Precisionist works in their combination of modernism and realism. A student at the Pennsylvania Academy between 1903 and 1906, his particular American modernism was solidly grounded in both a sense of place and an appreciation for the past. Sheeler had a strong interest in antiques and craft artifacts, as well as in historic buildings, whose straightforward design resonated with his modernist paintings. His Pennsylvania interests persisted even when not working in the state, and Bird’s Nest (1944) portrays the Victorian house in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, where he moved in 1942.
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