Primarily searching for the “Unique & Rare” by dealing with some of the finest acquisitions and consignments of Prominent California Estates, Large Collections and Celebrity homes from Santa Barbara, Beverly Hills, Bell Air, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, Malibu, Pasadena, San Marino, Newport Beach, La Jolla and most of the best locations of the fabulous West Coast. Offering here is a. Horace Bristol -Portrait of Migrant Mother Breastfeeding-1937 Silver Gelatin. Original 8×10″ Silver Gelatin Photograph – Rose of Sharon, from “The Grapes of Wrath Series. Signed in pencil on verso, inscribed and dated on mat. Horace Bristol (1908 – 1997) was among th first staff photographers for LIFE Magazine. He was a member of San Francisco’s fames Group f/64, which included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke and Dorthea Lange. In the late thirties, Bristol became aware of the migration of Okies from the dust bowl to California’s Central Valley, but the Great Depression was too depressing for his editiors at LIFE. Undaunted, Bristol employed John Steinbeck, a young, unkonwn journalist to accompany him to the campus to write a text for a photo book. Steinbeck was initially unenthusiastic but after energetic prodding by Bristol finally agreed. When Steinbeck arrived he apologized to Horace. “There’s too much here”, he told Bristol, “I have to write a novel”. John Ford did use Bristol’s images as the basis for his own 1940 masterpiece and both Bristol’s original images and stills from the film finally appeared as a photo spread in LIFE. These images are a major part of the exhibition at Frank Pictures as are his images taken as one of five photographers in an elite Navy unit formed by Deward Steichen during WWII. After the war, Bristol became the pre-eminent photographer of post war Asia. Bristol felt responsible and in his grief burned a lifetime of prints and negatives, vowing to give up photography forever. He ultimately remarried and began a new family. In 1985, Henri Bristol read The Grapes of Wrath and innocently asked his father if he knew this wonderfull book? Horace realized he was denying his children their incredible legacy. He then pieced back together what images he could find and from 1987 untill his death in 1997. Bristol reprinted his found negatived and restored to the world his historic collection. Horace Bristol died in August 1997, but not before seeing his photographs exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe, and a book of his work published in his name: Horace Bristol, An American View (Chronicle Books, 1996). His work has recently been on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as part of Taking Root: A Century of Migrant Workers in California and was featured in the exhibition Ten: Gifts of SBMA PhotoFutures. In addition his work was featured in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibtion, Made in California and was showcased along side Dorthea Lange in an exhibition of his photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum chronicling the plight of migrant laborers in an exhibition entitled The Grapes of Wrath: Horace Bristol’s California Photographs. A beautiful piece that will add to your décor! Please check all the photos. Should you have any inquiries, please do not hesitate to ask a question or call 310 293 2442.
