The Bonfire

The Bonfire

Believed to have been taken ca. 1900-06 (Flynt-The Allen Sisters-Pictorial Photographers) and first exhibited in early 1907 at The Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, the pictorial landscape The Bonfire by Frances Stebbins and Mary Electa Allen shows seven children in a field clustered around smoke rising from a small bonfire. As they look on, and with the child at center of composition shielding his face from the stinging smoke, the conflagration is kept in check by a seated boy who holds a long stick seen at far left background.

 

Tags

Landscape Figure Children Fields Meadows Smoke Documentary Framed photograph
Title
The Bonfire
Photographer
Country
Medium
Year
Dimensions

Image Dimensions15.6 x 20.5 cm (shown within original frame: glass removed)

Support Dimensions22.0 x 26.7 x 2.0 cm period Arts & Crafts, quarter-sawn oak frame

Print Notes

Recto: area of black spotting midway along right margin.

Verso: In graphite at center: The Bonfire; upper right: 3354 (Allen Sisters stock #); below title: 75 (original retail price for photograph was .75 cents): lower margin: faint black ink stamp:

FRANCES and MARY ALLEN
DEERFIELD, MASS
ALL Rights Reserved.

Exhibitions | Collections

1907: Exhibition of The Society of Arts and Crafts, Copley & Allston Halls, Boston, MA, February 5-26

1908: Fifth Annual Exhibition of Photographs, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 30-November 30.

1908: Art Crafts Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois: December 8-22.

 

Provenance

Acquired May, 2018 from Massachusetts book and ephemera dealer via 2015 auction based in New England.

Published

1908: plate #2, in: Colour Photography and other Recent Developments of The Art of The Camera: Edited By Charles Holme: Offices of “The Studio“: London, Paris & New York

1910: In volume: A White-Paper Garden, Sara Andrew Shafer, A. C. McClurg & Company, 1910 , full-page halftone: The Bonfire, between pp. 226-7

2002: plate 42: Frances S. Allen, The Bonfire, 1900-1906: platinum print: in: The Allen Sisters-Pictorial Photographers 1885-1920: Suzanne L. Flynt: 2002: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, Massachusetts: p. 121

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