Bird's Nest

Bird's Nest was Charles Sheeler's home on Dow's Lane in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. By 1942, the year the artist and his wife moved there, Sheeler had long been recognized as one of America's finest modern artists. The works he created during the 1940s were often executed on a commission basis or at the suggestion of his dealer, Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery, yet the present painting was a private work painted for Sheeler and his wife's own enjoyment. Sheeler also painted a watercolor version of this same view of his home, executed in 1944.

Carol Troyen writes, "The best of Sheeler's work, early and late, is about the conflation of shadow and substance, of the remembered and freshly seen, and how a new vision triggers treasured memories. Sheeler's paintings, with their photographic underpinnings to reflect 'nature seen from the eyes outward' comprise nothing less than fifty-year exploration of his understanding of reality. At the same time, they are a nostalgic attempt to bring the past forward into the present. That such an intellectually ambitious program could be visually satisfying in so many different media is a tribute to the romantic soul behind the disciplined hand that crafted them." (Exhibition catalogue, Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings, Boston, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 43)