Charles Sheeler and Nina Allender

Morton Livingston Schamberg (1881-1918) was an American painter known as one of the earliest American Modernists, whose paintings of the early 1900s anticipate the Precisionist manner that would be developed by his friend Charles Sheeler in the 1910s and 1920s. Charles Sheeler and Nina Allender from c. 1906 is a portrait of Schamberg's friend and fellow artist Charles Sheeler with Nina Allender, in the manner that anticipates the Modernist approach that both Schamberg and Sheeler would develop. The c. 1906 date places this in the early period of American Modernism, when Schamberg and Sheeler were developing the approach that would make them two of the most important American Modernists, before Schamberg's premature death in the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Charles Sheeler and Nina Allender is important in the history of American Modernism because it documents the early period of American Modernism when Schamberg and Sheeler were developing the approach that would make them two of the most important American Modernists. The c. 1906 portrait shows the friendship between two of the most important American Modernists in the early period before both had developed the Precisionist and Modernist approaches that would make them famous, and it is a poignant record of a promising artist who would die prematurely.

Charles Sheeler and Nina Allender is Schamberg's early American Modernist portrait: a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Charles Sheeler in the period before both developed the Modernist approaches that would make them famous. The c. 1906 painting documents the friendship that would produce two of the most important American Modernists, before Schamberg's premature death in the 1918 influenza pandemic.