1998 32c Four Centuries of American Art: Charles Sheeler

US #3236r
1998 Charles Sheeler

• Shows detail from Two Against the White
• From a pane featuring 20 art pieces produced by American artists
• Part of Classic Collection series

Stamp Category: Commemorative,
Set:  Four Centuries of American Art
Value: 32¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue: August 27, 1998
First Day City: Santa Clara, California
Quantity Issued: 4,000,000
Printed by: Sennett Security Products
Printing Method: Photogravure
Format: Pane of 20
Perforations: 10.2

Why the stamp was issued: This stamp is part of a pane highlighting 20 of the most important American works of art produced in the last 400 years.

About the stamp design: The stamps show details from 20 works. Howard Paine, a USPS art director, designed the layout for the pane.  He consulted with an expert on American art in choosing which paintings to include. Paine arranged the art in chronological order.

First Day City: The First Day of Issue ceremony took place at the opening event of Stampshow 98, which took place in Santa Clara, California.

About the Classic Collection series: The Classic Collections series began in 1994 with the Legends of the West issue.  The idea originated from Carl Burcham, manager of stamp and product marketing for USPS at the time.  Each Classic Collections set consists of a pane of 20 different semi-jumbo stamps with descriptive selvage at the top (header) and informational text on the back of each stamp beneath the gum.  The stamps are “broadly defined, Americana-themed subjects.”
The series began six years earlier with the infamous Legends of the West sheet in 1994. Each sheet in the series would have the same unique 20-stamp format.  Each would have broadly defined Americana themes, exceptional artwork, a banner printed on the selvage of the sheet, and descriptive text on the back of each stamp. Additionally, postal cards with matching artwork would be issued to coordinate with a few of the sheets.
In 1998, the sixth addition to the series honored four centuries of American Art.  The text on the back of the pane reads, “The American artists represented here were born in diverse places around this country, as well as elsewhere. Some were self-taught, others were academically trained…  These images … reflect some of the enduring themes in American visual arts: a concern with individuality in a democratic society, reverence for the variety of landscape across the continent, down-to-earth realism, and a recurring sense of optimism and energy.”

History the stamp represents:  The paintings of Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) are characterized by precise, abstract representations of manmade forms. A photographer as well as a painter, Sheeler invented a style of intense realism for which he is best remembered.
Born in Philadelphia, Sheeler received his training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Six of his paintings were included in the Armory Show of 1913. To support his painting, Sheeler became a commercial photographer. By about 1917, however, he had come to view photography as a creative art form in its own right. 
In 1920, Sheeler and fellow photographer Paul Strand made a short documentary film, Manhatta, which captured the modern energies of New York City. Some of Sheeler’s paintings, like Church Street El (1920) are based on still photographs taken from the film.
The Ford Motor Company hired Sheeler in 1927 to spend six weeks taking photographs of its River Rouge, Michigan plant. The images he took of the factory buildings are free of the human presence, except when needed to give a sense of scale. In his later work, such as Two Against the White (1957), Sheeler applied a purely photographic technique, that of the multiple exposure, to the painted rendition of simple, functional structures.