Dorothea Lange
Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle

ArtistAmerican, 1895–1965
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle
Date1938, printed 1965
Place depictedTexas, United States
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 30 × 24 in. (76.2 × 61 cm)
Sheet: 36 1/2 × 31 3/8 in. (92.7 × 79.7 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund
Object number2021.285
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description


From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea Lange worked for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration, tasked with recording the lives of Americans hit hardest by the double punch of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Her moving portrait of Nettie Featherston, slender and destitute against the backdrop of the Texas high plains, is emblematic of the era’s depleted land, bodies, and spirits. Nettie’s solitary despair, like the uncaring landscape that surrounds her, is inescapable. Produced under Lange’s supervision shortly before her death, this exceptionally large print was made for her solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.



ProvenanceEx-collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; [Sotheby’s New York, April 2, 2020, Lot 38]; [Howard Greenberg, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Inscribed in pencil, verso, upper right: No 90 [inside cropping lines]
Inscribed in pencil, verso, lower left: No 90 [underlined] [inside cropping lines]
[cropping lines on all corners]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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