- Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I.
- Xmas tree in living room, Levittown, N.Y.
- from the portfolio A box of ten photographs
Sheet: 19 7/8 x 16 in. (50.5 x 40.6 cm)
Explore Further
Diane Arbus’s honest and intimate photographs of people on the margins of society reveal what was extraordinary in the familiar and what was familiar in the extraordinary. Her portraits—straightforward in their technique, highly personal in their choice of subject, and collaborative in their approach— proved to be immediately and profoundly influential on subsequent photography. Already by November 1972, when a posthumous retrospective of Arbus’s work opened at the Museum of Modern Art, Robert Hughes declared in Time that her work “has had such an influence on other photographers that it is hard to remember how original it was.” The portfolio “a box of ten photographs,” conceived and assembled in 1969–71, is Arbus’s first and only distillation of her mature work, containing some of her most iconic images made between 1962 and 1970.
ProvenanceEstate of the artist; [consigned to Witkin Gallery, New York]; [purchased by Harry Lunn, 1972]; [purchased by Jo Tartt, Washington, D.C., late 1970s]; purchased by Gay Block, Houston, 1986; purchased by MFAH, 2018.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Stamped in black ink, verso, top center: This print is part of a limited edition portfolio of // ten Diane Arbus photographs. 8/50 [edition number inscribed in blue ink]
Printed and inscribed on applied label, verso, top right: A diane arbus photograph // title Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I. // date 1963 // print by Neil Selkirk February, 1973 // Doon Arbus [signed]
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.