Cape Cod Barn

Photographer: Ansel Adams, American, 1902–1984
Date: 1936; printed 1945
Material: Gelatin silver print
photographed in: Barnstable county, Massachusetts, United States, North and Central America
Classification: Photographs
Collection: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Current Location: Not on view
Dimensions: image: 9 in. × 12 5/8 in. (22.9 × 32.1 cm)
mount: 13 1/2 in. × 18 in. (34.3 × 45.7 cm)
framed: 15 3/8 × 20 3/8 in. (39.1 × 51.8 cm)
Credit Line: Museum Purchase
Rights: © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
Object Number: 66:1945

NOTES

Picturesquely framed by a white picket fence, this scene of farm buildings focuses on the facade of an impeccably maintained barn—its white clapboards gleaming in the sunlight. Rhythms of geometric shapes knit the picture together, notably the triangles of fence slats, the barn’s pitched roof and cupola, and the gable of a distant farmhouse. Ansel Adams was a virtuoso printmaker, and every detail of this scene shimmers with gradations of silvery tone, yielding an impression of grace and timelessness.

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