Smoke and Steam, Chicago

Provenance

Theodore Dreiser, Chicago, Illinois
Helen Richardson Dreiser, Los Angeles, California, by descent from above
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, December 4, 1980, lot 74
The Martin and Deborah Maloy Collection
Christie’s, Modern American Art, The Martin and Deborah Maloy Collection, April 16, 2026, lot. 68

Exhibited

(Probably) Chicago, Illinois, Roullier Gallery, May 1912 (as Chicago Smoke)
(Probably) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milwaukee Art Center, January 1913
(Probably) New York, Daniel Gallery, October 1913
(Probably) Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester Art Museum, Annual Loan-Purchase Exhibition, 1914

Literature

W. A. Swanberg, Dreiser (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), n.p., fig. 17, illustrated.
Van Deren Coke, Nordfeldt, the painter (University of New Mexico Press, 1972), 36, 38, 42.

Related Works

Chicago, 1912, oil on canvas, 43 x 37 inches; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina
Chicago–Logan Monument, 1912, etching on cream laid paper, 11 x 15 3/8 inches; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Notes

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) was a prominent American novelist and journalist. Dreiser and Nordfeldt met through the avant-garde literary and artistic circles in Chicago in the early 1910s.

This scene most likely depicts Central Station (1893–1972), a train depot and passenger terminal in downtown Chicago, Illinois, at the southern end of Grant Park near Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue. After returning to Chicago from traveling abroad in 1911, Nordfeldt was impressed by the industrial growth of the city, including newly built skyscrapers, steel plants, and railroads. Smoke and Steam, Chicago captures the city’s increasing industrialization and Nordfeldt’s influence of European Impressionism from his recent travels. His direct, energetic brushstrokes illustrate billowing smoke penetrating the sky, as trains arrive and depart from Central Station.