Born, Wolfgang: Still-life painting in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947)

he seems to fulfil the promise of the unknown painter
of the Locomotive at Night, who half a century earlier
groped his way with scant artistic means to a new inter-
pretation of machinery (fig. 134). Sheeler's interpreta-
tion of the machine, in all its apparent austerity, is

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eminently human, for it lovingly and lucidly displays
the intricate mechanical design as a work of the mind.
In Sheeler’s work mechanization is being humanized.
Hence he not only forms the zenith of a development
but also points the way to a new goal.