Photograph by Julius Schulman

In this vertical image, Rand and O’Connor are walking hand-in-hand in a grove of birch trees on their estate. In her biographical interviews, Rand recounted that she “did a lot of walking around the garden in California” while completing the full outline of Atlas Shrugged in 1946. Although not among the birch trees shown in this photograph, she recalled walking “near the road on the side, near the alfalfa field…. That’s where most of the plot was done, walking up and down.” It took her five months to complete the outline, which she considered “very brief” and an “enormous relief” once it was done.

This photographic print on canvas is 52″ wide and 67.5″ high. (Easel not included.)

FMV: $2,500

This lot will be familiar to those who attended OCON 2023 in Miami, as it was one of many images prominently displayed on easels in an exhibit visited by hundreds of attendees. Their large size allowed them to dominate the space—the vertical canvases are as tall as an average person, and they would all be especially suitable for two-story walls in a modern house. The photographer was Julius Shulman, a prominent architectural photographer who immortalized structures designed by prominent architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra. His collections are now housed in the Getty Institute in Southern California.