Steichen : the master prints 1895-1914,

the symbolist period

Dennis Longwell

Author
Steichen, Edward, 1879-1973

Date

1978

Publisher

The Museum of Modern Art:

Distributed by New York Graphic
Society

ISBN

0870705814

Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2362

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition

history—from our founding in 1929 to the
present—is available online. It includes
exhibition catalogues, primary documents,
installation views, and an index of
participating artists.

MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art

 180 pages, 73 plates (6 in color)
18 text illustrations

STEICHEN
The Master Prints 1895- 1914
The SymbolistPeriod
by Dennis Longwell

The surviving photographs printed by Edward

Steichen during the turn-of-the-century years are works
of unparalleled richness in the history of the medium.
These transcendent compositions on paper present
sumptuous surfaces and subtle color tones and shadings
that confound the usual preconceptions of what a photo
graph looks like. Steichen produced these masterworks
through a variety of enormously time-consuming print
ing techniques, some of them now almost forgotten.
These early original prints are few in number— less
than one hundred— and a significant portion of the im
ages exist only in a unique print. In this volume,
seventy-three of the early photographs are meticulously
reproduced to re-create as precisely as possible the look
and the effect of Steichen's own master prints.
This book charts a critical appreciation of these
works and appraises their meaning for the history of
photography, considering them in the context of the col
laboration between Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz that
changed the direction of modern art in America. Dennis
Longwell sets forth the formative influences on
Steichen and explores for the first time the relationship
between the early prints and the dominant art movement
of the late nineteenth century, Symbolism. In Mr.
Longwell's view, Symbolism rather than Impressionism
shaped the basic aesthetic that permeated the creative
efforts of Steichen and other members of the "Photo-
Secession" directed by Stiegiitz. In the light of a close
reading of letters and other documents, Mr. Longwell
reexamines Sc ^ssionist movement and suggests
that, in American photography, Steichen's master prints
form the basis of a Symbolist tradition that has remained
vital up to the present day.
During much of the period from 1895 to 1914,
Steichen lived in France, absorbing the new aesthetic of
European modernism and acting as "messenger" be
tween the artistic and intellectual world of Paris and his
STEICHEN: THE MASTER PRINTS 1895-1914
STEICHEN
THE MASTER PRINTS 1895-1914

THE SYMBOLIST PERIOD

Dennis Longwell

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Distributed by New York Graphic Society, Boston

 Copyright © 1978 by The Museum of Modern Art
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-90995

ISBN 0-87070-581-4

Designed by James M. Eng and Stevan A. Baron

Type set by The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vt.
Printed by The Meriden Gravure Co., Meriden, Conn.

The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street New York, N.Y. 10019

Printed in the United States of America

Frontispiece: YoungGirl Standing beside a Vase of Daffodils, c. 1908

Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Miss Mary Talbot
For my wife, Alicia
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 8

Steichen: The Master Prints 1895-1914 1

Plates 23

Catalog of Plates 169

Steichen's Printing Techniques 173

Selected Bibliography 175

Index to Plates 178

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition at

The Museum of Modern Art. An exhibition of prints as rare and valu
able as these by Steichen could happen only through the generosity of
those kind enough to lend irreplaceable works for an extended time.
Most generous has been the staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, through their willingness to part with approximately forty of
the nearly seventy Steichen photographs in the Metropolitan's incom
parable Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Without the enthusiastic cooperation
of Colta Feller Ives, Curator in Charge of the Department of Prints and
Photographs, and Weston J. Naef, Associate Curator, this project would
have been impossible. Their kindness transcended professional courtesy
and became an act of friendship for which I am deeply grateful. Weston
Naef was especially thoughtful in sharing with me his ideas about these
complex prints and the multiple processes that produced them, ideas de
rived from his long acquaintance with the works and his research into
the entire Stieglitz Collection. His catalogue raisonne of this most im
portant collection of Photo-Secession prints is eagerly awaited.
David Travis, Assistant Curator, and Miles Barth, Curatorial As
sistant, of The Art Institute of Chicago were similarly generous in lending
a number of works from the Institute's collection. My colleagues Ann
Percy, Associate Curator for Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, and Mark Haworth-Booth, Assistant Keeper of Photographs at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, offered valued additions to the
works exhibited. Mr. and Mrs. Noel Levine of New York City and Mrs.
Caroline Hammarskiold of Stockholm made their prized works available
with a readiness that was truly gratifying and deeply appreciated.
John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography at
The Museum of Modem Art, was kind enough to approve my proposal
for the exhibition and offered helpful criticism of the essay introducing
this book. Miss Grace M. Mayer, Curator Emeritus of the Steichen Ar
chive of The Museum of Modern Art, was enormously helpful in guiding
me through the vast store of information about Steichen's life and work
contained therein. Her willingness to share knowledge drawn from a
decade of research made my work easier than I could have imagined, and
I am in her debt. Susan Kismaric, Research Supervisor, assisted ably and
cheerfully in coping with the myriad details in the production of this
 book. Peter Collins, intern in the Department of Photography, made the
study prints that formed the basis of my research.
I would like to thank, also, Barbara Savinar of the Museum's De
partment of Registration, who skillfully assembled the prints for the exhi
bition; Lamia Doumato, Reference Librarian, who acquired research
materials from distant libraries; and Richard L. Palmer and Mary Lea
Bandy of the Department of Exhibitions, who so patiently coordinated
the activities necessary to mount the exhibition. Paper Conservators
Antoinette King and Trudy Schwartzman brought immense care to con
serving and restoring several works to their original beauty.
The introductory essay was edited by Francis Kloeppel, and I am
grateful for the challenging intelligence he brought to the task. Other ma
terial was edited by Jane Fluegel, a friend whose insight brought signifi
cant change to the form of this book. James M. Eng and Stevan Baron
designed what I believe is an extremely handsome volume, and the latter
also oversaw its production. I am grateful, in addition, to Don Dehoff and
Philip Poggio of Meriden Gravure for the energy and skill they brought
to the printing of this book.
I must acknowledge my gratitude to William Rayner and Diana
Edkins of Conde Nast for permission to reproduce the Steichen work
from Voguemagazine and to Donald Gallup and Miss Georgia O'Keeffe
for permission to quote letters by Steichen in the Stieglitz Archive at
Yale University. Richard Benson of The Fisher Press, Newport, Rhode
Island, generously shared his thoughts with me about the complex tech
niques Steichen used to make his prints. My understanding of the richness
and complexity of the Photo-Secession period was greatly enhanced by a
series of seminars led by Rosalind Krauss at the Graduate Center of The
City University of New York. I acknowledge my debt to her for the
innumerable ideas that were so freely exchanged.
Finally, Joanna T. Steichen, whose generosity has been boundless,
can never be sufficiently thanked for permitting her husband's works to
be reproduced in this volume. I can only hope that it, and the exhibition
it accompanies, will reward her kindness by reflecting in some measure
the genius inherent in Steichen's earliest work.
D.L.

9
 STEICHEN : THE MASTER PRINTS
1895-1914
THE SYMBOLIST PERIOD

"It is new, inasense, but only new as a school of photography, for

it reflects clearly the style of a well-known school of painting, and that is
why it has been accepted without the least difficulty by the enlightened
portion of the French public —whether they are photographers or not —
1 who have lived for several years in its special atmosphere."
Robert Demachy, a wealthy French amateur photographer and
critic, made these observations early in 1901 about an exhibition of
American photographs then on view in Paris at "le Photo-Club." The
exhibition, "Des oeuvres de F. Holland Day et de la nouvelle ecole
americaine," presented 304 prints by thirty-five American photographers,
the majority of whom are now forgotten. The star of the exhibition was
a young man of twenty-one then studying painting in Paris, Eduard J.
Steichen. His contribution of thirty-five photographs was exceeded only
Portrait of Steichen at age twenty-one, by the thirty-seven works from a Newark, Ohio, warehouse clerk, Clar
possibly photographed by traveling ence H. White, and those of the exhibition's organizer, Boston photog
companion, Carl Bjomcrantz, during first
voyage to France, 1900. Collection Mr. and rapher and publisher of deluxe books F. Holland Day, who had seen fit
Mrs. C. E. Bjorncrantz, Evanston, 111. to include eighty of his own creations, in a quarter of which he appeared
as Christ.
Demachy did not identify the "special atmosphere" that permeated
these works, probably because his readers were thoroughly familiar with
it. At that time the magazines referred to it as "advanced" photography,
"modern" in spirit. Today we can call it (and the school of painting to
which Demachy so perceptively linked it) Symbolism— the most influ
ential and widespread tradition in the art of the late nineteenth century.
Until recently, of course, the suggestion that the art of the Symbolist
movement as exemplified by such French artists as Gustave Moreau,
Odilon Redon, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes could have influenced
American artistic photography in the first decade of this century would

I have seemed incomprehensible, because Symbolism was itself so little

known and appreciated. It now appears, however, that the traditional
way of thinking about the evolution of modern art —Impressionism
followed by Post-Impressionism, followed by Fauvism and Cubism —
has greatly oversimplified the complex growth of the art of this century,
Day : The Seven Last Words: and that the Symbolist movement, far from being ancillary, was in fact
"Father Forgive Them: They Know Not
What They Do." 1898. Library of
seminal to that growth.
Congress, Washington, D.C. In Steichen's case this issue has been complicated by the suggestion

11
 in his autobiography, A Life in Photography (1963), that French Im
2 pressionism—Monet in particular influenced his early landscapes. A
further complication arises from Steichen's apparent need to ""justify"
his early career by emphasizing his role as the innovator who, while
living in France, arranged through Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession
gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue the first New York showings of Post-Impres
sionist and Cubist work in exhibitions by Cezanne (1911), Picasso (1911),
Matisse (1912), and others. Recent critics have seized upon these two
issues, contrasting Steichen's role as adventuresome impresario with an
3 alleged artistic timidity in his personal work.
As we shall see, it is an error (albeit one supported by Steichen's own
writings) to link Steichen's photographs of the period 1895-1914 pri
marily with French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s. The aesthetic
informing them is that of Symbolism, a movement contemporaneous
with the photographs, and lully as vital and as revolutionary as the art
descending from Impressionism. Placing these very beautiful prints-
some of the most beautiful photographs in the history of the medium— in
their proper, Symbolist context will erase the Januslike image of Steichen
referred to above and will give to his early work the recognition it de
serves for its contribution to the Symbolist photographic tradition that
leads to our own time.

Eduard Steichen was the only son of Jean-Pierre and Marie

Kemp Steichen, European peasants who emigrated from the tiny duchy
of Luxembourg to Hancock, Michigan, in 1881, when Steichen was only
4 eighteen months old. There his sister Lillian was bom in 1883. His
mother became a milliner and the family's principal breadwinner after
her husband s health was broken by work in the Michigan copper mines.
After graduating from grammar school in 1894 Steichen began a four-
year apprenticeship at the American Fine Art Company, a lithographic
firm that supplied posters and display cards for the breweries, flour mills,
and packinghouses of Milwaukee, a bustling city of 250,000 people and
his home since 1888. While serving as apprentice Steichen also studied Steichen: My Little Sister. 1895.
/2
".
16 Solio print, 11 x 115/
5 figure drawing with at least two local artists, Richard Lorenz (1858— The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the photographer.
6 1915) and Robert Schade (1861-1912), in what became the Milwaukee Steichen's first successful photograph,
Art Students' League. marking the beginning of his career
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly, beyond practical artist's concerns,
what Steichen learned in these classes. He was to write a letter of appre
ciation for Lorenz s instruction in 1966, almost seventy years later:
"Whereas other artists also generously helped us, notably Robert Schade,
7 it was Lorenz who gave us the real inspiration and a foundation."

12
 Indeed, the chief influence of these early teachers upon the teen-age
Steichen was probably not stylistic but practical. Both artists, by virtue of
the fact that they made a living as serious artists, could have encouraged
Steichen to leave the commercial illustrative work he had been trained to
do and to become a fine artist as well—a decision he made, over his
father's objections, when he was twenty-one years old.
One of the most significant influences of these early years came to
Steichen, who had begun to photograph in 1895, from a quarterly publi
cation edited by the noted amateur photographer Alfred Stieglitz for the
New York Camera Club from 1897 through 1902. This publication,
Camera Notes, was, like its successor, Camera Work (1903-17), the
major vehicle in America for informing serious amateurs of what was
new in photography, technically and aesthetically.
By the turn of the century there had evolved, chiefly through the
institution of the amateur camera club, a belief shared by American
and European photographers that certain kinds of photographs could
give aesthetic pleasure to those who viewed them sympathetically, and
that, therefore, a certain kind of photography —often referred to as
"advanced" —could be considered a valid medium of artistic expression.
Among those who held this belief—Alfred Stieglitz, most notably— the
criteria forjudging the aesthetic worth of a photograph were borrowed in
large part from the standards, the critical mechanisms, used to evaluate
other works of art. It is essential to realize that of these standards, those
associated with the Symbolist movement, in both its literary and its picto
rial manifestations, dominated the progressive critical thought of the day.
EDUARD
J-STEICHEN- Symbolism, flourishing at the end of the nineteenth century, could
trace its origins to Rousseau and the early Romantics of the end of the
eighteenth. Its qualities, according to the critic Edward Lucie-Smith, are
in large measure those associated with the poets Stephane Mallarme and
Paul Verlaine: "deliberate ambiguity; hermeticism; the feeling for the
Steichen's calling card, c. 1902 symbol as a catalyst (something which, while itself remaining unchanged,
generates a reaction in the psyche) ; the notion that art exists alongside the
real world rather than in the midst of it; and the preference for synthesis
8 as opposed to analysis."
Verlaine provided the most concise and accurate statement of its
essence in his famous Art poetique of 1874, a poem written while he was
imprisoned for shooting and wounding his lover, the poet Arthur Rim
baud. Lucie-Smith suggests that it is the manifesto of the movement:
Car nous voulons la Nuance encor.
Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!
Oh ! la nuance seule fiance
Le reve au reve et la flute au cor !

13
 For we wish for the Nuance still,
Not Colour, only the nuance!
Oh ! only the nuance marries
9 Dream to dream, and the flute to the horn !

Symbolism was, above all, the art of suggestion and of synthesis.

In some measure, too, especially for the bourgeoisie, Symbolism had
its negative aspects : a dandyism and snobbery and a perverse interest in
the occult—a decadence which denied the validity of scientific rational
ism and negated the belief in "progress" that characterized the materi
alism of the late nineteenth century. It was a radical, in many ways, a
revolutionary stance, paradoxically insisting on the primacy of the indi
vidual's sensibility and, eventually for many Symbolists, the necessity for
socialist political reform. And while it was in the strictest sense a literary
movement based in France and Belgium (the playwright and essayist
Maurice Maeterlinck was, as far as Steichen's history is concerned, the
prime literary influence), its tenets were embraced by artists as diverse as
Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss and by art movements as far apart in
time and place as the English Pre-Raphaelites and the Vienna Seces
sionists. Above all, the operas of Richard Wagner, with their fusion of
symbolic narrative, emotionally charged music, and the plastic arts of
stage design and the performing arts, represented an ideal of the Sym
10 bolist movement: the synthesis of all the arts into one.
Of the critics who dealt with photography and its relationship to
traditional art forms in the pages of Stieglitz's quarterlies, two seem to
have influenced Steichen most and seem most important today : Charles
H. Caffin ( 1854-19 18) and Sadakichi Flartmann (1867 7-1944). Caffin, an
Englishman who emigrated to the United States in 1892, published the
f
classic book on the subject, Photography as a Fine Art , in 1901. In it he
illustrated a chapter on landscape photography with six Steichen photo
graphs, including The Pool—Evening, 1899 (pi. 4). Caffin used this work
to illustrate a subtle but essential point about his and Steichen's Symbolist Steichen's first one-man show,
aesthetic, namely, the Neo-Platonic idea that the ultimate "reality" a Milwaukee, 1900, at the home of
Mrs. Arthur Robinson. Steichen Archive,
picture communicates is suggested by but is more than and different from The Museum of Modern Art, New York
its subject matter. Fie wrote :

I set this print and some others of Mr. Steichen's alongside

as many landscape pictures by other photographers (the latter
what you would call handsome but very literal interpretations
of nature) and invited a child of twelve, who is devoted to
country life, to tell me which she liked the best. After some little
while she selected this print of The Pool, and when I asked her
why, replied: "Because it is so real." Apparently the literalness
of some of the other prints had not conveyed an equal suggestion
11 of reality.

14
 It is significant that a child was chosen to make the selection. Symbolism
emphasized the intuitive over the rational and was anti-intellectual in its
12 epistemological orientation.
Caffin also recognized that Symbolism, in its opposition to the ma
. t. '- , * A terialism that dominated the age, was religious in its aspirations. He con
cluded his discussion of Steichen's landscapes with these thoughts:

For the lover of nature can never be satisfiedwith a mere record

of the physical facts; to him there is, as it were, a soul within
them, and he looks in pictures for its interpretation. It would not
be far wrong to say that landscape art is the real religious art of
13 the present age.

Sadakichi Hartmann, another of Stieglitz's critics who viewed the

world through Symbolist eyes, was perhaps even more important an ar
White: Spring—A Triptych. 1898. ticulator of Symbolist theories and ideas than Caffin. Hartmann, a poet
Three platinum prints, and a playwright (his Symbolist drama Christ , 1893, caused him to be
/s"8l ; center panel, i6V x 8
l/s". side panels, each 15 x 2 arrested in Boston) as well as a critic, had known Mallarme and appar
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. ently taken part in his "Tuesday evenings" in the 1890s. He was re
The Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss Fund
sponsible for introducing the Symbolist-Decadent aesthetic of the French
novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans, especially his A rebours (Against the
Grain) of 1884, into Camera Notes and Camera Work. Appropriately, it
was Hartmann who introduced the first selection of Steichen photographs

cmmh reproduced in Camera Work, in no. 2 (April 1903).

Perhaps the most influential photographer then working in the
WOQkT Symbolist mode was Clarence H. White (1871-1925). Steichen undoubt
edly saw reproductions of White's work in Camera Notes, and the two
men corresponded. White, after serving on the jury of the Chicago Salon
of 1900, wrote to Steichen commending him on the quality of the prints
A PHOTOGRAPHIC QUARTERLY
•EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY * he had submitted and encouraging him to visit Alfred Stieglitz when he
ALFRED STIEGLITZ NEW YORK
was in New York City. This meeting took place later that year as Steichen,
en route to study in Paris, introduced himself to Stieglitz and showed him
a portfolio of his drawings and photographs. Stieglitz, in a gesture that
NUMBER
XXIX became customary over the next decade, purchased three photographs
MDCGXX'"
for five dollars each, a sum Steichen regarded as princely. The collection
of Steichen's work which Stieglitz built up and later gave to The Metro
Cover of Camera Work, designed politan Museum of Art is the largest and finest in the world.
by Steichen. It remained unchanged Steichen and Stieglitz collaborated closely on two extended projects
throughout the fifty numbers issued
from 1903 to 1917 that changed the course of modern art in America : the quarterly Camera
Work which Steichen, using the German Symbolist publication Pan as a
model, designed, and the transformation, in 1905,of Steichen's New York
portrait studio into the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, called
"291" because of its location at 291 Fifth Avenue. There, through a

15
 series of exhibitions organized in part by Steichen, European modernism
—the work of Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, and Matisse, for example-
was first shown in New York.
Steichen first lived in Paris from 1900 to 1902. Upon arrival he
studied briefly at the Academie Julian, a venerable art school dominated
during the preceding decade by a Symbolist group known as the Nabis, a
quasi-religious fellowship of painters who worked under the influence of
Paul Serusier and, the master, Paul Gauguin. But it was a forerunner of
the Nabi group, Eugene Carriere (1848-1906), a painter of mothers and
children, nudes, and portraits of celebrated people, all in a misty, mono
chromatic style, who was to influence Steichen most directly. In an article
published in 1901 in the British publication The Photogram, Steichen
wrote a defense of his photographs then on view at the Royal Photo
graphic Society :

To some of us the lower tones have more of a tendency

to make beautiful than tones more brilliant, and hence the
Carriere: Auguste Rodin. 1897.
/87 repeated use of them. One strives for harmony—harmony Lithograph printed in black, 20 x
/4" in color, in value, and in arrangement. 133 . The Museum of Modern Art,
Carriere, one of the greatest modern French painters, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carroll L.
keeps all his pictures in a low brownish key, using no pure Cartwright
whites or darks ; and blending his tones, he secures an ex
quisite feeling of atmosphere and shrouds that in a lovely
14 sentiment.

As can be seen from a comparison of Carriere's lithograph of Rodin

(1897) and Steichen's little-known portrait of the sculptor made in 1902,
Steichen's debt to the French artist is great. Similarly, Steichen's nudes
with flowers and his mother-and-child pictures owe much to Carriere's
Symbolist vision.
Steichen's Rodin—Le Penseur , 1902 (pi. 11), is a perfect example of
Steichen's adoption of the Symbolist concept of synthesis : two separate
negatives were combined to create the symbolic image of the master
artist contemplating the works of his genius. This same concept of syn
thesis Steichen extended to the techniques and processes used to make
many of his most beautiful prints. At first Steichen used commercially
available platinum paper to print his negatives. Then, under the influence
of the French photographer and writer Robert Demachy, whom he met
in Paris, he began to experiment with the gum-bichromate process. Later, Steichen: Rodin Le Penseur. 1902.
platinum prints were coated with a layer of gum bichromate, and an over Platinum and gum-bichromate print,
16V2x 12 • The Museum of Modern Art,
printing—in color— of the same image was applied. Sometimes three or New York. Gift of the photographer
more separate coatings of gum bichromate were layered one over the
other. (See Winter Landscape , 1904-05, pi. 31, as an example of multiple-

16
 gum printing.) Technically, the work involved in making such large prints
as, for example, The Flat iron, 1905 (pi. 56), which is gum over platinum,
was enormous. In one of the few letters he wrote to Stieglitz discussing
technique, the following is most revealing:

I don't think the prints as a whole are nearly what I would

like to see them—but they represent two months' hard work to
say nothing of the expensewhich my bills testify to. Big plates
mean more failures and cost like h—1. I wish you could see
the new things— They will be hard to hang— One in particu
lar—my pet—and [Joseph T.] Keiley [a lawyer and one of
Stieglitz's closest associates]just got excited over it—one of
my old Lake George things "The Big Cloud" [pi. 33] an
enormous white cloud over the opposite mountain which is
inky black making the cloud blaze with light as the paper is
dyed brilliant greenish yellowf—]a few overhanging leaves on
top— It's a whopper—and will compel attention—although
I'm afraid they may refuse to hang it—d—m if they do.
Another one[—]Moonrise[Mamaroneck, New York, 1904,
pi. 35] in three printings: first printing, grey black plat[inum]
—2nd, plain blue print [cyanotype](secret)[—]3rd, greenish
gum. It is so very dark I must take the glass off because it acts
too much like a mirror. I hope they will handle it carefully—
of course the varnish will protect it some—15

Steichen: Night Landscape, c. 1905. In the creation of large, elaborately layered prints —gum bichromate
Oil on canvas, 25 x 21". Whitney Museum
of American Art, New York. over cyanotype over platinum, as in the preceding example— Steichen
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ira Spanierman was the unique master. Certainly, other "advanced" photographers,
Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Kasebier, F. Holland Day, Clarence
White, and Frank Eugene among them, applied the ideas of the Sym
bolist movement to their photographic work, and many of them made
very beautiful platinum or gum-bichromate prints, and, on occasion,
combined the processes. But none utilized so fully the various means then
available to photographers in the rich and, from a Symbolist view, ap
propriate way that Steichen did.
In his motifs, too, Steichen reveals his Symbolist inclinations. This
early material falls into five interrelated categories : first, a small group of
self-portraits, in which he projects a strong psychological need to be seen
as an artist ; second, the numerous landscapes, small and tremulous in the
beginning, becoming increasingly expansive and resonant through the
decade; third, the nudes, presented in the most Symbolist manner pos
sible, the body merging into the lambent atmosphere that surrounds it,
suggesting ineffable sorrow; fourth, portraits of two distinct types, those
of men, usually artists, seen as the embodiment of genius, and those of
women presented as the personification of beauty (a symbolic representa-

17
 tion generallyunderscored by the inclusion of exotic flowers); finally,the
fusion of the portrait of genius and the landscape, as exemplifiedby the
very beautiful seriesdevoted to Rodin's Balzac, a group that captures the
essenceof Steichen's art of this period.
It is interesting to note that the paintings Steichenmade at this time
(for, particularly after his return to France in 1906, Steichen was pri
marily a painter) employ virtually the same limited motifs as the photo
graphs. Indeed, on numerous occasions, works in both mediums were
exhibited together. Uelsmann: Room #/. 1963. Silver print,
11 x 14". Collection the photographer
Thus, through the mergingof Symbolistmotifs and techniques,these
early photographs embody the ultimate expression of the Symbolist
aesthetic in American photography in the first decade of this century.
But, perhaps because of their technical synthesis, these works presented
problems for the critics of the day. One writer, when confronted with the
fact that these prints did not look like photographs, resolvedthe issue by
suggestingthat "they are photographs; they were drawn by light. But it
is the ordinary every-day photographs which are not photographs, and
16 should properly be called cameragraphs or machinographs." And, as
Steichen himself suggestedin the letter just quoted, they were very diffi
cult and time-consumingto make. Thus, although new finds of original
Steichen prints turn up from time to time, the number of great works is Weston: Nude Floating. 1939.
2"!/ . extremely, almost unnaturally, small, fewer even than one hundred Silver print, 7 x 9V
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
works, and a significant portion of these images exist in only a unique Gift of Edward Steichen
print.
Steichenmade fewof the kind of prints we have discussedafter 1914,
when World War I forced him, his wife, and two daughters to return to
the United States from France, where they had lived since 1906.When
first published these photographs had great importance. Because they
were made—to quote Stieglitz—by "a 'real artist,'" they were proof that
17 photographs could be works of art. Stieglitz reproduced seventy-four
plates of Steichen's works, far more than he devoted to the work of any
other photographer, in numerous issuesand two special supplements of
Camera Work.Becauseof the advanced Symbolistaesthetic that informs

9
them, they presented a vital counter to the cliche-ridden genre photo
graphs that were (and still are) the concern of the camera clubs. They
were,in short, what a very significantportion of modern art was all about.
Samaras: Photo-Transformation. 1976.
These works can be seen as forerunners of a kind of photography Polaroid print, 3x3".
very much in vogue today. The mysterious narrative sequences photo The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the American Art Foundation
graphed by Duane Michals, for example, project ideas akin to those in
the Symbolistetchings of Max Klinger (1857-1920).The strange masked
creatures in the images of the late Ralph Eugene Meatyard correspond
dramatically to the grotesques inhabiting the tortured paintings of James

18
 Ensor (1860-1949).Symbolismis at the very heart of the syntheticphoto
graphs of Jerry Uelsmann, and it even appears in the work of the master,
Edward Weston, chieflyin the strange works from just before and during
the war years. The boldest, most brilliant exponent of the Symbolist
tradition working today is Lucas Samaras, whose obsessive Polaroid
self-portraits form a virtual catalog of Symbolist ideas; the hermeticism,
obsessionwith self,and synthesisof the late nineteenth century are trans
lated into the late twentieth. (The self-portraits relate in a fascinatingway
to the work of F. Holland Day, mentioned at the beginningof this essay.)
The vitality of the Symbolist aesthetic is astounding, and in any future
account of it the role played by Steichen's Symbolist photographs must
be recognized.

One additional question remains to be discussed, one that

shifts the focus for the moment from Steichen to Stieglitz: How did the
Symbolist aesthetic influenceStieglitz's work?
Hine: Italian Family Seeking Lost
On a technical level, the kind of hybrid, bravura print that Steichen
Baggage, Ellis Island. 1905. Silver had mastered had little influenceon Stieglitz,whose only deviation from
2". print, 5V2 x 47 The Museum straight platinum or gum-bichromate prints (or their pellucidtranslation
of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
into hand-pulled gravure) was a few experimental glycerin prints made
around 1900.Also, Stieglitz's subject matter—street views in New York
and Paris or portraits of individuals, not generalized types—was always
too particularized, too obviously related to life in the real world, to em
body the Symbolist formula that placed art parallel to yet separate from
the world we live in. While Stieglitz and the documentarian Lewis W.
Hine, for example, differ in many respects, they both dealt with various
aspects of the same reality. A similar analogy could not be made with
Steichen.
Yet, to be a student in Berlin in the late 1880s,as Stieglitzwas, was
18 to be envelopedin an atmosphere thick with the elementsof Symbolism.
The effectsof this aesthetic education are everywhereapparent. Arnold
Bocklin (1827-1901),for example, a painter of mystical, allegorical sub
jects, was Stieglitz's favorite painter at the turn of the century; his Isle of
the Dead (1880) hung in reproduction in Stieglitz's New York apart
19 Stieglitz: The Steerage. 1907. ment. Similarly, the first exhibition of nonphotographic art held at
1/2"34. Photogravure, 7 x 6 "291" presented the drawings of Pamela Colman Smith (1878-?), a
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz mysterious, American-born artist living in London, best known for her
designs for the ultimate Symbolist occult object, the Rider deck of tar-
20 ot cards. Gertrude Stein, the Symbolist roots of whose work were
21 stressed by Edmund Wilson, was published for the first time anywhere
in Camera Work, a publication, as noted earlier, that was modeled upon
Pan (Berlin), but also upon other European Symbolist periodicals.

19
 In his own photographs, as some of their titles suggest from Sun
light and Shadow, Paula, Berlin (1889) through The Hand of Man (1902)
to Spiritual America (1923)—there are recurrent Symbolist themes. Per
haps Stieglitz's most beautiful, if elusive, pictures are the series of photo
graphs he called the Equivalents. These were shown at the Anderson
Galleries in 1924 in the exhibition "Songs of the Sky—Secrets of the
22 Skies as Revealed by My Camera." This evocation of music is quintes-
sentially Symbolist. He said:

I wanted a series of photographs which when seen by Ernest

Bloch (the great composer) he could exclaim: Music! music! Stieglitz: Equivalent. 1926.
l/2"58. Silver print, 3 x 4
Man, why that is music! How did you ever do that? And he The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
would point to violins, and flutes, and oboes, and brass, full Gift of Mrs. Dorothy S. Norman
of enthusiasm, and would say he'd have to write a symphony
called "Clouds." Not like Debussy's but much, muchmore.
And when finally I had my series of ten photographs
printed, and Bloch saw them—what I said I wanted to happen
23 happened verbatim.

The Equivalents are the culmination of an involvement in Symbolist

thought extending back into Stieglitz's youth.
It is obvious, then, why SteichenY Symbolist photographs, during
the period under discussion, were so admired, published, exhibited, and
purchased by Stieglitz. He inscribed a copy of a double issue of Camera
Work (no. 42-43), devoted entirely to Steichen's work, as follows:

Dear Steichen: This is the first copy of the "Steichen Num

ber." It is just out. It happens to be the Night before Thanks
giving. Nothing I have ever done has given me quite as much
satisfaction as finally sending this Number out into the world.
Real friendship is rarer than real art— That is, heaven knows,
rare enough these days.
"291"
24 November 26 — 1913

Yet, with the advent of World War I, the close association between
Steichen and Stieglitz ended. Undoubtedly there were many reasons, but
most important perhaps were the affiliations each had to the countries
tragically at war: Stieglitz, the son of German emigres, himself educated
in Germany, was neutral if not pro-German ; Steichen, after twelve years
in residence, was devoted to France.
The war seemingly changed everything. Steichen, who enlisted in
the United States Army in 1917, learned to make sharply defined photo
graphs from vibrating biplanes high above enemy territory. The experi
ence, he declared in his autobiography, clarified his vision and taught him

20
 to appreciate the beauty of the unmanipulated photograph. In 1923he
ceased his career as a painter, and in a spectacular bonfire in the garden
of his country home in Voulangis, France, he burned all his paintings
in his possession. In the same year his marriage of twenty years ended
in divorce. Employed by Conde Nast, publisher of Vogueand Vanity
Fair, Steichen then became the highest-paid fashion photographer in
the world. With its crisp sparkle, his commercial work, designedas it was
to attract the eye to the printed page, suggests that Steichen had re
nounced his Symbolist aesthetic along with his career in painting. Es
sentially, however, Steichen remained a Symbolist throughout his long
life, in his fashion work and in later projects as well.
The famous exhibition he directed for The Museum of Modern Art
in New York, "The Family of Man" (1955), for example, was an enor
mous synthesis of the work of hundreds of photographers, and it was
Steichen : Fashion photograph for Vogue,
Nov. i, 1935. Copyright © 1935 (renewed) rife with dilute Symbolist ideas. The final work of his great old age (he
1963 by The Conde Nast Publications Inc. died in 1973two days short of his ninety-fourth birthday) was a color
motion picture, unfortunately left incomplete, of a small shadblow tree
on his Connecticut estate. The Little Tree was to have symbolized,
through the shadblow's determined struggle to exist through all ad
versity, the very nature of existence itself.
The works of his youth reproduced here seem at once simpler and
more successful than the grandiose projects of later life. Emphatically
unphotographic and on occasion showing the seams that hold them to
gether, the early images are nevertheless among the masterworks of
Installation of Steichen photographs photography. They still stir the sense of marvel that Roland Rood ex
at the first exhibition at "291," periencedwhen he first saw a number of them at the inaugural exhibition
November 24, 1905- January 5, 1906
of "291" : "And Steichen's works in the little show are certainly wonder
ful. I have never seen a more beautiful wall of black and white than he
covers. I went back twice to see if they were, in truth, as they had ap
peared to me at that first night. And they were!They haunt me to this day
25 as a strange and lovely dream."

21
 NOTES

1. Robert Demachy, "Exhibition of the New American School of 6. Schade was born in New York City. In 1863 his parents, emi
Artistic Photography at the Paris Photo-Club," The Amateur grants from Prussia, moved to Milwaukee, where Schade studied
Photographer (London), vol. 33, April 1901, p. 275. An earlier, at the school of the Art Association with the painters Bridge
slightly smaller version of this show opened at the Royal Photo Tradsham, Heinrich Vianden, Henry and Julius Gugler, and the
graphic Society, London, in 1900. photographer Edward Kurtz. (I am indebted to Robert G. Car-
2. Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y. : roon, Curator of Research, Milwaukee County Historical So
Doubleday& Co. in collaboration with The Museum of Modern ciety, for this information, taken from his letter to me dated June
n7> Art, 1963), unpaged (chap. 2). 2 1977-) I 1878 Schade went to Munich, where he studied for
3. Henry Geldzahler, for example, at the time of Steichen's retro three and a half years, principally under a painter of historical
spective exhibition at The Museum of Modem Art, New York, subjects, Alexander Wagner (1838-1919). In the 1880s Schade
in 1961, declared: "Thus we get a dual picture of Steichen's role joined the panorama painters along with Lorenz, began to teach
in the early years of this century. The photographer dedicated to privately, and made two additional trips to Munich for study
pictorial photography— the translation of Impressionist, etc., with Wagner. The final twenty years of his life, aside from a brief
painting into photographs, an aesthetic dominated by what sojourn in New Mexico, were spent in Milwaukee, where he
would seem in retrospect to be a frankly reactionary reverence made his living primarily as a portrait painter.
for the dreamy-misty. And Steichen the unshockable, quickly 7. Letter from Steichen to Miss Margaret Fish dated April 8, 1966.
acclimated eye, eager for New York to share the powerful new See Margaret Fish, An Exhibition in Tribute to Richard Lorenz,
formal freedom that so outraged his contemporaries. Both seem 1858-1915 (catalog), Milwaukee Art Center, 1966, p. 5.
important, but if the Photo-Secession laid the ground for the 8. Edward Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art (London: Thames and Hud
Armory Show (which it did) and if the Armory Show vibrations son, 1972), p. 55.
have never died down (which they haven't) then we must be more 9. Ibid., p. 58.
grateful to Steichen the messenger than to Steichen the pictorial 10. Because relating Pictorial Photography to Symbolism is an un
photographer. But this too may change." ("Edward Steichen: familiar approach, it seemed to me essential to describe the out
The Influence of a Camera," Art News [New York], vol. 60, no. standing characteristics of the Symbolist movement—even in the
3 [May 1961], p. 53.) face of the oversimplification that is inevitable in a brief essay.
4. Steichen was christened simply Eduard Steichen. Very early in 11. Charles H. Caffin, Photography as a Fine Art (1901, reprint ed.,
his life he seems to have adopted his father's name, Jean-Pierre, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Morgan & Morgan, 1971), p. 160.
as a middle name, and he used "Eduard J. Steichen" throughout 12. Maurice Maeterlinck's The Intelligence of the Flowers is a case
this early period when writing for publication. Occasional ref- in point.
ences to him in French periodicals employed the French "Edou- 13. Caffin, op. cit., p. 166.
ard," just as occasional English and American texts spelled it
"Edward." Legally, as for example on his naturalization papers, 14. Eduard J. Steichen, "The American School," The Photogram
signed in 1900,he used "Edward J. Steichen." He used this name (London), vol. 8, no. 85 (January 1901), p. 9.
exclusively from sometime during World War I until his death. 15. Leaf 54, Alfred Stieglitz Archive, Collection of American Litera
5. Lorenz (whom Steichen called "Lorence" in his autobiography) ture, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
was bom in Weimar, Germany, where he studied at the Royal University, New Haven, Conn.
Academy on a scholarship endowed by Franz Liszt. In 1886 he 16. Roland Rood, Camera Work, no. 14 (April 1906), p. 37.
came to Milwaukee, where he worked on what now seems a 17. Alfred Stieglitz, "Eduard J. Steichen's Success in Paris," Camera
peculiarly exotic project: painting only the horses (other im Notes, vol. 5, no. 1 (July 1901), p. 57.
ported German artists dealt with the trees, mountains, and sky) 18. A vivid self-portrait of Stieglitz during this period is evoked in
in enormous panoramic views which depicted on canvases 25 feet Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer (New
high and 350 feet long scenes like the Battle of Gettysburg or a York: Random House, 1973), pp. 24-35.
Voyage down the Mississippi. These panoramas, the precursors 19. William Innes Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-
of the newsreel, the travelogue, and the documentary film, were Garde (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977), p. 69.
usually unrolled before paying audiences as educational enter 20. Ibid., p. 237, note 27.
tainment. (For a discussion of this phenomenon see H. Stuart 21. Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (New York: Charles Scribner's
Leonard et al., Mississippi Panorama [catalog], St. Louis City Art Sons, 1931), pp. 243-44.
ls>o Museum, 1949, pp. 127-37; a Porter Butts, Art in Wisconsin:
22. Norman, op. cit., p. 144.
The Art Experience of the Middle West Frontier [Madison : Madi
son Art Association, 1933],especially chap. 4, "Panorama Scene 23. Ibid., pp. 143-44.
Painting," pp. 51-65.) 24. Photostat of an inscribed page of Camera Work in a box marked
Traveling to San Francisco in 1887, Lorenz became entranced "Memorabilia," Steichen Archive, The Museum of Modem Art,
with the American West. By the time of his death of a mysterious New York.
and painful degenerative disease at the age of fifty-seven, he was, 25. Roland Rood, review in the January 1906 issue of The American
with the exception of Frederic Remington, the nation's foremost Amateur Photographer, reprinted in Camera Work, no. 14 (April
painter of cowboys, Indians, and their soon-to-vanish world. 1906), p. 37.

22
PLATES
 i. Self-Portrait. Milwaukee. 1898

Steichen was nineteen when he made this self-conscious photo

graph of himself, the empty picture frame carefully echoing the
black border around the print. Exhibited in F. Holland Day's
"New American School" exhibition in London in 1900, this work
provoked one unknown critic to write : Imagine half a young man
clothed only in shirt and trousers, standing before a light wall,
quite bare, savefor a black picture frame that he could easily
swallow at a gulp, and you have a self-portrait. It is probable that
his missing half is at his next door neighbour's, for we notice that
l/2 his address is 342 Seventh Street, Milwaukee.

Photography (London), vol. 12, October 4, 1900, p. 654.

2. Lady in the Doorway. Milwaukee. 1898

This work and the one preceding were the first Steichen prints to
be placed on exhibition. In 1899 he sent them to the Second
Philadelphia Photographic Salon : The prints were accepted and
hung by the jury. I never heard of any bells being rung for them, but
I did receive a letter from Clarence White [one of the jurors], saying
that my two pictures showed originality— "a quality which needs to
be encouraged."

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y. :

Doubleday& Co., 1963), unpaged (Chapter 1).
3. Woods — Twilight. 1898

We occasionallyfind ourselves in darker parts of the world, and, as a

rule, feel more easy there. What a beautiful hour of the day is that of
the twilight when things disappear and seem to melt into each other,
and a great beautiful feeling of peace overshadows all. Why not, if
wefeel this, have this feeling reflect itself in our work ? Many of the
negatives have been made at this hour, many early in the morning or
on dark grey days.

Eduard J. Steichen, "The American School," The Photogram

(London), vol. 8, no. 85 (January 1901), p. 6.
4. The Pool —Evening. Milwaukee. 1899

Then Whistler, whose influencefew if any modems have escaped . . .

affected this young man profoundly. He found in the great artist not
only technical example but a kinship of spirit. Steichen himself is
somewhat arrogantly intolerant of the commonplace; rapturously
devout toward that which is choicely beautiful; but, first and fore
most, he was keenly sensitive to the master's abstraction of spirit, to
his preference for the expression of the idea. So Steichen sought it
wherefor a while, in the seventies, Whistler sought it, and where
we ordinary folk who are not painters seek for it, especially when we
are young, namely, in the twilight and the night. It is in the
penumbra, between the clear visibility of things and their total
extinction in darkness, when the concreteness of appearances be
comes merged in half-realized, half-baffled vision, that spirit seems
to disengage itself from matter and to envelope it with a mystery of
soul-suggestion.

Charles H. Caffin, "The Art of Eduard J. Steichen," Camera

Work (New York), no. 30 (April 1910), p. 34.
5. Woods in Rain. Milwaukee. 1898
6. Wood Lot —Fallen Leaves. 1898
Farmer's Wood Lot. Milwaukee. 1898
if» !4» i s*

*:-
"lv v ^
8. Self-Portrait with Sister. Milwaukee. 1900

During his first trip to Europe, Steichen visited Rome. He wrote

to his friend and fellow portrait photographer Gertrude Kasebier
in 1902:
Roma—MDCCCCII
There are trees in the Villa de Medicis that are so full of sap
and growth that they have put great iron bands around them to
keep them from bursting—I feel that way myself!

Leaf 28, Steichen Correspondence, Alfred Stieglitz Archive,

Collection of American Literature, The Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Hereafter referred to as Beinecke.
Mi
9. Bartholome. 1901

Steichen photographed the French sculptor Paul-Albert

Bartholome (1848-1928) before his most celebrated work, Le
Monument aux morts, 1895, in Pere Lachaise cemetery, Paris.
Bartholome wrote : I am irritated by most of the photographs in
which the authors have intervened to create works that are no longer
photographs and are not drawings. They suggest to me only
imperfect imitations of etchings or of reproductions of paintings. . . .
1 do not mean to say that one cannot produce fine works with
photography, but one should stick to composition, to selection, to the
variety of lightings, to his own preferences in arrangement, and I
assure you, that if he lets it go at that, then gradually the machine
and the light will give him results entirely personal. Think, compose,
prepare your subject in all possible ways, usefeeling, then open the
objective [lens] and put your hands in your pockets, or else have
someone put handcuffs on you.

Quoted by George Besson, in "Pictorial Photography : A Series of

Interviews," Camera Work (New York), no. 24 (October 1908),
pp. 18-19.
10. Edmond Joseph Charles Meunier. Paris. 1907

Very little is known about this French artist, except that he was
born at an unknown time in the nineteenth century in Colombes,
was the student of Eugene Meunier (his father?), and exhibited in
the Paris Salons of 1874 and 1878. Steichen has photographed him
before what we can presume to be one of his sculptures, just as he
posed Matisse, Rodin, and Bartholome in front of theirs.
ii. Rodin — Le Penseur. 1902

Steichen wrote the following letter to Stieglitz from Paris,

probably in 1901: I wish you could hear some of thefine things
the big painters & artists here have to say when I can show some
thing good. ... I could cite dozens of things—up to Rodin himself—
who took my hand in big silence the first time he went through my
portfolio —At another time when I had the honor to dine with him
at his home—he said of one of the things that it was a remarkable
photograph and a remarkable work of art —a chef d'oeuvre—as
he would have it (a very recent print— a self portrait in Gum
Bichromate [pi. 13]). Ah well I am excited and saying too much-
please do not think it is vanity Mr. Stieglitz—I assure it is not
merely patriotism to photography—. . . I only wish I could give it
more time—even now I fear I am giving it too much.

Leaf 3, Beinecke.
12. AlPHONSE-M ARIE MUCHA. PARIS. 1902

Steichen photographed the Czech artist Alphonse-Marie Mucha

(1860-1939) standing before his famous poster of Sarah Bernhardt
in La Dame aux Camelias : I cannot take more than one photo
graph in a day. It means the complete merging of myself in the
personality of my subject, a complete loss of my own identity, and
when it is over, I am in a state of collapse, almost. The commercial
photographer, with his forty sittings a day, cannot of course enter
into the individuality of his sitter as I do.
Of course photography is only a side issue with me—I am a
painter, first, last, and all the time. But there are certain things that
can be done by photography that cannot be accomplished by any
other medium, a wide range of finest tones that cannot be reached
in painting.

Steichen, quoted in an unidentified Milwaukee newspaper, dated

August 30, 1902. From a scrapbook assembled by Steichen's
mother, The Steichen Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New
York.
13- Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette.
Paris. 1902 (negative 1901)

In the "Self-Portrait," one notices at once the forehead and large

nose with their attendant nobility of character, and other features
betraying the capability of the original for great things. The position
of the hand, with longfingers, grasping a brush, shows great
flexibility of purpose and work, a power which is accentuated by the
subtle curve as though the brush had been used. All other details of
dress and surroundings are suppressed, and we see Mr. Steichen
only as artist, genius, and leader.

Anonymous, "Mr. Steichen's Pictures," The Photographic Art

Journal (London), vol. 2, no. 14 (April 15, 1902), pp. 27-28.
14- George Frederic Watts. 1901

The British artist George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) painted a

great many portraits of celebrated Victorian artists, scholars, and
politicians, adding each to what he called his "Hall of Fame."
Upon his return to America, Steichen similarly described his own
portraits when interviewed for a Milwaukee newspaper : Full of
enthusiasm, and in a naive and delightful state of satisfaction with
the world and his art, Edward J. Steichen has returned to Milwaukee
for a brief sojourn before he opens his studio in New York. . . .
Young Steichen, who was the first to raise photography to an
artistic plane sufficiently elevated to receive a place in the Paris
salon, talked interestingly and enthusiastically about his work this
morning. . . . "My 'Great Men' series includesportraits of Rodin,
Maeterlinck, George Frederick Watts, the eminent English artist,
Zengwill, Lenbach, the great German portrait artist, Besnard, who
is perhaps the greatest living exponent of the modern school of art,
William M. Chase of New York, Mucha, the painter and many
others. Then too, I have hosts of pictures of young men, who I
expect will be great. ..."

Clipping dated August 30, 1902, Steichen scrapbook. The Steichen

Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
15. Frederick H. Evans. 1900

Originally a bookseller by trade, Frederick H. Evans (1853-1943)

made a celebrated photographic study of English and French
cathedrals, printing the work in the richest of platinum prints. The
photograph Evans is studying here is by F. Holland Day, who has
posed himself as Christ. Steichen helped Day install the "New
School of American Photography" exhibition in the Royal Photo
graphic Society, London, in the fall of 1900, the probable date of
this photograph.
16. The Black Vase. 1901

From an unidentified newspaper clipping, dated August 7, 1902,

in the album assembled by Steichen's mother : Edward J.
Steichen of Milwaukee and New York, portrait painter and
photographer , arrived on the Pennsylvania from Hamburg. His
photograph, "The Black Vase," which he exhibited in the Brussels
Photographic Salon, was purchased by the Belgian government,
which ordered it hung in the National Gallery at Brussels.
The hanging of a photograph in a gallery with paintings brought
loud protests from artists. It is the first time a photograph had been
officially recognized as worthy of a place in a national collection.

Steichen scrapbook. The Steichen Archive, The Museum of Modern

Art, New York. A recent survey of various Belgian public collec
tions failed to uncover the whereabouts of this work.
1^— —
17• The Mirror. 1901

From the New York Herald , Paris edition, December 27, 1900:

CHRISTMAS DINNERS
Artistic Gathering at Mr. Edward J. Steichen's Studio in the
Latin Quarter.
A Christmas dinner was given by Mr. Edward J. Steichen, in his
studio at 8J boulevard Montparnasse, in honor of the arrival of his
confrere, Mr. F. Holland Day, of Boston. Covers were laid for six,
the other four being: Mr. Frank Eugene, of New York; Mrs.
William E Russell and Miss Mary Devins, of Cambridge, and
Mrs. Elise Pumpelly Cabot, of Boston, who, with Mr. Steichen and
Mr. Day are the representatives of the new school of American
artist-photographers happening at the present moment to be on this
side of the Atlantic. The studio was lighted with,the red glow of silk
lanterns, which Mr. Steichen wasfortunate enough to obtain from a
Japanese Government official at the Exhibition, and was decked
with holly and mistletoe.
Toasts were drunk in honor of the newly-elected American
members of the "Linked Ring," Mrs. Gertrude Kasebier, of New
York, being the first woman to be elected to this body. Before
breaking up the banquet, a curiously improvised medley of the
"Marseillaise," "God Save the Queen" and "America" was sung,
and toasts were drunk to Her Majesty and the French and American
Presidents.

Steichen scrapbook, The Steichen Archive, The Museum of

Modern Art, New York.
19- La Cigale. 1907 (negative 1901)

Steichen's photographic nudes are not as perfect as the majority of

his portraits, but they contain perhaps the best and noblest aspira
tions of his artistic nature. They are absolutely incomprehensible to
the crowd.
To him the naked body, as to any true lover of the nude, contains
the ideals, both of mysticism and beauty. Their bodies are no paeans
of the flesh nor do they proclaim absolutely the purity of nudity.
Steichen's nudes are a strange procession offemale forms, naive,
non-moral, almost sexless, with shy, furtive movements, groping
with their arms mysteriously into the air or assuming attitudes
commonplace enough, but imbued with some mystic meaning, with
the light concentrated upon their thighs, their arms, or the back,
while the rest of the body is drowned in darkness.
" What does all this mean?" Futile question. Can you explain the
melancholy beauty of the falling rain, or tell why the slushy pave
ments, reflecting the glaring lights of Fifth Avenue stores, remind us
of the golden dreams the poets dream?

Sidney Allan [Sadakichi Hartmann], "A Visit to Steichen's

Studio," Camera Work (New York), no. 2 (April 1903), p. 28.
 H

20. Figure with Iris. 1902

 2i. Little Round Mirror. Paris.
1902 (negative 1901)

64
22. In Memoriam. New York. 1905
HHHHH8
23. Otto, French Photographer, c. 1902

The photographer M. Otto ran a studio in Paris that specialized in

making prints from enlarged negatives. And, as some photographic
laboratories do today, he provided gallery space for his customers.
Steichen had a show there in 1902. This undated letter was written
to Stieglitz by Steichen sometime after returning to Paris in 1906:
Well—I've taken a job as a day laborer. I am workingfor Otto! ! !
going to put in two days a week with him for a while at $20.00
twenty dollars a day—"showing him" how to do it [make Steichen
prints ].
I tell you it is not exactly pleasant but I simply had to do
something—/ have thought of giving up this place [103, boulevard
du Montparnasse] —but find that any other place including moving
etc. would be about the same in the end—and now that I have gone
to the trouble and expense of making this place fine why I might as
well get some of the benefit not only for our pleasure and comfort
but from a business standpoint. [Steichen made his living chiefly as
a portrait photographer and painter .]—There is no use denying it
people have more respect in a business wayfor you if they think you
have money enough—Oh I guess I'm talking wash but I can't see or
think straight any more.

Leaves 307-08, Beinecke.

24. Maurice Maeterlinck. Paris. 1901

In April 1906 Stieglitz issued a deluxe volume of Steichen's work

containing twenty-nine plates and an introduction by the Belgian
Symbolist playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949). Shortly
thereafter Steichen wrote Stieglitz : Here's a linefrom
Maeterlinck that has just come about the book—whichfinally
reached him—I send the words to you because they are really
meant for you as much as for me—infact for all of us—even if
Maeterlinck does not realize it—
"Je regois a I'instant votre magnifique album. C'est une admirable,
un incomparable realisation d'art. Vous avez discipline directement
les rayons de soleil comme un peintre discipline ses pinceaux. Je
vous remerci de tout coeur de ce superbe envoi qui sera I'ornament
royal de ma table de travail. "
That's great— isn't it—the sort of thing that overbalances all the
peanuts we have to eat. I know you are enjoying these words as
much as I am. They have the significance and honesty of—nature
itself—
Let's shake hands old man—and be glad-
Always your Steichen

Leaf 253, Beinecke. The Maeterlinck letter may be translated:

"I received a moment ago your magnificent album. It is an
admirable, an incomparable artistic realization. You have
disciplined directly the rays of the sun as a painter disciplines his
brushes. I thank you with all my heart for sending this superb
gift, which will be the royal adornment of my work table."
25. Franz von Lenbach. Munich.
1903 (negative 1901)

According to his autobiography, Steichen visited Munich in 1901

to attend an exhibition of the German Secessionist painters. While
there he photographed the German portrait painter Franz von
Lenbach (1836-1904). In an article for a London periodical, in
which he refers to Lenbach, Steichen reveals his belief in the strong
relationship between painting and photography : One need not
point to the sources of influence to befound in the American work,for
Whistler and Alexander are as much in evidence as the old masters
and the Japanese. Yet is not the movement in modern art similarly
kin to this influence? If we in America havefelt this more keenly
than others it is because we have been more ready to be receptive.
We cannot realize that it should seem strange that, if the photog
rapher is desirous also of being an artist, his work shall communicate
the spirit of the painter. Observe how intimate is the relation be
tween the German painter and their school of photography. One is
continually reminded of the influence of a Boecklin, a Lenbach, or a
Leistikow. These photographers are more concerned with art than
with dark room textbooks. . . .

Eduard J. Steichen, "The American School," The Photogram

(London), vol. 8 (January 1901), p. 2.
26. J. P. Morgan. New York. 1904 (negative 1903)

Steichen described the making of this most famous portrait of the

multimillionaire railroad magnate John Pierpont Morgan (1837-
1913) : I suggested a different position of the hands and a movement
of the head. He took the head position, but said, in an irritated
tone, that it was uncomfortable, so I suggested he move his head to
a position that felt natural. He moved his head several times and
ended exactly where it had been "uncomfortable" before, except
that this time he took the pose of his own volition. But his expression
had sharpened and his body posture became tense, possibly a reflex
of his irritation at the suggestion I had made. I saw that a dynamic
self-assertion had taken place, whatever its cause, and I quickly
made the second exposure, saying, "Thank you, Mr. Morgan," as
I took the plate holder out of the camera.
He said, "Is that all?"
"Yes, sir," I answered.
He snorted a reply, "I like you, young man. I think we'll get
along first-rate together. " Then he clapped his large hat on his
massive head, took up his big cigar, and stormed out of the room.
Total time, three minutes.

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y. :

Doubleday & Co., 1963), unpaged (Chapter 3).
27. Clarence H. White. 1903

Clarence H. White (1871-1925), a photographer of great talent,

was a close friend of Steichen's. In the fall of 1903, Steichen and
his new bride, Clara Smith Steichen, visited White's home in
Newark, Ohio, on their honeymoon. This portrait probably dates
from that year. It was reproduced in the January 1905 issue of
Camera Work, following a portfolio of White's photographs.
In an editorial note, Stieglitz discussed briefly the work of both
photographers in a passage that reveals one reason for the superb
quality of the gravures in Camera Work: the use of the photog
rapher's own negative to make the printing plate whenever
possible.
Although having devoted Number III of Camera Work to Clarence
H. White's work, wefelt at the time that we had not done himfull
justice. As he is, beyond dispute, one of the most interesting figures
in the ranks of the world's pictorial photographers, our readers will
undoubtedly enjoy the opportunity of studyingfurther examples of
his work. All the plates are photogravures made directly from the
original negatives.
Mr. Steichen's portrait of Clarence H. White has been similarly
reproduced directly from the original negative. Thus we have six
examples of the "straightest" kind of "straight photography"
reproduced in these plates of Messrs. White and Steichen.

Camera Work (New York), no. 9 (January 1905), p. 55.

28. The Brass Bowl. 1904

The subject of this mystical portrait is unknown, but her medi

tative pose and the suggestive inclusion of the sensuously
reflective bowl make this work one of Steichen's strongest
Symbolist statements. It expresses perfectly the Symbolist fusion
of thought and feeling that produces a mood which is peaceful yet
tinged with sadness.
The Symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck was enthusiastic
about Steichen's photographs. His essay about them ends with
these words : It is already many years since the sun revealed to us
its power to portray objects and beings more quickly and more
accurately than can pencil or crayon. It seemed to work only its own
way and at its own pleasure. At first man was restricted to making
permanent that which the impersonal and unsympathetic light had
registered. He had not yet been permitted to imbue it with thought.
But to-day it seems that thought has found a fissure through which
to penetrate the mystery of this anonymousforce, invade it,
subjugate it, and compel it to say such things as have not yet been
said in all the realm of chiaroscuro, of grace, of beauty and of
truth.

Maurice Maeterlinck, Supplement, Camera Work (New York),

no. 3 (July 1903), unpaged.
MS®
29. Mercedes de Cordoba Carles. New York.
1904

Mercedes de Cordoba (1879-1963) was the beautiful wife of the

artist Arthur B. Carles, whose work prefigured much of what came
to be called Abstract Expressionist. A gifted pianist and singer,
Mrs. Carles was a close friend of Steichen and his wife Clara, and
this exquisite portrait was made in friendship.
Both Steichen and Arthur B. Carles exhibited paintings in a
nine-man exhibition arranged by Stieglitz at "291" in March and
April of 1910. Stieglitz wrote about YoungerAmerican Painters
that it was "the best possible answer to those who classed these
young pioneers as common disciples of Matisse."

[Alfred Stieglitz], Camera Work (New York), no. 30 (April 1910),

P- 54-
30. Experiment in Multiple Gum. 1904

The subject of this Whistleresque portrait is unknown, although

we can reasonably suggest that she is an American, since Steichen
at this time earned his living as a fashionable portrait photog
rapher in New York. Her taste for Japanese prints was shared,
however, by connoisseurs on both sides of the Atlantic. Tech
nically, this print is interesting because Steichen, in a handwritten
notation on the original mount, describes the three coatings of
tinted gum bichromate used in making it : Experiment in
Multiple Gum / Showing color coating on edges / 1st printing solid
lamp Black / 2nd printing terre verte (flat) / 3rd sepia & black
(very pale) / The three printings developed mechanically / byfloating
paper on cold water / no local manipulation.
3i. Winter Landscape. Lake George. 1904-05

The first "Steichen number" of Camera Work, published early in

1903, contained the following epigraph reproducing Rodin's
handwriting :
Quand I'on commence a comprendre
la Nature, les progres ne cessent plus.
Aug. Rodin

Stieglitz printed the following translation :

When one begins to understand nature,
progress goes on unceasingly.

Camera Work (New York), no. 2 (April 1903), before Plate 1:

Rodin (1902).
ii:

r: • • -. .

—
.•
32. Moonlight — Winter. 1902
33- The Big White Cloud, Lake George,
New York. 1903 (dated 1902 on print)

Mr. Steichen's Big Cloud, Lake George, is a most effective

arrangement , strong and fine in color ; the great mass of cumulus
cloud is gloriously modeled and lit, but I am afraid I can not accept
its lighting as also explaining the superbly rich black bank over
which it appears. Can the time of day and strength of light that
gives us the cloud be also taken as giving the impenetrable black of
the shadowed bank ? The water is beautifully felt and melts away
into the dark most enjoyably, but I fail to account for the cloud's
lighting as of the same hour.

Frederick H. Evans, "The Photographic Salon, London, 1904, As

Seen through English Eyes," Camera Work (New York), no. 9
(January 1905), pp. 38-39.
 34- Garden of the Gods, Colorado. 1906

From an undated letter to Stieglitz, probably written early in

1906:
Menomonee Falls [ Wisconsin]

My Dear A.S.
Got back Sat. from a bullyfine trip of about three weeks
strenuous 'sightseeing.' ... I managed to see a lot of Nebraska,
Colorado, & New Mexico, and in a wayfeel it is one of the
greatest things I have experienced—not so muchfrom a
pictorial standpoint [asfrom] the bigger standpoint of life. . . .
I don't know which impressed me most—the prairie or the
mountains—one bigger than the other—together forming a
boundless whole. . . . Somehow since I have been west I almost
regret going to Paris— or Europe. I tell you one builds up a
big wholesomerespect and appreciation of those early settlers
—My God what men & women they must have been.

Leaf 263, Beinecke.

90
35- Moonrise. Mamaroneck, New York. 1904
;- , .... .

£ '-r; -.
mm- -mm
 36. Steichen and Wife Clara on Their
Honeymoon. Lake George, New York. 1903

While on his honeymoon in 1903, Steichen wrote to Stieglitz from

the Lake George, New York, house belonging to Stieglitz's
father : We had a moon night before last—the like of which I had
never seen before—the whole landscape was still bathed in a warm
twilight glow—the color was simply marvelous in its dark bright—
and into this rose a large disc of brilliant golden orange in a warm
purplish sky—Gold—and we both rose and floated off into it
deliciously—languidly—like the wild ducks that sailed by.
Everything is so magnificent—so lavish—one can't help responding
to it. Under the yellow and orange red maples everything seems
transparent with the glow, so that one becomespart of the glow
oneself.

Leaves 35-36, Beinecke.

94
37- Horse Chestnut Trees. Long Island.
1905 (negative 1904)

Again, in the latest exhibition there were still some nocturns, which
were preferred by many people who have got the nocturnal habit and
are disinclined to change. But the pictures in this genre were in the
minority and did not represent the chief interest to those who are
watching Steichen's growth. Evidence of the latter they found in his
subjects of radiant or softened sunlight. These represented a distinct
step in advance, because they showed the attack upon a problem at
once more difficult and more vital. Psychologically speaking, it is to
express the spirituality of things plainly seen; to extract from the
concrete appearances of daylight their abstract expression. Tech
nically, it is to escape from the arbitrary restrictions of tonality and
to harmonize the conflicts of local color, seen in the glow of natural
light.

Charles H. Caffin, "The Art of Eduard J. Steichen," Camera

Work (New York), no. 30 (April 1910), p. 34.
38. Mary Steichen and Her Mother.
Huntington, L.I. 1905-06

THE SKYLARK
Oh, the skylark, the skylark,
The beautiful skylark
I heard in the month of June,
It was nothing but a dark, dark
Speck. And nothing but a tune.
And Oh! If I had some wings
I wouldfly up to him
And I would look down upon the things
Until the day grew dim.
Mary Steichen (age not quite nine).

Camera Work (New York), nos. 42/43 (April-July 1913), p. 14.

39. Mary and Her Mother. Long Island. 1905
40. Mrs. Stieglitz and Her Daughter.
1904 (dated 1903 on print)

Alfred Stieglitz married Emmeline Obermeyer, a young New

Yorker of twenty, nine years his junior, in 1893. Five years later
their only child, a daughter named Katherine— but called Kitty-
was born. Stieglitz and Emmeline eventually divorced, and of
Kitty, Stieglitz's biographers are strangely silent.
 41. Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York.
1905 (negative 1904)

104
spitt
mta
 42. Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York.
1905 (negative 1904)

106
43- Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York.
1905 (negative 1904)
44- Sadakichi Hartmann. 1903

A Monologue The pangs of despised art, the cash 's delay,

The "nerve" of the profession, and the spurns
Scene: Fifth Avenue, between Thirtieth and Thirty-first That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
Streets [the location of 291 Fifth Avenue, Steichen's residence When he himself might triumph over all
and studio from 1902 to 1905] With a base camera ? Who would brushes clean ?
Enter Hamlet-Steichen, wearing a Japanese obi as a necktie. To grunt and sweat in schools or studios,
To paint or photograph—that is the question: But that photograms were not dependent
Whether 'tis more to my advantage to color On some manual fake: Photography turned painting;
Photographic accidents and call them paintings, Paintographs or photopaints ; a sad plight,
Or squeeze the bulb against a sea of critics Which makes me rather bear (at times) the painter's ills
And by exposure kill them? To paint —to "snap" :— Than turn entirely secessionist.
No more ; and, by a snap, to say we end Thus prudence makes chameleons of us all;
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks And thus my native store of "fakey" talents
That art is heir to— 'tis a consummation is sicklied o'er with scarcity of tricks;
Devoutly to be wish'd. To paint —to snap ; And enterprises of great moment to A.S.,
Perchance to tell the truth;— aye! there's the rub. with this regard, their currents turn awry
How may a fact be lost infuzziness And lose the name: artistic. Soft you now!
When we have cast aside the painter's brush The Kasebier, austere, comes down the street. Nymph of Newport,
Must give us pause: There's the respect In thy brownish tints be all my sins remembered!
That makes picture-painting of so long life; Sadakichi Hartmann
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The dealer's wrong, the patron's proud contumely, Camera Work (New York), no. 6 (April 1904), p. 25.

no
5 Ir-i 1- + ! -i'«'1"awi'ih^
45- Richard Strauss. New York.
1906 (negative 1904)

Reviewing the London Salon of 1904, the noted photographer

Frederick H. Evans wrote: The Richard Strauss, No. 125, is
evidently a carefully worked out symbolic version. I would have
preferred another treatment, for like though it certainly is, it is too
little important in that aspect to have any great value as a portrait.
My own seeing of the great composer when conducting or
accompanying at the piano gave him to me as a much more cheerful
person; and when in the throes of composing, say such a tremen-
thing as his Ein Heldenleben, I should not believe him to be fond
of so "forcing the note" as this study gives him out to be doing. I
suppose the flame-like high lights around the head are to symbolize
the musical emanations from his tireless brain. How clever, almost
too clever, it all is, and how infinitely I for one wouldprefer the
treatment of the Chase or the Lenbach or thefirst Rodin, three
superb and unquestionable masterpieces !

Frederick H. Evans, "The Photographic Salon, London, 1904, As

Seen through English Eyes," Camera Work (New York), no. 9
(January 1905), p. 39.
46. Rodin. Paris. 1907

I believe that photography can create works of art, but hitherto it

has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. No one ever
suspected what could be gotten out of it; one doesn't even know
today what one can expect from a process whichpermits of such
profound sentiment, and such thorough interpretation of the model,
as has been realized in the hands of Steichen. I consider Steichen a
very great artist and the leading, the greatest photographer of the
time. Before him nothing conclusive had been achieved. It is a
matter of absolute indifference to me whether the photographer does,
or does not, intervene. I do not know to what degree Steichen
interprets, and I do not see any harm whatever, or of what im
portance it is, what means he uses to achieve his results. I care only
for the result, which however, must remain always clearly a photo
graph. It will always be interesting when it be the work of an artist.
Auguste Rodin

George Besson, "Pictorial Photography: A Series of Interviews,"

Camera Work (New York), no. 24 (October 1908), p. 14.
47- Agnes Ernst Meyer. 1906-08

Agnes Ernst had become a part of the Stieglitz circle after having
interviewed him for an article published in the New York Sun.
She later married the paper's owner, Eugene Meyer, and Steichen
photographed her in 1910 in her wedding gown (pi. 57). Steichen
wrote Stieglitz, sometime after 1906, from his studio at 103,
boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris: A Mr. Mayer—brother of
Mrs. Blumenthal [—] was in today to be photographed and bought
2 large prints of the Rodin portraits —He came with Miss Ernst —
"the girl from the Sun. " And he left an order for me to do her for
him.

Leaf 213, Beinecke.

 48. The Photographer's Best Model:
George Bernard Shaw. London. 1907

July 13, 1907

My Dear A.S.—
Well I've seen and done Shaw (photographically of course) —
He's all I expected him to be—both ways—Thin—tall—lanky-
very light reddish hair & beard —turning very white—gives him a
very airy appearance unlike his photographs —infact from that
standpoint he is impossible I think—Even a colour plate I made of
himfails to give the true impression. He's the nicest kind offellow
imaginable—genial and boyish—there is a little of the sardonic about
him as you see him but whenyou get the camera at him you are
tempted with the possibilities in that way—He said "[Alvin Langdon}
Coburn will be very much cut up when he hears you 've done me—
you know he considers me his special property. "—He seems to
know a lot about photography and certainly skillfully bluffsyou into
believing he knows it all. . . .

Leaf 104, Beinecke.

Il8
x
49- Mrs. Conde Nast. Paris. 1907

Steichen's relationship with magazine publisher Conde Nast was

established as early as May 24, 1906, the date a special "outing"
number of Vogue magazine appeared with a color lithograph of a
Steichen painting on its cover. In 1923, Steichen began full-time
his celebrated career as a fashion photographer for Vogue and a
photographer of celebrities for Vanity Fair , two of the magazines
published by Conde Nast. Steichen retired from the Nast or
ganization in 1937, and upon submitting his letter of resignation
he received this letter of appreciation from Nast.

September 27, 1937

Dear Edward:
... I remember, as if it were yesterday, our luncheon together at old
Delmonico's, when I first tried to seduce you into becoming a
professional photographer, at the expense of your career as a
painter. What a fortunate thingfor me that you were weak and
surrendered to my solicitations ! I believe that that luncheon did
more to further the art and progress of photography in America
than any other single event or agency in the past quarter century. . . .
Affectionately and gratefully yours,
Conde

The Steichen Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 50. Cyclamen — Mrs. Philip Lydig. New York.
c. 1905

Rita de Acosta Lydig (1880-1929), a woman celebrated for her

extravagant ways with money, for her impeccable taste in clothes,
objets d'art, and dinner guests, and for her dark beauty, lived
sumptuously in New York and Paris in the first three decades of
this century. She loved white flowers—cyclamen, lilies, gardenias,
and lilies of the valley—and she would spend a thousand dollars a
month for the flowers that filled her Stanford White house on East
52nd Street, where this photograph was probably made. That this
elegante, who tipped her dressmakers with loose emeralds, would
decide to be photographed by Steichen shows how very successful
he was as a celebrity portrait photographer, his primary profession
in the years in New York between 1902 and 1906.

122
p

HB
5i. Lillian Steichen, Menominee Falls,
Wisconsin. 1907

Steichen made this portrait of his sister, then a student at the

University of Chicago, the year before her marriage to the poet
Carl Sandburg. Miss Steichen's youthful socialist idealism is
evident in this essay she wrote for the second issue of Camera
Work and the first to feature Steichen's work.
OF ART IN RELATION TO LIFE
Art may, perhaps, be explained as the self-realization of
personalities whose experiences are of such surpassing nature
that they can not be expressed adequately by the ordinary ways
of social intercourse and utilitarian production. A subtler
medium is required to transmit the thoughts and feelings of the
artist-soul in their intense individuality, and with exactly that
poise between definiteness and vagueness in which they were
conceived. Has the painter felt the dim, soft benison of hope—
it stands confessed in the "Hope" of a Watts. Did Shelley
experience an agony of yearning for an elusive vision of ideal
perfection —in "Alastor, in "Epipsychidion" he has expressed
it. . . . This, then, is the burden of art: "Lo—the Beautiful and
the Good. . . .

Camera Work (New York), no. 2 (April 1903), p. 30.

52. Portrait of My Mother. Milwaukee. 1908

From an unidentified newspaper clipping (probably from the early

fall of 1902) in the scrapbook assembled by Steichen's mother:
A MASTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Edward J. Steichen Now Has World-Wide Reputation. Young
Milwaukee Artist who Attracted Attention in Foreign Capitals is
Now Visiting His Mother Here—High Praise from World's
Greatest Critics
The gray linen shirt with loose "Kimono" sleeves, short turnover
collar and black ribbon scarf at the throat, to say nothing of hair of
a significant length and degree of unkemptness, would have pro
claimed Edward J. Steichen, the artist, even if he had not been
caught this morning in the act of placing a large photographic plate
holder in a favorable position in the sunlight before his mother 's
home, 423 Fifteenth Street. . . . During the two years abroad the
young Milwaukee artist has made the acquaintance of and
photographed nearly all the personages known to Paris. . . .
Just before Mr. Steichen left Paris, Rodin gave a luncheonfor
him to which were bidden all the artists of note in Paris, and the
great master embraced the young American and hoped to see him
back soon. Maeterlinck, the Belgian Symbolist, is also a friend of
his, and it is Steichen's picture of the author [pi. 24] which makes
the frontispiece for the English edition of Maeterlinck's latest
book. . . .
Mr. Steichen is the more wonderful, in that he is self taught, and
except for a month at Julien 's in Paris has had no instruction. He
has no usefor and says that Julien 's has killed more artists than one
can number. Mr. Steichen works slowly, not making more than one
print a day, and seldom more than two or three a week. This
compared with the amount usually turned out by photographers,
will give an idea of the care bestowed on the prints as well as a clue
to their money value.

The Steichen Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

.
53- French Peasant Woman, c. 1907
 V

54- Steeplechase Day, Paris: After the Races.

1907

One day in the summer of 1907, 1 borrowedfrom a friend a

German hand camera called the Goerzanschutz Klapp Camera.
Armed with this camera, I made myfirst attempt at serious docu
mentary reportage. I went to the Longchamps Races and found an
extravagantly dressed society audience, obviously more interested in
displaying and viewing the latest fashions than infollowing the horse
races.

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y. :

Doubleday & Co., 1963), unpaged (Chapter 4).
55- Steeplechase Day, Paris: Grandstand. 1907
56. The Flatiron. 1905

Daniel H. Bumham (1846-1912) designed this structure for a

triangular area bound by Broadway and Fifth avenues between
Twenty-second and Twenty-third streets in New York City. It was
completed in 1902.
At all events, it is a building—although belonging to no style to be
found in handbooks or histories of architecture —which, by its
peculiar shape and towering height, attracts the attention of every
passerby. True enough, there are sky-scrapers which are still higher,
and can boast of five or six tiers more, but never in the history of
mankind has a little triangular piece of real estate been utilized in
such a raffine manner as in this instance. It is typically American in
conception as well as execution. It is a curiosity of modern archi
tecture, solely built for utilitarian purposes, and at the same time a
masterpiece of iron-construction. It is a building without a main
facade, resembling more than anything else the prow of a giant
man-of-war. And we would not be astonished in the least, if the
whole triangular block would suddenly begin to move northward
through the crowd of pedestrians and traffic of our two leading
thoroughfares, which would break like the waves of the ocean on the
huge prow-like angle. . . .

Sidney Allan [Sadakichi Hartmann], "The 'Flat-Iron' Building:

An Esthetical Dissertation," Camera Work (New York), no. 4
(October 1903), p. 36.
 57- Mrs. Eugene Meyer. New York. 1910

Early in 1912 Steichen wrote Stieglitz about a visit to London with

Eugene Meyer who, two years earlier, had married Agnes Ernst,
"the Girl from the Sun." Steichen advised them on the art they
purchased : I tried to get Vollard [Cezanne's Paris dealer] to
bring over to London a few Cezannes. ... I was so insistent on one
Cezanne stillife—that Meyer practically gave me the order to get it
—but I am sending him the photos of it first —I don't want to appear
too aggressively cock sure—even if I do feel it myself—It is the
finest stillife Cezanne ever painted I am sure—and I don't know
if anyone but Chardin ever painted as good a one—and I'd rather
have a Cezanne than a Chardin. If they take that picture America
will have a Cezanne—for fair —I don't think I should have taken
that attitude about anything else.

Leaf 259, Beinecke.

136
58. Landon Rives — Melpomene. 1903

Melpomene, one of nine Greek Goddesses, all daughters of Zeus

and Mnemosyne, had as her domain the art of Tragedy. We might
suppose, therefore, that Landon Rives appears here as an actress,
a player of tragic roles. Perhaps, as an amateur, she was. Of all the
subjects of Steichen's large and dramatic portraits, none is as
obscure as the dour Miss Rives. We know only that she was
reputed to be wealthy, a friend of F. Holland Day and Alvin
Langdon Coburn, liked photography, and that her family owned
an estate in Virginia called Castle Hill.
59- Lady Ian Hamilton. London. 1907

Steichen made this imposing portrait shortly after his photograph

of George Bernard Shaw (pi. 48), for in the same letter to Stieg-
litz describing his session with Shaw, Steichen adds the following :
Staying over till Tuesday as I finally got an order and the
appointment wasfor Tuesday. (Lady Hamilton)—! felt 1 must stay
to try and get my expenses out of the d—ntrip at least.

Leaf 105, Beinecke.

6o. Isadora Duncan, c. 1910

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927) struggled to free the dance from the

constraints of outmoded traditions, and her bid for liberty was
likened by Stieglitz and other secessionists to their struggle for the
acceptance of photography as a valid medium of artistic expres
sion. The critic Charles H. Caffin praised her contributions in
Camera Work : A few days ago I saw Miss Isadora Duncan in her
dance interpretive of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which Wagner
described as "An Apotheosis of the Dance." . . .
If you have seen her dance, I wonder whether you do not agree
with me that it was one of the loveliest expressions of beauty one has
ever experienced. In contrast with the vastness of the Metropolitan
Opera House and the bigness of the stage her figure appeared
small, and distance lent it additional aloofness. The Personality of
the woman was lost in the impersonality of her art. Thefigure
became a symbol of the abstract conception of rhythm and melody.
The spirit of rhythm and melody by some miracle seemed to have
been made visible. . . .
The movement of beauty that artists of all ages have dreamed of
as penetrating the universe through all eternity, in a few moments of
intense consciousness, seemed to be realized before one's eyes. It
was a revelation of beauty so exquisite, that it brought happy,
cleansing tears. Brava, Isadora!

Charles H. Caffin, "Henri Matisse and Isadora Duncan,"

Camera Work (New York), no. 25 (January 1909), pp. 18-19.
 6i. Edward Gordon Craig. 1909

E. Gordon Craig (1872-1966), the son of the celebrated actress

Ellen Terry, was himself an actor, stage designer, and theoretician
of greatest importance in the decade prior to World War I. It was
at this time that his liaison with the dancer Isadora Duncan was
most intense. This portrait dates from 1909, the year before
Steichen assembled a group of Craig's drawings and etchings for
an exhibition at Stieglitz's "291" from December 10, 1910,
through January 8, 1911.

144
 62. Matisse — La Serpentine, c. 1910

American Art Association of Paris

74, Rue Notre Dame des Champs
Paris [undated, probably 1908]
My dear A[lfred] S[tieglitz]—
I have another cracker jack exhibition for you that is going to be
as fine in its way as the Rodins are. Drawings by Henri Matisse[—]
the most modern of the moderns—his drawings are the same to him
& his painting as Rodin's are to his sculpture. ... I don't know if
you will remember any of his paintings at Bernheims— Well they
are to the figure what the Cezannes are to the landscape—Simply
great. . . .

Leaf 342, Beinecke.

146
 63. Anatole France, c. 1910

Anatole France was the nom de plume of the French novelist

Jacques Anatole Thibaut (1844-1924). He was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1921.
Steichen himself appears briefly in a roman a clef published in
1910, shortly after he had successfully shown thirty-one paintings
and twenty-eight photographs at the prestigious Montross Gallery
on Fifth Avenue in New York. The hero of the work is an im
poverished painter, based on the life of artist Max Weber who, by
this time, had come to dislike Steichen, or "Stecker," as he is
called here. Finch is the author's name for Stieglitz.
Stecker had succeeded in hitting the town at the Montrose
Gallery, because Stecker knew the ropes. Stecker was a better
business man than he was an artist. He had gone back to Paris
now, to his little cottage embowered in roses, where his wife had
been waitingfor him during the three months of his stay in New
York, and had taken with him eight thousand American dollars!
No, he did not envy him. Stecker was a fine fellow and meant well.
He deserved his success. Still, he was not the big man Finch
thought him. He was in the swim, with the rest. . . . He was shrewd,
very clever and facile as a colorist ; a hard worker, and an excellent
talker ; but an artist! Weaver shrugged his shoulders. He knew how
to advertise. If the critics of the newspapers had sneered, they had
not ignored him. And to be talked about in any way, means pub
licity, and publicity may become a road to success. . . .

Temple Scott [T. H. Isaacs], "Fifth Avenue and the Boulevard

Saint-Michel," The Forum (New York), vol. 44 (December 1910),
pp. 668-69. This work forms a chapter in Scott's book, The
Silver Age and Other Dramatic Memories (New York: Scott and
Seltzer, 1919).

148
64. John Marin. New York. 1911.
Photograph by Steichen and Stieglitz

Collaborative works are comparatively rare but not unknown in

the history of photography. Hill and Adamson and Southworth
and Hawes in the nineteenth century, Hilla and Bernd Becher in
the twentieth come to mind. Stieglitz worked collaboratively with
Joseph T. Keiley and, later, with Clarence H. White. This is the
only known work by Steichen and Stieglitz.
The subject, the American painter John Marin, was close to
both photographers. Stieglitz showed Marin's paintings through
out his career. It was Steichen who introduced them. In a letter,
probably written in 1908, he wrote : I have one show other than
the Balzac I will send and that in a week or two [—] Some water
colors by John Marin —a young American—ask Caffin about them
—They are the real article —

Leaf 118, Beinecke.

65. Alfred Stieglitz. c. 1909

Stieglitz, then, recognizing the unusualness of Steichen's talent,

reasoned that, if this young man lived up to his ideals, he was bound
to make a mark : that, if he should succeed in becoming an expert
proficient both in photography and in painting, using the one or the
other according to its better fitness to express whatfor the time
being he had in mind, the claim that photography may be a medium
of artistic expression would have to be admitted. It was to establish
this claim, to encourage the photographers to justify it, and the
public to recognize it, that he had beenfighting for seventeen years.
Now was the chance. If Steichen should make good his dual inten
tion, the fight would be won. Thus began the friendship between the
older and the younger man, based upon their common belief in
photography. . . .

Charles H. Caffin, "Progress in Photography (With Special

Reference to the Work of Eduard J. Steichen)," The Century
Magazine (New York), vol. LXXV, no. 4 (February 1908), p. 491.
mmmmm
HHMMMHI
66. Midnight— Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. 1908

Steichen wrote two letters to Stieglitz in the fall of 1908.

Been photographing & painting Rodin's "Balzac" —he moved it out
in the open air and I have been doing it by moonlight—spent two
whole nights—from sunset to sunrise—it was great—It is a
commissionfrom himself

But the Balzacs—I wonder how they will strike you & CaJfin—
They are the only things I have done of recent that I myself can feel
enthusiastic over—And they simply have hit everybody that has
seen them here square between the eyes. . . . I hope you can give
them a show to themselves if onlyfor a week—The three big ones
are a series and should be hung on one wall—The rest anyway
you choose. . . .

Leaves 334 and 135, Beinecke.

 67. The Open Sky, ii P.M. —Rodin's Balzac.
Meudon. 1909 (negative 1908)

The Spirit is outside in the moonlight and the night. For a moment,
in the exultation of its disembodied liberty, it halts beside the trees;
the branches forming an interlace of blackness around the illumined
head. For the moonlight is full upon the proud head: lambent on its
lion's mane of hair, on the smooth highforehead, the arched nostrils
and curling upper lip. Only the eyes are plunged in the depths of
introspective mystery. Robed in shadow also is the form; rearing up
like the swell of a wave, luminous upon the arch of its breast.

Charles H. Caffin, "Prints by Eduard J. Steichen—of Rodin's

'Balzac,'" Camera Work (New York), no. 28 (October 1909),
P- 25.

156
68. Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. 1908
I
6g. Towards the Light, Midnight
Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. 1908
70. The Silhouette, 4 A.M. — Rodin's Balzac.
Meudon. 1908
7i. Nocturne — Orangerie Staircase,
Versailles, c. 1910

When Stieglitz saw a set of the Balzac prints later, he seemed more
impressed than with any other prints I had ever shown him. He
purchased them at once and later presented them to the Metro
politan Museum of Art with most of the other prints of mine that he
had acquired by purchase over a number of years. This collection
not only represents the major part of the good prints I made during
the early periods, but also contains the only surviving record of most
of my early work. During World War I, we had to leave my
negatives behind, uncaredfor, in our home in Voulangis [in France]
when we left. During the four years of the war, humidity and
bacterial action destroyed the emulsions. The plates were ruined.

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y. :

Doubleday & Co., 1963), unpaged (Chapter 4).
Ma

*>' -
 72. Heavy Roses. Voulangis, France. 1914

In August 1914 Germany invaded France and World War I began.

Paris —Sept. 2, 1914

Dear Stieglitz—
We are leaving Paris for Marseilles tonight in a cattle train with the
other emigrants— We have passage for N. Y.from Marseilles
Sept. 10—I don't know even now if we will get out for in view of the
fact that all able bodied men young & old are mobilized the rest of
the population is weak & panicky—and the rumors are of all kinds-
some that the Germans are within 30 kilometers of Paris — The
bombsfrom Aeroplanes do not seem to scare anyone as yet. . . . We
are cheerful <£hopeful—and not as nervous as we were at the
beginning.
Love to all—
Steichen

Leaf 175, Beinecke.

166
 CATALOG OF PLATES

3/84 The plates in this book were made directly from Steichen's original tive. Signed in ink on mount. Platinum print, io x 8 inches
prints, with the exceptions of numbers 13, 15, 46, 63, 64, and 67, (27.3 x 21.3 cm). The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Christian
which were reproduced from the highest quality copy prints, and the Brinton. 41.79.43.
six works in color, which were printed from Kodachrome transpar 13. Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette. Paris. 1902 (negative 1901).
encies. Works that are larger than the format of this book have, of Signed and dated lower left in white pencil. Gum-bichromate print,
7/8 course, had to be reduced in reproduction, but those that are smaller 11 x 7 inches (27.6 x 20 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago. The
than the page are printed in their exact size. The descriptions of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.823. Note: also called Self-Portrait.
processes used by Steichen are those of the author. Dates in paren 14. George Frederic Watts. (1901). Signed lower left in pencil; titled
3/816 theses do not appear on the prints themselves. In some instances in pencil across top. Gum-bichromate print, I37 x io inches
Steichen printed from an earlier negative; if known, the dates of the (33.8 x 26.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The
print and the negative both appear. Dimensions are given in inches Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.26.
and centimeters, height preceding width. For works in public collec 15. Frederick H. Evans. (1900). Signed in Evans's hand "Steichen."
3/8s tions, the accession number follows the museum's name. Platinum print, 75 x 4 inches (194 x 11.1 cm). The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. David Hunter McAlpin Fund. 68.688.4.
Frontispiece. YoungGirl Standing besidea Vaseof Daffodils, (c. 1908). 16. The Black Vase. 1901. Signed and dated lower left. Gum-bichro
/2? Unsigned. Autochrome, 6 1 x 4 l inches (16.5x 11.4 cm). The Phila mate print (?), 87i6 x 67i6 inches (20.4 x 15.4 cm). The Metropolitan
delphia Museum of Art. Gift of Miss Mary Talbot. 48.77.2. Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.45.20.
/16
13 1. Self-Portrait. Milwaukee. (1898). Unsigned. Platinum print, 7 Note: also called Woman beside a Window.
/85 x 3 inches (19.8 x 9.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New 17. The Mirror. 1901. Signed with monogram "S" and drawing of a
York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-1- rose and dated in pencil on front of original mat. Platinum print,
2. Lady in the Doorway. Milwaukee. (1898). Initialed in ink at lower 8x6 inches (20.2 x 15.2 cm). Collection Mr. and Mrs. Noel Levine,
/83 right. Silver print, io x 125 inches (26.5 x 32.2 cm). The Museum New York.
of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 141.61. 18. The Cat. (1902). Unsigned. Platinum print, 8x6 inches (20.2 x
3. Woods—Twilight. (1898). Unsigned. Platinum print, 6x8 inches 15.2 cm). Collection Mr. and Mrs. Noel Levine, New York.
(15.2 x 20 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The 19. La Cigale. (1907 print from 1901 negative). Signed in pencil.
3/8 Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.14. Gum-bichromate over platinum print, io x ii inches (26.4 x
4. The Pool—Evening. Milwaukee. (1899). Unsigned. Platinum print, 28.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
/8 8 x 63 inches (20.3 x 16.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.22.
New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.232. 20. Figure with Iris. 1902. Signed and dated in ink. Gum-bichromate
2/16
38 5. Woods in Rain. Milwaukee. (1898). Unsigned. Platinum print, 71 print, 13 x f/ inches (34 x 19 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of
x 6 7g inches (19 x 15.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.17.
York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.8. Note: also called 21. Little Round Mirror. Paris. 1902 (negative 1901). Signed and
1/8 Woods Interior. dated upper right. Gum-bichromate over platinum print, i9 x
16x/2 6. Wood Lot—Fallen Leaves. (1898). Unsigned. Platinum print, 6 137 inches (48.6 x 33.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
8 x 87 inches (16.5 x 20.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-32.
York. Gift of the photographer. 21.70. 22. In Memoriam. New York. 1905. Signed and dated upper right.
7. Farmer 's WoodLot. Milwaukee. (1898). Unsigned. Platinum print, Silver print (?), 19 x 147, inches (48.5 x 36.2 cm). The Museum of
/8 7Y2 x 57 inches. (18.9 x 14.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 362.64.
New York. Gift of the photographer. 20.70. 23. Otto, French Photographer, (c. 1902). Unsigned. Gum-bichro
4x/16 8. Self-Portrait with Sister. Milwaukee. 1900.Unsigned but dated on mate print, 8 x 5 3 inches (20.4 x 14.6cm). The Metropolitan Mu
/iie
3/15
6I0
3-
). verso of original mat. Platinum print, 3 x5 ( x ! cm seum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.231.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 24. Maurice Maeterlinck. Paris. (1901). Signed in pencil lower right.
2 146.61. Gum-bichromate print, 137g x io7 inches (33.3 x 26.7 cm). The
/127s 9. Bartholome. (1901). Unsigned. Silver print (?), io x 7 inches Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection.
(26.7 x 20 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The 33-43-2-
Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.16. 25. Franz von Lenbach. Munich. 1903 (negative 1901). Signed and
10. Edmond Joseph Charles Meunier. Paris. (1907)- Unsigned. Silver dated in yellow crayon pencil lower left. Gum-bichromate print,
84 print (?), I47 x io7 inches (35.9 x 26 cm). The Metropolitan Mu 207 x 147s inches (51.5 x 37.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of
seum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-11. Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 3343-33-
11. Rodin—Le Penseur. 1902. Signed and dated lower left. Gum- 26. J. P. Morgan. New York. 1904(negative 1903). Signed and dated
6x43
91/8/i bichromate print, 157 x i inches (40.3 x 50.3 cm). Collection in pencil lower right. Silver bromide print, 20 x 16 inches (51.5 x
Caroline Hammarskiold, Djursholm, Sweden. 40.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
12. Alphonse-Marie Mucha. Paris. 1902. Signed and dated in nega Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.167.

169
3/8 27. Clarence H. White. (1903). Unsigned. Platinum print, i3 x New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.28. Note: Stieglitz
ioVs inches (34 x 25.7 cm). The Museum of Modem Art, New York. dated this photograph 1904.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence H. White, Jr. 75.76. 41. Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York. 1905(negative 1904).Signed
43/ 28. The Brass Bowl. 1904. Signed and dated in pencil lower left. and dated upper left in ink. Gum-bichromate print, 17 x 153
8 Gum-bichromate print, 12 x ioV inches (30.5 x 25.8 cm). The inches (45.1 x 40 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Col The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.23.
lection. 33.43.6. 42. Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York. 1905(negative 1904).Signed
/1346 29. Mercedes de Cordoba Carles. New York. 1904. Signed and dated and dated in pencil lower right. Platinum print, 9 x 9 inches
8/ in pencil lower left. Gum-bichromate print, 123 x ioV inches (31.5 (24.7 x 23.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The
x 25.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.228.
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.3. 43. Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York. 1905 (negative 1904). Un
/83 30. Experiment in Multiple Gum. 1904. Signed and dated in ink on signed. Platinum print, 1i x 9 inches. The Metropolitan Mu
/8 gray submount. Gum-bichromate print, 111 x 9V2 inches (28.3 x seum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.230.
24.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred 44. Sadakichi Hartmann. 1903. Signed and dated in orange pencil
u/ie Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.13. lower right. Gum-bichromate print, 9 x 12 inches (24.6 x 30.5
31. Winter Landscape. Lake George. (1904-05). Unsigned. Multiple- cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
8/16 gum-bichromate print, 2 13 x 3 V inches (7.2 x 8 cm). The Museum Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.52.
of Modem Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 149.61. 45. Richard Strauss. New York. 1906 (negative 1904). Signed and
2/ 32. Moonlight— Winter. 1902.Signed and dated in green pencil lower dated lower left. Gum-bichromate print, 18 x x 13 inches (47 x 33
7/85 left. Platinum and gum-bichromate print, 13 x i6 inches (34.6 x cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
42.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.168.
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.30. 46. Rodin. Paris. 1907. Signed and dated in pencil lower left. Toned
/4 33. The Big White Cloud. Lake George, New York. (1903. Dated 1902 silver print, I2 7 x 111 inches (39.1 x 28.6 cm). The Art Institute of
on print). Signed and dated in yellow pencil lower left. Platinum, Chicago. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.826.
7/6i cyanotype, and gum-bichromate print, 15 x 19 inches (40.4 x 47. Agnes Ernst Meyer. (1906-08). Signed in negative. Platinum
/58u6i 48.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred print, io x 8 inches (21.9 x 27.3 cm). The Metropolitan Mu
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.47. seum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.226.
34. Garden of the Gods, Colorado. 1906. Signed and dated in yellow 48. The Photographer's Best Model: George Bernard Shaw. London.
/16 crayon pencil. Gum-bichromate print, 155 x 18s inches (38.9 x 1907. Signed and dated in yellow pencil lower left. Platinum print,
83/4 46.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred r9 x 15x inches (49.3 x 38.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.25. Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.166.
35. Moonrise. Mamaroneck, New York. 1904.Signed and dated lower 49. Mrs. Conde Nast. Paris. 1907. Signed and dated in pencil. Plati
/i«
/i6
15 right. Platinum and ferroprussiate print. The Museum of Modern num and gum-bichromate print, 10n x 8 inches (27.1 x 22.7
Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 364.68. cm). The Museum of Modem Art, New York. Gift of Mrs. Conde
36. Steichen and Wife Clara on Their Honeymoon. Lake George, Nast. 376.55.
/146
13 New York. (1903). Unsigned. Platinum print, 113 x I5 inches 50. Cyclamen—Mrs. Philip Lydig. New York. (c. 1905). Unsigned.
/16 (29.9 x 40.2 cm). The Museum of Modem Art, New York. Gift of Gum-bichromate print, 12 7 x 8 2 inches (31.5 x 21.6 cm). The
Mary Steichen Calderone, M.D. 85.73. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Col
37. Horse Chestnut Trees. Long Island. 1905 (negative 1904). Signed lection. 33.43.9.
and dated in pencil lower right. Gum-bichromate over platinum 51. Lillian Steichen. Menominee Falls, Wisconsin.(1907). Unsigned.
/81346 print, 19V2x 153 inches (49.6 x 40 cm). The Metropolitan Museum Platinum and gum-bichromate print, 9 1X x 9 inches (24.7 x 24
of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.42. cm). The Museum of Modem Art, New York. Gift of the photog
38. Mary Steichen and Her Mother. Huntington, L.I. (1905-06). Un rapher. 363.64.
x/16 signed. Platinum print, 6 5 H'Vie inches (16 x 37.3 cm). The Mu 52. Portrait of My Mother. Milwaukee. (1908). Unsigned. Platinum
/58s seum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mary Steichen Calderone, print, 7 x 4 inches (19.4 x 11.8 cm). The Museum of Modern
M.D. 73.73. Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 36.70.
39. Mary and Her Mother. Long Island. 1905.Signed and dated lower 53. French Peasant Woman, (c. 1907). Unsigned. Platinum print,
8/1/i
66 right in yellow pencil. Silver print, 13 11 x 10 13 inches (34.8 x 8 7s x.67 inches (20.5 x 15.5cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New
27.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred York. Gift of the photographer. 17.70.
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.27. 54. Steeplechase Day, Paris: After the Races. (1907). Unsigned.
/85s 40. Mrs. Stieglitz and Her Daughter. (1904. Dated 1903 on print). Gum-bichromate print, io x 115 inches (27 x 29.6 cm). The
2/ Signed and dated in pencil lower right. Platinum or silver print, 191 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Col
x 15V4inches (49.6 x 38.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, lection. 33.43.51.

170
 67/8 55. Steeplechase Day, Paris: Grandstand. (1907)- Signed in pencil in yellow pencil lower right. Gum-bichromate print, i4 x i8Vi
/347s lower right. Gum-bichromate print, io x 13 inches (27.4 x 35.3 inches (37.8 x 45.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-36-
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.49. 71. Nocturne— Orangerie Staircase, Versailles, (c. 1910). Signed
/87 56. The Flatiron. (1905). Unsigned. Gum-bichromate over platinum lower right in pencil. Gum-bichromate print, 11 x 13 inches (28 x
83/4 print, i8 x 15V inches (47.8 x 38.4 cm). The Metropolitan Mu 35.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the
seum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-43- photographer. 38.70.
57. Mrs. Eugene Meyer. New York. 1910. Signed and dated upper 72. Heavy Roses. Voulangis, France. (1914)- Unsigned. Silver print,
/4315
/i6 left in ink. Gum-bichromate print, 11 x 8 inches (28 x 22.2 cm). 7 x9 inches (20.2 x 25.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. New York. Gift of the photographer. 152.61.
185.64.
58. Landon Rives—Melpomene. 1903. Signed and dated lower right.
3/4 Gum-bichromate over platinum print, i8 x i2 inches (47.7 x
32.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-31-
59. Lady Ian Hamilton. London. (1907)-Signed in pencil lower right.
59/7ie
s Gum-bichromate over platinum print, i9 x I inches (50.5 x
39.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred
Stieglitz Collection. 33.43.24.
7/s 60. Isadora Duncan, (c. 1910)- Unsigned. Platinum print, 7 x 9 Is
inches (19.9 x 25 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gilt
of the photographer. 15.70.
8 61. Edward Gordon Craig. (1909). Unsigned. Silver print, 19V x
1/g I4 inches (48 x 35.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 49.55.227.
62. Matisse—La Serpentine, (c. 1910). Unsigned. Platinum print,
3/1g6 115 x 9 inches (29.6 x 23.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of the photographer. 270.61.
l/87 63. Anatole France, (c. 1910). Unsigned. Platinum print, i2 x i
inches (32.7 x 18 cm). Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
64. John Marin. New York. (1911). Unsigned. Photograph by both
/ Stieglitz and Steichen; platinum print by Stieglitz. 97 16x 73 16inches
(24 x 18.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago. The Alfred Stieglitz
Collection. 49.712.
9/186 65. Alfred Stieglitz. (c. 1909).Unsigned. Platinum print, 115 x 9
inches (29.5 x 24.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the photographer. 1228.64.
66. Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. (1908). Unsigned. Gum-
3/8/ie bichromate print, 1115 x i4 inches (30 x 36.5 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. 196.63.
67. The Open Sky, 11 P.M.— Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. 1909 (nega
tive 1908). Signed and dated lower left. Gum-bichromate print,
53l/i6 i9 x1 inches (48.7 x 38.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-46-
68. Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. (1908). Signed in yellow pencil lower
8 right. Gum-bichromate print, 11 x 8 7 inches (28 x 20.7 cm). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Col
lection. 33-43-5-
69. Towards the Light, Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. 1908.
Signed and dated in yellow pencil lower right. Gum-bichromate
3/8 print, 14 x 19 inches (36.5 x 48.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 33-43-38.
70. The Silhouette, 4 A.M.—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon. (1908). Signed

77/
— _
 STEICHEN'S PRINTING TECHNIQUES

The creative photographer in the first decade of this century the negative, he continues the washing until the
had readily available to him an array of printmaking tech print is fully developed. But on the other hand,
he can, if he desires, introduce into the print
niques, each offering special characteristics that could ex
effects and qualities that are not in the negative.
press his vision. In this respect, today's photographer seems He can, for example, omit details, reduce the dark
impoverished. Steichen, a master printer of photographs, parts, change dark into light and vice versa, and
relied primarily on the platinum and the gum-bichromate graduate his grays, by controlling the application
processes and on virtuoso combinations of these two. In ad of more or less water to certain parts. He can even
dition, his repertoire included at least the following: the alter the drawing in the picture, if he wishes. In
conventional silver print (today's basic printmaking medi fact, the process is so elastic that there is virtually
um), the cyanotype (the architect's common "blueprint"— no limit, except that of his own skill and feeling,
also called in Steichen's time the "ferroprussiate print"), and to the changes and effects he can secure. Steichen,
the autochrome (the first simple, effective process to repro for example, with his command of the process,
could take another man's negative and produce
duce the visual world in full color).
from it a print that would be characteristically "a
The platinum print, or platinotype, invented by William
1 Steichen."
Willis in England in 1873, was made from commercially
prepared paper that supported in its fibers a deposit of light- What Caffin does not say is that the gum-bichromate
sensitive platinum salts. The photographer's negative was process gave Steichen additional control over the color and
printed by contact in daylight and then developed for about richness of the print through double and triple coatings of
thirty seconds in a solution of potassium oxalate. The print light-sensitive emulsions. After the first printing was com
was "cleared" of yellow stain in baths of dilute hydrochloric pleted and dried, the surface was recoated, dried, registered
acid, washed in water for an hour, and then dried. The result under the negative, and exposed a second and, possibly, a
was a print with clearly separated blacks and a seemingly in third time. These additional developments allowed the same
finite range of grays unattainable in any other process. Com measure of control as the first and resulted in a stronger,
mercial production of platinum paper ceased about 1930.
richer print.
The gum-bichromate process, exhibited in London as One can attempt to determine visually, through a micro
early as 1858, was simpler, cheaper, and more yielding to the scope, which process Steichen employed in making an indi
photographer's expressive demands than platinum. It was vidual print. Because the gum-bichromate process requires
prepared, on heavily sized paper, in the photographer's own that the paper be sized, the bits of pigment that compose the
darkroom. Charles H. Caffin, in an important article in The image appear to rest atop the glistening surface of the paper.
Century Magazine in 1908, described Steichen's masterly In the platinum process, by contrast, the image seems to be
use of the gum-bichromate process : in the paper, and the fibers making up the paper are clearly
visible. Complications arise, however, in those hybrid works
For those who, like myself, are laymen, it may be that combine the platinum (and perhaps the silver) and
explained that in this process the photographer
gum-bichromate processes. In these, Steichen first made a
sensitized the paper on which he intends to print
with a solution of gum arabic, bichromate of fairly light print on platinum paper. He then resensitized
potash [potassium bichromate], and a pigment of the print with gum bichromate and allowed it to dry. The
any color he chooses. Light renders this solution print was then registered under the enlarged negative a sec
insoluble. Therefore, when the paper is exposed ond time. After exposure to daylight, the print was devel
beneath a negative, certain portions of the surface oped in plain water in the usual way. Similarly, a coating of
become more or less insoluble, according to the cyanotype (ferroprussiate) solution, in a process invented
amount of light which they have received. When by Sir John Herschel in 1842, was added to a number of
the negative is removed, the paper presents an Steichen's largest and most elaborate works. This solution,
undisturbed surface of uniform color; but after it in its simplest form, consisted of potassium ferricyanide and
has been subjected to water, the soluble portions ferric ammonium citrate. The prepared paper was registered
begin to dissolve away until a faint image appears.
to the negative, exposed to light until the required depth of
Then, if the photographer is content simply to
reproduce the effects and qualities contained in tone was achieved, then washed in several changes of water

'73
 the final bath being slightly acidified with hydrochloric Notes
acid. The complications inherent in these elaborate, tech
nically demanding processes may partially explain the very 1. Charles H. Caffin,"Progress in Photography(With SpecialRef
small number of Steichen prints that are known to have erenceto the Work of Eduard J. Steichen),"The CenturyMaga
survived. zine (New York), vol. 75, no. 4 (February 1908),p. 493.
The autochrome process was the first practical system of 2. Eduard J. Steichen,"Color Photography," Camera Work(New
color photography. It was invented by Auguste and Louis York), no. 22 (April 1908),p. 24.
Lumiere in 1903, but technical problems were not overcome
until 1907, when it was released to the public. The process
involved coating a glass plate with microscopic particles of
starch that had been dyed in the three primary colors. A
panchromatic emulsion was applied over this color "screen."
After exposure and reversal development, the image viewed
through the color "screen" was in full color. Small auto-
chromes could be projected, just as one projects color slides
today. Large autochromes were viewed by holding them up
to the light, illuminating them from behind, or placing them
in a special viewer that permitted light to pass through the
glass plate onto a mirror, which reflected the image to the
eye. The process was discontinued sometime in the 1930s.
That it was extremely beautiful can be noted in the tribute
Steichen paid to it in Camera Work. He wrote: "Personally
I have no medium that can give me color of such wonderful
luminosity as the Autochrome plate. One must go to stained
glass for such color resonance, as the palette and canvas are
2 a dull and lifeless medium in comparison."

174
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Steichen Reproductions Articles about Steichen

Steichen's photographs were widely reproduced in the peri Soulier, Gustave. "L'Art photographique et l'ecole ameri-
od before 1914. The following list includes only those issues caine." Art et decoration (Paris), vol. 10, September 1901,
containing Steichen reproductions in the magazines edited pp. 76-80.
by Alfred Stieglitz, Camera Notes and Camera Work. Fre Juhl, Ernst. "Eduard J. Steichen." Photographische Rund
quently articles about Steichen and his work accompany the schau (Vienna), vol. 16, no. 7 (July 1902), pp. 127-29.
illustrations. Anonymous. "Mr. Steichen's Pictures." The Photographic
Camera Notes (New York). Vol. 4, no. 3 (January 1901). Journal {London), vol. 2, no. 14 (April 15, 1902), pp. 25-
6 ills. 29.
Vol. 6, no. 1 (July 1902). 14 ills. Yeo, H. Vivian. "The American School and Mr. Steichen's
s- Camera Work (New York). No. 2 (April 1903)- 11 P^ ' Pictures." The Amateur Photographer (London), vol. 35,
1 ill. in advertising section. no. 918 (May 1, 1902), pp. 346-47-
No. 7 (July 1904). 1 pi. Stieglitz, Alfred. ["Eduard J. Steichen."] Camera Notes, vol.
No. 9 (January 1905). 1 pi.
No. 11 (July 1905). 2 pis. 6, no. 1 (July 1902), p. 15.
No. 13 (January 1906). 1 ill. in advertising section. Brinton, Christian. "Four Portrait-Photographs by Eduard
No. 14 (April 1906). 10 pis. Steichen." The Critic (New York), vol. 42, no. 3 (March
Special Steichen Supplement (April 1906). 16 pis. 1903), pp. 198-99.
No. 15 (July 1906). 1 pi.; 1 ill. in advertising section. Rood, Roland. "Eduard J. Steichen: A Study of the Artistic
No. 19 (July 1907). 1 pi. Attitude toward Art and Nature." The American Amateur
No. 22 (April 1908). 3 pis. Photographer (New York), vol. 18, no. 4 (April 1906), pp.
No. 34-35 (April-July 1911). 4 pis.
s- No. 42-43 (April-July 1913). 17 pl 157-62.
No. 44 (October 1913). 1 pi. Caffin, Charles H. "Progress in Photography (With Special
Reference to the Work of Eduard J. Steichen)." The Cen
tury Magazine, vol. 75, no. 4 (February 1908), pp. 482-98.
Articles by Steichen, 1900-14
Caffin, Charles H. "Prints by Eduard J. Steichen— of Ro
din's 'Balzac.'" Camera Work, no. 28 (October 1909), p.
"British Photography from an American Point of View."
The Amateur Photographer (London), vol. 32, no. 839 25-
Caffin, Charles H. "The Art of Eduard J. Steichen." Camera
(November 2, 1900), pp. 343~45- Reprinted in Camera
Work, no. 30 (April 1910), pp. 33—36.
Notes, vol. 4, no. 3 (January 1901), pp. 175-81.
Cornu, Paul. "L'Art de la robe." Art et decoration (Paris),
"The American School." The Photogram (London), vol. 8,
no. 85 (January 1901), pp. 4-9. Reprinted in Camera vol. 29, April 1911, pp. 101-18.
Notes, vol. 6, no. 1 (July 1902), pp. 22-24. Maeterlinck, Maurice. "Sur la photographie." Cahiersd'au-
jourd'hui (Paris), no. 2, 1912, pp. 53~54-
"Ye Fakers." Camera Work, no. 1 (January 1903). P- 48-
Strand, Paul. "Steichen and Commercial Art." The New
"Color Photography." Camera Work, no. 22 (April 1908),
Republic (New York), February 19, 1930, p. 21.
pp. 13-24.
Brokaw, Clare Boothe. "Edward Steichen, Photographer."
"Painting and Photography." Camera Work, no. 23 (July
Vanity Fair (New York), June 1932, pp. 49, 60, 70.
1908), pp. 3-5. Reprinted in Academy Notes (Buffalo), no.
Harriman, Margaret Case. "Steichen." Vogue (New York),
1 (January 1911), pp. 16-18.
January 1, 1938, pp. 36-4 1, 92, 94.
"What Is '291'?" Camera Work, no. 47 (July 1914), pp.
Josephson, Matthew. "Commander with a Camera." The
65-66.

175
 New Yorker, June 3, 1944, pp. 30-36, and June 10, 1944, The Museum of Modern Art. Steichen the Photographer.
pp. 29-41. With essays by Carl Sandburg, Alexander Liberman, Ed
Cisney, Lenore, and Reddy, John. "Edward Steichen: Dis ward Steichen, and Rene d'Harnoncourt; biographical
satisfied Genius." Saturday Review (New York), Decem outline by Grace M. Mayer. Garden City, N.Y. : Double-
ber 14, 1957, pp. 9-12. day & Co., 1961.
Millstein, Gilbert. '"De Lawd' of Modern Photography."
New York Times Magazine , March 22, 1959, pp. 22-23. Books on Steichen, Stieglitz,
Liberman, Alexander. "Steichen's Eye: A Study of the
Greatest Living Photographer." Vogue (New York), Au and the Photo-Secession
gust 1, 1959, pp. 94-99, 140, 142.
Norman, Dorothy. "Alfred Stieglitz." Aperture (Rochester), Caffin, Charles H . Photography as a Fine Art. 190 1. Reprint,
vol. 8, no. 1, i960, pp. 18-20. with Introduction by Peter Pollack. New York : American
Geldzahler, Henry. "Edward Steichen: The Influence of a Photographic Book Publishing Co., 1972.
Camera." Art News (New York), vol. 60, no. 3 (May Sandburg, Carl. Steichen the Photographer. New York : Har-
1961), pp. 26-28, 52-53. court, Brace & Co., 1929.
Greenberg, Clement. "Four Photographers." New York Frank, Waldo, et al., eds. America and Alfred Stieglitz: A
Review of Books, January 23, 1964, pp. 8-9. Collective Portrait. New York: Doubleday, Doran, The
Sekula, Allan. "The Instrumental Image: Steichen at War." Literary Guild, 1934.
Artforum (New York), vol. 14, no. 4 (December 1975), pp. Doty, Robert. Photo-Secession: Photography as a Fine Art.
26-35- Rochester, N.Y.: The George Eastman House, i960.
Steichen, Edward. A Life in Photography. Garden City,
Exhibition Catalogs N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., in collaboration with The Mu
seum of Modem Art, 1963.
Royal Photographic Society. An Exhibition of Prints by the Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography : From
New School of American Photography. London: October 1839 to the Present Day. New York: The Museum of
io-November 8, 1900. Modern Art, in collaboration with the George Eastman
Photo-Club de Paris. Catalogue des oeuvres de F. Holland House, 1964.
Day et de la nouvelle ecole americaine. Paris : February 22- Gernsheim, Helmut and Allison. The History of Photog
March 10, 1901. Presents an expanded version of the exhi raphy: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the
bition indicated in preceding entry. Modern Era. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
Maison des Artistes. [Eduard J. Steichen . . . Exposition .] Green, Jonathan, ed. Camera Work: A Critical Anthology.
Paris: June 3-24, 1902. Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1973.
Juhl, Ernst. Camera-Kunst, eine Internationale Sammlung Norman, Dorothy. Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer. New
von Kunst-Photographien der Neuzeit. Berlin: Gustav York: Random House, 1973.
Schmidt, 1903. Doty, Robert, ed. Photography in America. New York:
Montross Gallery. Exhibition of Pictures by Eduard J. Random House, 1974.
Steichen. New York: January 17-29, 1910. Homer, William Innes. Alfred Stieglitz and the American
Knoedler& Co. Paintings by Eduard J. Steichen. New York : Avant-Garde. Boston: The New York Graphic Society,
January 25-February 6, 1915. 1977.
Baltimore Museum of Art. Edward Steichen: A Retro Kelton, Ruth. Edward Steichen. Millerton, N.Y. : Aperture,
spective Exhibition. Baltimore: June 1-30, 1938. 1978.

176
 Books on the Portraits of His Famous Contemporaries. Catalog. Lon
don: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1975.
Symbolist Movement Fawcett, Trevor, and Phillpot, Clive, eds. The Art Press:
Two Centuries of Art Magazines. London: The Art Book
Huysmans, Joris-Karl. Against Nature [Against the Grain]. Company, 1976.
Translated by Robert Baldick. London: Penguin Books, Hofstatter, Hans H., et al. Le Symbolisme en Europe. Cata
1974. Translation first published 1959; original A rebours, log. Paris: Editions des Musees Nationaux, 1976.
Paris, 1884.
Symons, Arthur. The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1958. First published
1899, revised 1908, 1919.
Mumford, Lewis. The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts
in America 1865-1895. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
Co., 1931.
Wilson, Edmund. Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative
Literature of i8yo to 193 New York: Charles Scribner s
Sons, 1931. Paperback, 1969.
Chasse, Charles. Le Mouvement symboliste dans Tart du
XIX siecle. Paris: Floury, 1947.
Rewald, John. Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gau
guin. 2nd edition. New York: The Museum of Modern
Art, 1962.
Chasse, Charles. The Nabis and Their Period. Translated by
Michael Bullock. New York: Praeger, 1969. First pub
lished in France, i960.
Jullian, Philippe. Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Paint
ers of the 1890s. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York :
Praeger, 1971. Originally published as Esthetes et ma-
giciens, Paris: Perrin, 1969.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. Symbolist Art. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1972.
Corn, Wanda M. The Color of Mood: American Tonalism
1880-1910. Catalog. San Francisco: H. M. De Young
Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Le
gion of Honor, 1972.
Jullian, Philippe. The Symbolists. Translated by Mary Ann
Stevens. London: Phaidon, 1973.
Weintraub, Stanley. Whistler: A Biography. New York:
Weybright & Talley, 1974-
Huyghe, Rene. La Releve du reel: la peinture frangaise au
XIX siecle. Paris: Flammarion, 1974.
National Portrait Gallery. G. F. Watts: The Hall of Fame-

177
 INDEX TO PLATES

Agnes Ernst Meyer 117 La Cigale 61

Alfred Stieglitz 153 Lady Ian Hamilton. London 141
Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York 105, 107, 109 Lady in the Doorway. Milwaukee 27
Alphonse-Marie Mucha. Paris 47 Landon Rives—Melpomene 139
Anatole France 149 Lenbach, Franz von. See
Balzac, Rodin's. See under Rodin Franz von Lenbach. Munich 73
Bartholome, Paul-Albert. See f. Lillian Steichen. Menominee Falls, Wisconsin 125
Bartholome 4 1 Little Round Mirror. Paris 65
The Big White Cloud. Lake George, New York 89 Lydig, Mrs. Philip. See
Cyclamen—Mrs. Philip Lydig. New York 123
The Black Vase 55
The Brass Bowl 79 Maeterlinck, Maurice. See
Carles, Mercedes de Cordoba (Mrs. Arthur B.). See Maurice Maeterlinck. Paris 71
Mercedes de Cordoba Carles. New York 81 Marin, John. See
John Marin. New York 151
The Cat 59
Mary and Her Mother. Long Island 101
Clarence H. White 77
Mary Steichen and Her Mother. Huntington, L.I. 99
Craig, Edward Gordon. See
Edward Gordon Craig 145 Matisse, Henri. See f.
Cyclamen—Mrs. Philip Lydig. New York 123 Matisse —La Serpentine 147
Duncan, Isadora. See Maurice Maeterlinck. Paris 71
Isadora Duncan 143 Mercedes de Cordoba Carles. New York 81
Edmond Joseph Charles Meunier. Paris 43 Meunier, Edmond Joseph Charles. See
Edward Gordon Craig 145 Edmond Joseph Charles Meunier. Paris 43
Evans, Frederick H. See Meyer, Mrs. Eugene. See
Frederick H. Evans 53 Agnes Ernst Meyer 117
Experiment in Multiple Gum 83 Mrs. Eugene Meyer. New York 137
Farmer's Wood Lot. Milwaukee 37 Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 155
Figure with Iris 63 The Mirror 57
The Flatiron 135 Moonlight— Winter 87
France, Anatole. See Moonrise. Mamaroneck, New York 93
Anatole France 149 Morgan, John Pierpont. See
Franz von Lenbach. Munich 73 J. P. Morgan, New York 75
Frederick H. Evans 53 Mrs. Conde Nast, Paris 121
French Peasant Woman 129 Mrs. Eugene Meyer. New York 137
Garden of the Gods, Colorado 9 1 Mrs. Stieglitz and Her Daughter 103
George Frederic Watts 51 Mucha, Alphonse-Marie. See
Hamilton, Lady Ian. See Alphonse-Marie Mucha. Paris 47
Lady Ian Hamilton. London 141 Nast, Mrs. Conde. See
Hartmann, Sadakichi. See Mrs. Conde Nast. Paris 121
Sadakichi Hartmann 111 Nocturne—Or anger ie Staircase, Versailles 165
Heavy Roses. Voulangis, France 167 The Open Sky, // P.M.— Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 157
Horse Chestnut Trees. Long Island 97 Otto, French Photographer 69
In Memoriam. New York 67 The Photographer 's Best Model: George Bernard Shaw. London 119
Isadora Duncan 143 The Pool—Evening. Milwaukee 31
John Marin. New York 151 Portrait of My Mother. Milwaukee 127
J. P. Morgan. New York 75 Richard Strauss. New York 113

78 !
Rives, Landon. See Mrs. Stieglitz and Her Daughter 103
London Rives—Melpomene 139 Strauss, Richard. See
Rodin, Auguste. See ff. Richard Strauss. New York 113
Rodin—Le Penseur 45 Towards the Light, Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 161

Rodin. Paris 115 Watts, George Frederic. See

George Frederic Watts 51
Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 159. See also
Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 155 White, Clarence H. See
The Open Sky, // P.M.— Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 157 Clarence H. White 77
The Silhouette, 4 A.M.—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 163 Winter Landscape. Lake George 85
Towards the Light, Midnight—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon i6i Wood Lot—Fallen Leaves 35
Sadakichi Hartmann 111 Woods in Rain. Milwaukee 33
Self-Portrait. Milwaukee 25 Woods—Twilight 29
Self-P or trait with Brush and Palette. Paris 49 Young Girl Standing beside a Vase of Daffodils 3
Self-Por trait with Sister. Milwaukee 39
Shaw, George Bernard. See
The Photographer's Best Model: George Bernard Shaw. London
119
The Silhouette, 4 A.M.—Rodin's Balzac. Meudon 163
Steeplechase Day, Paris: After the Races 131
Steeplechase Day, Paris: Grandstand 133
Steichen, Clara Smith (Mrs. Edward). See
Mary and Her Mother. Long Island 101
Mary Steichen and Her Mother. Huntington, L.I. 99
Steichen and Wife Clara on Their Honeymoon. Lake George, New
York 95
Steichen, Edward (Eduard). See
Self-Por trait. Milwaukee 25
Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette. Paris 49
Self-Por trait with Sister. Milwaukee 39
Steichen and Wife Clara on Their Honeymoon. Lake George, New
York 95
Steichen, Lillian (Mrs. Carl Sandburg). See
Lillian Steichen. Menominee Falls, Wisconsin 125
Self-Portrait with Sister. Milwaukee 39
Steichen, Marie Kemp (Mrs. Jean-Pierre). See
Portrait of My Mother 127
Steichen, Mary (Mary Calderone). See
Mary and Her Mother. Long Island 101
Mary Steichen and Her Mother. Huntington, L.I. 99
Steichen and Wife Clara on Their Honeymoon. Lake George, New
York 95
Stieglitz, Alfred. See
AIfred S tieglitz 153
Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty 105, 107, 109
Stieglitz, Emmeline Obermeyer (Mrs. Alfred). See
Mrs. Stieglitz and Her Daughter 103
Stieglitz, Katherine (Kitty). See
Alfred Stieglitz and Kitty. New York 105, 107, 109

179
 TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

William S. Paley, Chairman of the Board ; Gardner Cowles, David Rockefeller, Vice Chairmen ;
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, President', J. Frederic Byers III, Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, Vice Presidents; Neal J. Farrell, Treasurer;
Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.,* Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, Gordon Bunshaft,
Shirley C. Burden, William A. M. Burden, Thomas S. Carroll, Ivan Chermayeff, Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon,* Gianluigi Gabetti,
Paul Gottlieb, George Heard Hamilton, Wallace K. Harrison,* Mrs. Walter Hochschild,* Mrs. John R. Jakobson,
Philip Johnson, Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin, Ronald S. Lauder, John L. Loeb, Ranald H. Macdonald,* Donald B. Marron,
Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller,* J. Irwin Miller,* S. I. Newhouse, Jr., Richard E. Oldenburg, John Parkinson III, Peter G. Peterson,
Gilford Phillips, Nelson A. Rockefeller,* Mrs. Albrecht Saalfield, Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn,* Mrs. Bertram Smith,
James Thrall Soby,* Mrs. Alfred R. Stern, Mrs. Donald B. Straus, Walter N. Thayer, R. L. B. Tobin, Edward M. M. Warburg,*
Mrs. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., Monroe Wheeler,* John Hay Whitney* *Honorary Trustee

PHOTOGRAPHY COMMITTEE

Shirley C. Burden, Chairman; Arthur Bullowa, Vice Chairman;

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Pierre Nelson Leval, David H. McAlpin, Thomas J. Maloney, Robert B. Menschel,
Beaumont Newhall, Richard E. Oldenburg,* William S. Paley,* Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, John Parkinson III,
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd,* Richard G. Rockefeller, Samuel Wm. Sax, James Thrall Soby, Samuel J. Wagstalf, Jr.,
Edward M. M. Warburg, Mrs. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., Monroe Wheeler *Ex Officio
 TheMuseum
ofModern
Art

I IIIfil
111IIIIIII
300298678

friends in New York. The works reproduced in this book

were created during a time of personal growth, hard
work, and youthful enthusiasm. In 1902, during his first
trip to Europe, Steichen wrote to his friend and fellow
photographer Gertrude Kasebier:"There are trees in the
Villa de Medicis that are so full of sap and growth that
they have put great iron bands around them to keep them
from bursting— I feel that way myself!"

Dennis Longwell, Assistant Curator in the De

partment of Photography at The Museum of Modern
Art, directed the exhibition on which this volume is
based. He has furnished, in addition to the essay, notes
on the plates (including comments by Steichen and his
contemporaries), a description of Steichen's printing
techniques, and a selected bibliography. The works re
produced are drawn from the Museum's own collection
and those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art
Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Vic
toria and Albert Museum, and two private collections.

Front cover: The Flatiron. 1905

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Alfred Stieglitz Collection

The Museum of Modern Art

11West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019

Distributed by
New York Graphic Society, Boston
« 1m