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KEELER, JAMES EDWARD
published in Camera Work 20 (October 1907), of the
self-indulgent “emotional artist.” The privileged role
of intuition in pictorial photography was beginning to
give way to a more detached, modernist photographic
aesthetic.
By 1909, Käsebier’s relations with Stieglitz had
grown strained over her identifi cation with professional-
ism and his with non-commercialism (Michaels, 130). In
1910, in the wake of Stieglitz’s International Exhibition
of Pictorial Photography, tension erupted over fi nancial
matters relating to the sale of her works (Michaels, 136).
Stieglitz, meanwhile, was turning his attention away
from pictorial photography in favor of the machine
aesthetic and modern art. In 1911, he asked for a pledge
of loyalty to the new direction that the Photo-Secession
was taking under his leadership; Käsebier refused. When
Clarence H. White, himself an ex-Secessionist, founded
the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916, he made
Käsebier honorary vice president
From the start of her career in the mid-1890s,
Käsebier’s critical fortunes had risen and fallen rather
precipitously. What at fi rst seemed bold and daring in her
work came, in light of trends away from pictorial pho-
tography after 1910, to seem conservative (Tighe, 98).
After her death in 1934, decades of relative invisibility
followed. In the 1970s, however, concurrent reevalua-
tions of pictorial photography and the neglected history
of women artists led to a revival of interest in Käsebier’s
life and work. Subsequently, in the late 1990s, her in-
novative portraits of Native Americans drew renewed
attention to her exceptional career.
Stephen Petersen
Biography
Gertrude Käsebier was born Gertrude Stanton in Fort
Des Moines, Iowa (now Des Moines, the state capi-
tol), on 18 May 1852, to a family of Quaker heritage.
From the age of eight to twelve she, along with her
parents, John W. Stanton and Muncy Boone Stanton,
and younger brother Charles, lived in the Colorado Ter-
ritory, where her father sought his fortune in the gold
rush. After fi nding success in mining operations, he
and his family moved east in 1864, settling in Brook-
lyn, New York. Käsebier attended Moravian Seminary
for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from
1868 to 1870. In 1874 she married Eduard Käsebier, a
German immigrant and shellac importer six years her
senior. Living fi rst in Brooklyn and later in New Jersey,
the Käsebiers raised three children before Gertrude
decided to pursue a career as a painter, returning to
Brooklyn to study at the Pratt Institute from 1889 to
- Turning in 1896 to a profession in photography,
she apprenticed with Brooklyn portrait photographer
Samuel H. Lifshey. Following her apprenticeship she
operated a highly regarded portrait studio in New
York for thirty years, before physical ailments forced
her retirement. A member of the Brotherhood of the
Linked Ring from 1900–1909 and of the Photo-Seces-
sion from 1902–1912, she knew and exhibited with all
of the major pictorial photographers. Käsebier died on
13 October 1934 in New York City at the age of 82.
Her husband predeceased her by twenty-fi ve years.
Early in her career, she published her photographs in
many journals and magazines including The Monthly
Illustrator, The World’s Work, Everybody’s Magazine,
Ladies’ Home Journal, and Harper’s Bazaar. Major
exhibitions during Käsebier’s lifetime included the
Philadelphia Photographic Salon, Pennsylvania Acad-
emy of Fine Arts, 1898, 1899, 1900; The New School
of American Photography, curated by F. Holland Day,
Royal Photographic Society, London, 1900; American
Pictorial Photography Organized by the Photo-Seces-
sion, National Arts Club, New York, 1902; and the
International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography,
Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1910.
See also: Brotherhood of the Linked Ring; Gum
Print; Pictorialism; Platinum Print; Portraiture; and
Stieglitz, Alfred.Further Reading
Bunnell, Peter C., “Gertrude Käsebier” in Arts in Virginia, vol.
16, no. 1 (Fall 1975), 2–15, 40.
Caffi n, Charles H., Photography as a Fine Art, facsimile edition
of 1901 original, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York: Morgan
and Morgan, 1971.
Homer, William Innes., A Pictorial Heritage: The Photographs of
Gertrude Käsebier. Wilmington, DE: Delaware Art Museum,
1979 (exhibition catalogue).
Hutchinson, Elizabeth, “When the ‘Sioux Chief’s Party Calls’:
Käsebier’s Indian Portraits and the Gendering of the Artist’s
Studio” in American Art, vol. 16, no. 12 (Summer 2002),
40–65.
Käsebier, Gertrude, “Studies in Photography (1898)” in A Pho-
tographic Vision: Pictorial Photography, 1889– 1923 , edited
by Peter C. Bunnell. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1980,
84–86.
Michaels, Barbara, Gertrude Käsebier: The Photographer and
her Photographs,.New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
Tighe, Mary Ann, “Gertrude Käsebier Lost and Found” in Art in
America, vol. 65, no. 2 (March–April 1977), 94–98.
Tucker, Anne. The Woman’s Eye. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1973.KEELER, JAMES EDWARD (1857–1900)
The American astronomer James Edward Keeler was
born in La Salle, Illinois, and during an extended
period of illness in his teens, developed a passion for
astronomy. After completing his bachelors degree at
John Hopkins University, he studied for two years in
Europe—at Berlin and Heidelberg—and subsequently