Evelyn Nesbitt

Rudolph Eickemeyer, Jr. was an eminently successful portrait photographer, active early in this century, who enjoyed the patronage of a great number of the social elite in and around New York City. One of his sitters of note was the New York architect Stanford White, whom he photographed in 1899. Another was Evelyn Nesbit, the woman in the red swing, the chorus girl, the purported mistress of Stanford White, and the wife of Henry V. Thaw, who in a fit of jealous rage gunned down White in 1906. In 1901 Eickemeyer produced an immensely popular suite of photographs featuring Nesbit that included this and other traditional poses in addition to some controversial and risqué depictions. It was a collection made even more famous by the scandal. Not only was Eickemeyer a commercially successful portraitist, but he was also a respected and early member of the linked Ring Brotherhood of Pictorialist photographers.