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Käsebier was born Gertrude Stanton on 18 May 1852 in Fort Des Moines (now Des Moines, Iowa). Her father, John W. Stanton, transported a saw mill to Golden, Colorado at the start of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859, and he prospered from the building boom that followed. In 1860 eight-year-old Stanton traveled with her mother and younger brother to join her father in Colorado. That same year her father was elected the first mayor of Golden, which was then the capital of the Colorado Territory.

Gertrude Käsebier attended the Moravian Female Seminary from 1868 to 1870. She married and began raising a family, but she couldn’t shake a yearning to be an artist. At the age of 37, when most women had settled into their families, Käsebier uprooted hers and moved them to Brooklyn so that she could study painting and drawing at Pratt. It was photography, though, that captivated her. She studied and worked in Europe and opened her own studio in Brooklyn.

Her passion was for portraiture and motherhood in particular, and what distinguished her work was her drive to delve beneath the surface to reveal her subject. To that end, she used simple backgrounds, excluding elements from the photograph that might detract from the person or family. Her images evoke an intimacy that draws the viewer in.

“She is, beyond dispute, the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day,” said Alfred Stieglitz.