Walther, Edeltrude, and Hans Kühn

About 1904–5, inspired in part by his contact with the American photographer, publisher, and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz and by having seen the outdoor figural compositions of the American Pictorialists Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence White, the Viennese photographer Heinrich Kühn turned from monumental landscapes and carefully composed still lifes to intimate and informal images of his four children and their nanny, often out-of-doors in the countryside. Walther, Edeltrude, and Hans Kühn is an almost dreamlike depiction of childhood innocence: three young siblings, dressed in white, hand in hand, playing ring-around-the-rosy on a hillside of wildflowers, all rendered in delicate tones that imbue the scene with an Impressionist sensibility.