Sunshine in the House

Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence White were leading figures in the world of turn-of-the-century American art photography, tapped by Alfred Stieglitz to be founding members of the Photo-Secession, his loose association of kindred spirits, and reproduced in the pages of his lavish journal Camera Work. Käsebier’s portrait of White and his family perfectly embodies the artistic ideals of the moment: a luminous study of home life, removed from the modern urban world, softly printed in the warm tones of palladium paper. During the summers between 1910 and 1915, White ran a photography school on the coast of Maine, where students dressed in sailor suits and enjoyed instruction from White and critiques from visiting photographers including F. Holland Day, who summered nearby, and Käsebier, who traveled from New York. It was undoubtedly on one such visit that she photographed White, his wife Jane, and their three sons, Maynard, Clarence Jr., and Minor.