Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 30))

own sake. The sane copyism of the beginner is conspicuously absent. The decorative form and
color have imposed themselves forthwith upon the thing seen.
‘‘Mark these pale yellow poplars, in Autumnal harmony, which spring geyser-like from a
shadow-shot greensward, before a band of russet oaks, while a deeply blue sky bends overhead.
We are in the realm of pure fantasy. A Monticelli has been reincarnated somewhere near Giverney
to refresh us.
“In general the scale of these designs is very big—again an unusual quality. Whether it be
the stems of poplars rising against the moonlight, the stretch of a pale green valley, a swelling cloud
drifting down towards us over calm water—all these motives are rendered in a sense of size and
importance. With color, Mr. Steichen plays his own decorative game, but he is soberly true to the
spaciousness of the scenery of French river valleys. It is perhaps a crabbed and injurious doubt
that asks whether this precocious composure is good for Mr. Steichen, when we unquestionably
should be grateful for work so vivacious and accomplished. One awaits with mixed feelings the
emergence of his third manner. He is the valedictory exhibitor in these galleries, where individual-
ism has ever been at home. After the 29th Mr. Montross will move to No. 550 Fifth avenue,
between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth streets.
“In the room beside the paintings about thirty of Mr. Steichen’s photographs are shown.
He has always preferred to take his two arts with equal seriousness, but the fact that most of the
photographic prints are familiar suggests that painting is winning him away. One could hardly
regret such a defection. His photographs are most skilfully contrived, but they share the quality
of the new camera work of looking better than they really are, with the defect of never again look-
ing quite as good as they did on first acquaintance/’
Mr. Harrington in the “New York Herald”:
“Nature, with the assistance of Mr. Eduard J. Steichen, an American artist, makes a credit-
able showing in the Montross gallery. It is hard to tell where she begins and the imagination of
Mr. Steichen starts, yet the result is a series of interesting canvases in which what is true and what
could not be are often strangely blended.
“Secession and convention go hand in hand in this exhibition. The influences of Matisse and
rebels of his clan who flourish about the environs of Paris and painter sense for the things that
are combined in most of the thirty-one canvases which Mr. Steichen has brought from his studio
in France. The show is for the delectation of those who are ultra aesthetic and those who would
like to be and also for those who really like pictures.
“The group which is more or less of a transcript of the scenery of the Valley of the Morin,
has a definite appeal to those who are frankly interested in beauty for its own sake. Mr. Steichen
has caught the sunlight and imprisoned it in pigment in ‘The Summer Morning,’ and again where
he depicts the same vale under the glow of Autumn. Here he has been carried away with the
poetry of what is really before him. His nocturne of the city of Paris is mystic and unreal, the ex-
pression of inner emotion rather than that which appeals to the outer senses. Yet it will impress
any one who looks at it long enough to feel its spell.
‘Across the Great Divide,’ which is a memory of the Rockies, is overpowering in its depth
of color and in the grandeur of the great masses of blue reared as a challenge to all the ages.
“It contrasts strangely with the ‘Spring Sunlight,’ where a child is wandering beneath the sun-
flecked branches of a grove in the late afternoon. One must see such pictures as those which Mr.
Steichen presents with the painter’s own eyes, and therefore it is entirely within the bounds of verity
to believe that on the day he saw ‘Apple Bloom’ Mr. Steichen not only beheld the twigs blossoming
so cheerfully, but also saw that the trunk of the honest tree itself was of exactly the same shade of
pink as the blooming branches.
“ Photographs of the variety Photo-Secession may also be seen here, including some fine like-
nesses of the President, of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. George
Bernard Shaw. Mr. Steichen took them. Nature helped.”
Arthur Hoeber in the “Globe”:
“Eduard J. Steichen offers the results of the last three years’ painting in France, where he
has made a serious study of new movements in art, and where he has limned faithfully the world

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