Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 33))

Steichens raises doubts, the collection of de Meyer’s prints which face them gives an overwhelming
impression which is increased by the presence of almost every print he shows. A wonderful assort-
ment of portraits and character studies; a handful of inimitable still-life prints of glistening puppets
and shimmering vessels of flowers; each one of wonderful conception, exhibiting a rare originality
of view, and carried out with an extraordinary mastery of tone, light, and texture. Here is a
worker whose prints are stamped with an unmistakable individuality, quite undisguised by his
uncommon variety in subject and treatment, and which cannot by any amount of analytical labor
be resolved into a compound of mannerisms. A great artist; and a great collection of prints!
It is of interest to observe that his most recent work is also his best. The same cannot, I think, be
said of the other two artists whose work completes this room. Coburn is represented by his Rodin,
Shaw, and William Nicholson portraits, as well as a few other old friends, including “Notre
Dame,” “Wier’s Close,” and that brilliant bit of bravura “El Toro.” The majority of his prints
are, however, more recent; and while they show not only no falling off but even a decided advance
in his handling of wide and striking printing scales, he seems to be entirely losing grip in con-
struction. At least half a dozen of his recent examples have little beyond their wonderfully extended
tonal expression to recommend them; and this is the more surprising since Coburn at his best is
unexcelled in originality and force of composition. On the whole, he is not shown at his best. The
same remark applies also to Seeley, who is represented chiefly by quite recent work in which he has
chosen to develop schemes consisting of patterns in masses of almost unmodulated light and dark
tones rather after the manner of stencil work, in which the delicate play of tone-nuance, which is
so charming a feature of his earlier and smaller work, has been thrown over for, as far as I can
see, no corresponding compensation.
Surrounding gallery 17 are a number of smaller rooms in which other collections are hung,
separately or in groups. One is devoted to what Mr. Stieglitz is fond of calling the “old masters.”
Here you can learn, from thirty-eight prints by D. O. Hill or from his negatives, that pictorial
photography is not very much younger than photography itself. You can note that Mr. Stieglitz
has as keen an eye for a perfectly “straight” rendering of the various phases of New York City as
he had when he made his historic print of “Winter in Fifth Avenue”; but I think you are likely
to linger most over Craig Annan’s photogravures and to take careful note of the wonderful crafts-
manship of the man the still more astonishing fact that his early work looks just as good to-day as
when executed. Here is certainly an example of the undying beauty of sincere work. Fashions
have come and fashions have gone, making reputations and killing them; the history of all of which
is clearly written in the present exhibition. Untouched by fashion, seeing with an artist’s eye,
executing with unrivaled skill, Annan has steadily worked along and has to-day the satisfaction,
rare in so young an art, of being able to look back at his early work and call it good, to-day and
for all time. Much the same can be said of Eugene; though one’s satisfaction in his work is some-
what qualified by the attempt to insist on the value of some of his prints as being unique examples,
rather than by letting their pictorial qualities speak for themselves. Eugene’s numerous contri-
butions, which include some of those recently issued in Camera Work, are grouped with collec-
tions by Mrs. Brigman, Mrs. Kasebier, J. G. Bullock, Alice Boughton, Rose Clark, J. T. Keiley,
and Holland Day, whose prints are among his earliest work. Of these collections, those of Mrs.
Brigman and Mrs. Kasebier are the most extensive and important, containing much of their best
and best-known work. The yellow daubs with which Mrs. Kasebier has surrounded more than
one-half of her prints have a distracting effect and are unfortunate in interfering with the enjoy-
ment of some of her best work. In the French room attention will be chiefly centered on Demachy’s
twenty prints, two thirds of which represent his latest work in oil and show well his extraordinary
mastery of that process. The Puyo oils serve little purpose, except to show how smoothly the
medium can be handled, but there is also one print in his best style, “The Straw Hat,”—a gum.
This room also contains six nude studies by Le Begue, in gums of violent color; three prints by
Dyer, a curious colored manipulation in platinum by Miss Stanbury, and three of the extraordinary
series of Stieglitz-White collaborations in the meaningless depiction of the naked. The Austrian
room is very interesting. The enormous Hofmeister gum, “The Solitary Horseman,” and the
large, but not so enormous, gum landscapes of Kuhn and Henneberg have a striking effect; and if
on closer acquaintance they grow to appear somewhat crude in color and conception, and rather
old-fashioned, you can always turn to some of Kuhn’s quieter, smaller, and later work, the
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