Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 41))

The young artist went on to say that he was going to Europe to continue his art studies,
and if Mr. Stieglitz would be good enough to keep his drawings, some fifty in number, until
his return, he would be obliged. So he went, and now Mr. Stieglitz has mounted these carica-
tures of well-known actresses and actors under pieces of thick glass and placed them upon the
walls of his little exhibition room.
A few days ago there came a distinguished man of middle age and looked long and hard
at one of these clever and quite personal drawings. After a while he looked at Mr. Stieglitz.
Pointing to the drawing of a well-known actor, he said: “That, sir, is my son-in-law.”
“ Indeed,” said the courteous but cautious Stieglitz, moving a little further away.
“Yes,” returned the visitor with solemnity, “that is he. I will buy it.”
“But,” ventured Stieglitz, in a relieved tone, “these drawings are not for sale.”
“What,” said the visitor, “do you mean to tell me that I can’t buy the portrait of my
own son-in-law?”
“Yes, that is exactly the situation.”
The distinguished gentleman stared. “But I want the picture.”
“No doubt,” answered Mr. Stieglitz, “and so do others. But I can’t let you have it.”
And so, after an exchange of cards, exit the visitor.
Next, the newspaper upon whose staff the young artist had worked began to discover
that he had been a somebody, now that he had had to go to Europe to be himself. This sort
of thing often happens. It will happen again. Meantime, the caricatures are giving pleasure
to a good many persons who find their way to the little elevator that carries them up to the
miniature gallery of the Photo-Secession on the busy thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue.
The exaggeration that makes these portraits caricatures has in the main been happily
conceived. From the pictured reminder of Annette Kellermann, for example, one gains a
definition, so to say, of what is the essence of the diver’s grace and beauty. It is a drawing
to make one smile, for it conveys something of comedy, but it also embodies a rather surprising
vigor and whirl of movement; it is a singling out, by an artist capable of doing it, of what is
individual and distinctive in Miss Kellermann’s aspect as she is making one of her captivating
journeys between springboard and water. The humor is not Miss Kellermann’s; it is the
artist’s contribution, but it is quaintly in keeping, somehow or other, with the taut yet supple
human arc that Miss Kellermann becomes when in transit through the air.
While the diver provided a more eloquent theme than most of the other stage personages
available for caricature—one wishes that she could have crossed the path of Edgar Degas while
he was yet painting such pictures as that of the trapeze performer, Mme. Zaza, in the Cirque
Fernando; but that was away back in 1877—the maker of these new drawings has employed
a generally similar method throughout his series. Mannerisms, characteristic poses, pronounced
features, favorite costumes, have been seized upon with skill and audacity, sometimes a bit
too violently. From Julia Marlowe and Mrs. Fiske to De Wolfe Hopper and Charles Bigelow
and J. W. Powers, from Lillian Russell to Oscar Hammerstein, and from John Drew to Bert
Williams, this young newspaper man has ranged freely through the list of those who have of
late made up the theatrical firmament of New York. It is not to be overlooked by those to
whom the faces and voices of these actors and actresses are familiar, and it should give a min-
gled feeling of pleasure and curiosity, which latter the catalogue will help to appease, to those
less acquainted with the theatre.
It may be well to mention the name of the young man who made these drawings, though,
except to him, it really will not make much difference—yet. His name is Alfred J. Frueh, and
to judge by the present show he will be heard of again.
Henry Tyrrell in the “N. Y. Evening World”:
Alfred Stieglitz, the perennial paradox of Picture Lane, is out sleuthing again in search
of the true and the ugly in art. This time the trail leads to Alfred J. Frueh, an American carica-
turist. (Sure, Frueh is an American — wasn’t he born of German parents, and raised in Lima
and St. Louis, and didn’t he learn comic drawing from Matisse in Paris?) Frueh’s dainty little

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