Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1916 (Heft 48))

I think one can find an echo of the moods of both these landscapes in the “Self-Portrait,”
which is singularly fascinating in its revelation of character and temperament. It is very in-
teresting to compare it with the adjacent portrait of the same subject by Miss Beckett. The
facial characteristics are similar, but the character of the face is different. There is an imperi-
ous suggestion in the portrait by Miss Beckett, which is absent from the other. The suggestion
of intellectuality has been pushed to an extreme that entirely misses the quality of spirituality.
However, this portrait does not represent Miss Beckett at her strongest. For that one
must turn to the “Mabel Hussey” and “Eduard J. Steichen.” Of these the last named is the
better, for here there is the suggestion of complex qualities of character, whereas in the other
the suggestion is of a single trait, extracted and intensified with an almost ruthless insistence.
Meanwhile, the color beauty of these portraits is as unquestionable as their force. Indeed,
their insight and grip, as well as their technical execution, display an individuality quite differ-
ent from those of any other woman portrait-painter, and, it seems to me, superior.
For, so far as I can judge, this lady is no imitator, even unconsciously, of the methods of
men painters. Her manner, both of seeing and recording, is being evolved from her own very
distinctive personality, and it may not be too much to predict that, if she can maintain her
progress, she will prove to be the first of women painters to reveal in portraiture the actual
feminine point of view.
Robert J. Cole in the “N. Y. Evening Sun”:
There is an odd placing of certain pictures in the current exhibitions. The revolutionary
Matisse at the once conservative Montross Galleries has already been noted. Now come the
Steichen decorations for a private house, at Knoedler’s, and the quite intelligible portraits by
Katharine N. Rhoades and Marion H. Beckett at the Photo-Secession Galleries. One would
naturally expect the positions to be reversed. But Mr. Stieglitz has exhibited Picabia and
Picasso, not because they represented the limits of his own taste, but because he refused to be
bound by the limits of other people’s taste.
It is worth a trip to 291 Fifth Avenue to see some of the enthusiasts over the art of the
future in the act of not looking at these lively present day portraits that are painted with at
least a partial use of old methods. Mr. Steichen happened to sit the other afternoon exactly
under the Beckett study of himself. A young artist whose work might well be used to illustrate
certain pages of Gertrude Stein was reproaching him for his use of gold in the said mural decora-
tions at Knoedler’s. She never glanced at the pictures in the room where she stood.
Yet they were worth a look. The portrait of Mrs. Cord Meyer is full of dignity. Char-
acter speaks from the silent lips. There is a fine gradation of tones in the light fabric that lies
between the rich gown and the shoulders.
The sheer human appeal comes, perhaps, most powerfully through a nameless “sketch.”
The artist here shows a rare sympathy with individual personal life. The portrait of Mrs.
Stieglitz, in the next room, with its wise smile, is the kind anybody might wish to possess as
the record of a friend.
The other artist, Katharine N. Rhoades, may see herself as others see her in the Beckett
portrait, and close by others may behold her as she sees herself. The two views have little in
common. The subject’s friend is evidently trying to make an honest presentation of her.
But the artist in doing her self-portrait cared only for the decorative values of her countenance.
She evidently enjoyed taking any liberty she pleased with it, and the result justifies her—green
eyes, gold background and all.

Henry Tyrrell in the “Christian Science Monitor” (Boston):
Alfred Stieglitz’s little Photo-Secession gallery, familiarly known to seceders of all sorts
as “291,” its Fifth Avenue number, has been having its most important season.
It began with an exhibition of statuary in wood by African savages, wherein, Mr. Stieglitz
says, lies the root of modern art. This was followed by drawings and paintings of Picasso and
Braque of Paris, to which was added for good measure, archaic Mexican pottery and stone carv-
ings and “ Kalogramas” of Mexican Torres Palomar.
The New Year found in the garret gallery new paintings of Francis Picabia—more of
modernist Paris—and these in turn were followed by the work of two young American women
of talent and marked personality, Marion H. Beckett and Katharine N. Rhoades. With an
honest love for sturdy drawing they conjoined the bold and purposeful use of the modernists’

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