Trained as a painter, Sarah Choate Sears was encouraged to pursue photography by her friend F. Holland Day. She was elected to the Photo-Secession in 1904, and Stieglitz reproduced two of her photographs in the April 1907 issue of Camera Work—including this portrait of Julia Ward Howe, the author of the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which he acquired for his own collection. Sadakichi Hartmann, whose photography criticism was often published in Camera Work, wrote of this picture in June 1904: She knew in this print precisely what she wanted to do and precisely what to do and what to leave undone in order to succeed. And the leaving of things undone is in no small part of the artist’s task with such a craft as photography. [1]