Portrait (Miss N.) Kasebier, Gertrude  (American, 1852-1934)

Kasebier’s sensuous Portrait—Miss N. redresses the charms of motherhood so much associated with her work. It depicts Evelyn Nesbitt, the sixteen-year old showgirl and mistress of prominent architect Stanford White. Nesbitt figured in a sensational early twentieth-century scandal and murder fictionalized by E.L.Doctorow in the novel Ragtime (1975): she married railroad heir Harry K. Thaw, who, spurred by jealousy over her previous relationship with Stanford White, shot him dead in 1906. [1]

Reproduced / Exhibited

Doty, Robert M. Photo-secession: Photography As a Fine Art. N.Y: Eastman, 1960. plate XVIII.

Marien, Mary W. Photography: A Cultural History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: SunSoft Press, 2002. (cover). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: SunSoft Press, 2002. (cover)

Kruse, Margret. Kunstphotographie Um 1900: D. Sammlung Ernst Juhl; Hamburg: Museum für Kunst u. Gewerbe, 1989 pl. 587

Roberts, Pam. Photohistorica: Landmarks in Photography : Rare Images from the Collection of the Royal Photographic Society. New York: Artisan, 2000. p. 47

References

[1] Marien, Mary W. Photography: A Cultural History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: SunSoft Press, 2002.