artist's own part, which characterizes these pictures, lifting them, as conceptions, so far above the ordinary. Similarly in the case of old people there is a simple acquiescence in themselves as they are, an unconsidered mental and physical bearing, which renders them sympathetic subjects. It is with the sitters of both sexes in between the extremes of age that the difficulty is greater; and particularly in the case of those who feel bound to live up to a reputation for being intellectual or artistic. I am not aware what prints are to be used to illustrate this paper, so I can glide around this delicate question without risking any personal reference. But, among a considerable number of Mrs. Kasebier's prints which I have seen, I can recall a few, which jar upon myself as being affected.
THIS is, perhaps, the weakest point in the efforts of some photographers to be artistic. The large majority of photographic portraits are merely commonplace. I do not allude to these, but to the ones in which there is a definite aim to create a pictorial ensemble. And in how many of these can one detect some trickiness of pose or arrangement, some artificiality of sentiment, that is repugnant to good taste! Generally, no doubt, it results from the photographer's own lack of taste, from a certain flashiness of mind that regards the unusual as necessarily admirable, and mistakes sentimentality for sentiment. It is for the most part accompanied with very meagre knowledge of what really constitutes the artistic qualities of a picture. Now this is so clearly not the case with Mrs. Käsebier's work, that it is reasonable to charge any affectation that may appear to the sitter. But even so well-trained an artist as this lady, with her instinct for what is sincere and fine, labors under the disadvantage of being continually, as it were, before the footlights. It is a disadvantage shared by all artistic photographers. It is difficult for them to forget that they have a "mission"; they are particularly open to the temptation of taking themselves too seriously—a complaint, by the way, to which we, writers upon art, are conspicuously liable—and it must be hard indeed for them to be free altogether of some occasional pose of mind. It is, as I have said, a very detectable flaw in much artistic photography, alluded to here because it is very rarely to be detected in Mrs. Kasebier's work and its absence, therefore, is one of the most commendable features of her work.
THAT it appears so seldom, or, as I am sure many of her admirers will say, never—is due to the fact that she is an artist by training as well as by temperament; that she has a sound basis of knowledge and an abundance of imagination. For, in enumerating the artistic qualities of her work, let us not overlook this one of imagination, which irrigates and fertilizes all the others. I know of no photographer, at home or abroad, and not too many portrait-painters, who display so much charm of invention. There is always in her work the delight of surprise; no ordinariness, not even a tolerable repetition of motive; but, throughout, a perpetual freshness of conception, as extraordinary as it is fascinating, when one remembers the conditions under which she works. And the creativeness is not limited to a happy choice of pose and gesture; it circulates through all the elements of the
