picture; giving quality to the scheme of light and shade, to the tone and to the textures; permeating the whole composition and making a generously artistic ensemble.
LIGHT, tone and texture, the qualities preéminently within the range of the photographer, Mrs. Käsebier introduces with a deliberateness of intention and resourcefulness of means, that fill one fairly with enjoyment. At one time it is with a masculine breadth of effect, at another with indescribable delicacy; now imposingly rich in masses, now intricate and subtle; full and organlike, or again vibrating like a flute. Two of her subject-pictures come to my recollection as I write—an old man filling baskets with apples and a Madonna in the stable. How far apart they are in treatment, though akin to each other in their gentle intimacy of feeling! In one there are the glow and opulence of autumn; velvet pasture and firm gleam of apples; nature's abundant vigor contrasted with stooping, aged humanity; in the other figures of touching refinement in rude surroundings, irradiated with a soft flood of light that fills the place with heaven and surrounds the figures with divinity. Prints, like these, prove how abundantly Mrs. Käsebier possesses the picture-making faculty, and it is this possession which gives such marked distinction to her portraits.
FOR, in concluding a brief appreciation, I would insist upon this quality of distinction. I do not mean the entire absence of the commonplace, flashy, or cheap in her work, which, however, would of itself serve to distinguish her from a great number of soi-disant artistic photographers; but that finer quality of difference that is based on sound artistic knowledge and a very sensitive temperament. These give to her pictures, on the one hand, a satisfactoriness and on the other a stimulus of suggestion. There is nothing tentative, as in so much photographic work; the means are sound, well considered and convincing and, in addition, there is always a touch of something outside of and above mere soundness of method, the imprint of an actively original feeling, spontaneously tasteful and inventive. When we remember that this freshness of fancy has stood the wear and tear of professional requirements, we shall accord it all the greater admiration.
TO plague our souls for the ideal,
Or stupify them with the real—
This is the choice for us each day,
Each to decide in his own way.
Dallett Fuguet.
