The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Italy

c. 1889

Gertrude Käsebier

(American, 1852–1934)
America
platinum print mounted to Japanese paper
Image: 18.6 x 12 cm (7 5/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Paper: 18.6 x 12 cm (7 5/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Mounted: 30 x 21.1 cm (11 13/16 x 8 5/16 in.)
Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg 2022.116
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Gertrude Käsebier did not begin to study art until she was 37 and had 3 adolescent children.

Description

Italy provides insight into Käsebier’s earliest artistic productions. The woman’s pose and central placement emphasize the picture’s formalism and careful construction. Her rigid vertical posture echoes the trees in the background. Soft focus, a device borrowed from Pictorialist photography, frustrates a clear view of her features, suggesting that the image is neither portrait nor snapshot but a symbolic statement about womanhood and its association with nature.
  • 2000-2022
    (Lee Gallery, Winchester, MA), sold to Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, Scarsdale, NY
    2000-2022
    Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, Scarsdale, NY, sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    September 12, 2022-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • The Photographic Times, illustrated monthly magazine devoted to the interests of artistic and scientific photography, Vol. 30, Scoville Manufacturing Co., 1898 p. 493
    Bill Jay, ed., Album 6, with an introduction by Beaumont Newhall on the George Eastman House, London 1970 p. 45
  • {{cite web|title=Italy|url=false|author=Gertrude Käsebier|year=c. 1889|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2022.116