The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of June 22, 2025

Serbonne

1901
(American, 1852–1934)
America
platinum print
Image: 17.5 x 20.2 cm (6 7/8 x 7 15/16 in.); Paper: 17.5 x 20.2 cm (6 7/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2022.89
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Serbonne borrows its composition and setting from two famous and infamous paintings: Manet’s Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe and Titian’s Concert Champetre.

Description

In summer 1901, photographer Gertrude Käsebier and her daughter, an art student, traveled to France and became fast friends with American painter and photographer Edward Steichen (on the left).This posed photograph, taken in the woods of Serbonne outside Paris, documents one of their adventures. Käsebier replaced the textures of the tree bark, grass, and fabric with an overall texture on her negative so that the photograph appears to be composed of brushstrokes, associating her creation with artistic transformation rather than a recording of reality.
  • Hermine Käsebier Turner (daughter of the artist), to Consuela Kanaga [1894-1978]
    2011-2022
    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
  • Homer, William Innes, Gertrude Käsebier, and Deborah Jane Marshall. A Pictorial Heritage: The Photographs of Gertrude Käsebier : Delaware Art Museum, March 2-April 22, 1979, the Brooklyn Museum, May 12-July 8, 1979. 1979. pl. 30
    Homer, William Innes. Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983. fig. 24
    Michaels, Barbara L., and Gertrude Käsebier. Gertrude Käsebier: The Photographer and Her Photographs. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1992. pl. 59
    Homer, William Innes, and Catherine Johnson. Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession, 1902. New York: Viking Studio, 2002. unpaginated
    National Gallery of Canada, and Ann Thomas. American Photographs 1900-1950 from the National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2011. pl. 34
  • {{cite web|title=Serbonne|url=false|author=Gertrude Käsebier|year=1901|access-date=22 June 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2022.89