Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. 1862-1932

warm-toned platinum print, copyrighted by the photographer in pencil on the image, tipped to gray board, the photographer's monogram and date in red ink and signed, titled, inscribed 'To my friend Clare C. Converse, with compliments' and dated 'April 2nd, 1904' by the photographer in pencil on the mount, matted, 1903

The photographer to Clarence C. Converse, 1904

Witkin Gallery, New York

Acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the above, 1973

Another print of this image:

Weston Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978), pl. 26

 

In the 1890s, Rudolf Eickemeyer was one of the most popular of all international salon photographers, and A Summer Sea was one of his signature landscapes.  Naef 225 lists seven venues in which this seascape was exhibited, including London, Hamburg, and Brussels, in addition to New York.  As Naef points out, Eickemeyer was a serious rival to Stieglitz in terms of influence and prestige at the turn of the last century.  A Summer Sea is the only Eickemeyer photograph in the collection of photographs given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Alfred Stieglitz in 1933.

Eickemeyer authority Mary Panzer has pointed out that this photograph is inscribed to Clarence C. Converse, a writer and friend of Eickemeyer.  Converse’s humorous essays, written for the New York Sun, New York Journal, and the New York World, were anthologized in the volume Mr. Isolate of Lonelyville (New York, 1899).   This book was published by R. H. Russell, who published Eickemeyer’s books Down South (1901), The Old Farm (1902), Winter (1904), and The American Book of Beauty (1904), as well as Alfred Stieglitz's portfolio of large-format photogravures, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies (1897).