Margrethe Mather 1886-1952

platinum print, mounted to a large sheet of buff paper, signed and titled by the photographer in pencil on the mount, signed and inscribed '715 West Fourth Street, Los Angeles -- California' by her in pencil on the reverse, matted, circa 1921; accompanied by a backboard from an earlier frame, with a Gilman Paper Company label on the reverse

Graphics International, Ltd., Washington, D.C.

Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above, 1978

This portrait of Weston by his lover and business partner Margrethe Mather was probably made around 1921, the time of their formal collaboration on a number of jointly-signed works.  Beth Gates Warren, in her Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration (Santa Barbara, 2001), reproduces from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art another portrait likely made at the same sitting, showing Weston in what appears to be the same cape and glasses (pl. 87).  Warren points out that the cape belonged to Johan Hagemeyer, who had posed for Weston in it (cf. Conger 51). 

The cape and louche hat in the image offered here is the garb of the artiste, a persona Weston aspired to at that time.  Appropriately, it was Mather who had introduced Weston to the world of the avant-garde, such as it was in 1920s Los Angeles.  A self-portrait of Weston wearing another brimmed hat and a coat with turned-up collar, also striving for effect, is reproduced in Weston Naef and Susan Danley’s Edward Weston in Los Angeles (San Marino, 1986), figure 18.  As Naef observes of Weston’s transformation in appearance in the late teens and early 1920s, ‘Destiny has begun to leave its mark, and plainness is replaced by costume’ (ibid., p. 17).

Mather authority Beth Gates Warren knows of no other extant prints of the image offered here.