Eva Watson-Schütze
Encyclopedia
Eva Watson-Schütze was an American photographer and painter who was one of the founding members of the Photo-Secession
.
on September 16, 1867. Her parents were Dr. John and Mary Lawrence Watson, whose family had come from Scotland. She was the youngest of four children, but little else is known about her family or early childhood.
In 1883, when she was sixteen, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
in Philadelphia, where she studied under well-known painter and photographer Thomas Eakins
. Her interests at that time were watercolor and oil painting, and it’s unknown if she took any interests in Eakins’ photography.
Around 1890s Watson began to develop a passion for photography, and soon she decided to make it her career. Between 1894 and 1896 she shared a photographic studio with Amelia Van Buren
another Academy alumna in Philadelphia, and the following year she opened her own portrait studio. She quickly became known for her pictorialist
style, and soon her studio was known as a gathering place for photographers who championed this aesthetic vision.
In 1897 she wrote to photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston
about her belief in women’s future in photography: “There will be a new era, and women will fly into photography.”
In 1898 six of her photographs were chosen to be exhibited at the first Philadelphia Photographic Salon, where she exhibited under the name Eva Lawrence Watson. It was through this exhibition that she became acquainted with Alfred Stieglitz
, who was one of the judges for the exhibit.
In 1899 she was elected as a member of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia. Photographer and critic Joseph Keiley
praised the work she exhibited that year, saying she showed “delicate taste and artistic originality”.
The following year she was a member of the jury for the Philadelphia Photographic Salon. A sign of her stature as a photographer at that time may be seen by looking at the other members of the jury, who were Alfred Stieglitz
, Gertrude Kasebier
, Frank Eugene
and Clarence H. White
.
In 1900 Johnston asked her to submit work for a groundbreaking exhibition of American women photographers in Paris. Watson objected at first, saying “It has been one of my special hobbies – and one I have been very emphatic about, not to have my work represented as ‘women’s work’. I want [my work] judged by only one standard irrespective of sex.” Johnston persisted, however, and Watson had twelve prints – the largest number of any photographer – in the show that took place in 1901.
In 1901 she married Professor Martin Schütze, a German-born and -trained lawyer who had received his Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1899. He took a teaching position in Chicago, and soon after the couple moved to that city.
That same year she was elected a member of The Linked Ring
. She found the ability to correspond with some of the most progressive photographers of the day very invigorating, and she began to look for similar connections in the U.S.
In 1902 she suggested the idea of forming an association of independent and like-minded photographers to Alfred Stieglitz
. They corresponded several times about this idea, and by the end of the year she joined Stieglitz as one of the founding members of the famous Photo-Secession
.
About 1903 Watson-Schütze began to spend summers in Woodstock
at the Byrdcliffe Colony
in the Catskill Mountains
of New York. She and her husband later bought land nearby and built a home they called “Hohenwiesen” (High Meadows) where she would spend most of her summer and autumn months from about 1910 until about 1925.
In 1905 Joseph Keiley wrote a lengthy article about her in Camera Work
saying she was “one of the staunchest and sincerest upholders of the pictorial movement in America.”
As she began to spend more time at Byrdcliffe her interests in painting were reawakened, and within a few years she was spending more time in front of a canvas than behind a camera. She became a student of William Emile Schumacher, an American painters who exhibited at the famous Armory Show
of 1913. After 1910 she made fewer and fewer photographs, and by 1920 she had ceased photography except for family photos.
In 1929 Watson-Schütze became the director of The Renaissance Society
, a non-collecting museum founded in 1915 at the University of Chicago. Under Watson-Schütze's direction from 1929 to 1935, the society presented groundbreaking exhibitions of early modernists such as Pablo Picasso
, Georges Braque
, Marc Chagall
, Jean Arp
, Joan Miró
, and Constantin Brâncuşi
. It was said of her tenure there, "In those six years she transformed the group from a largely amateurish, unfocused organization into an internationally recognized, truly vanguard institution advancing a rigorous modernist agenda."
Watson-Schütze died in Chicago in 1935. Later that year the Renaissance Society held a memorial exhibition of her work. It included 32 paintings and 2 drawings but none of her photographs.
Since Watson-Schütze's death there have been two retrospective exhibitions of her photographs: Eva Watson-Schütze, Chicago Photo-Secessionist, (ISBN 0-943056-06-3) at the University of Chicago Library in 1985, and Eva Watson-Schütze, Photographer, (ISBN13: 978-0-615-25832-4) at the Samuel Dorsky Museum Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz
in 2009.
Photo-Secession
The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F...
.
Life
Watson-Schütze, née Eva Lawrence Watson, was born in Jersey City, New JerseyJersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...
on September 16, 1867. Her parents were Dr. John and Mary Lawrence Watson, whose family had come from Scotland. She was the youngest of four children, but little else is known about her family or early childhood.
In 1883, when she was sixteen, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...
in Philadelphia, where she studied under well-known painter and photographer Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
. Her interests at that time were watercolor and oil painting, and it’s unknown if she took any interests in Eakins’ photography.
Around 1890s Watson began to develop a passion for photography, and soon she decided to make it her career. Between 1894 and 1896 she shared a photographic studio with Amelia Van Buren
Amelia Van Buren
Amelia C. Van Buren was an American photographer who was best known for being the subject of Thomas Eakins's c. 1891 painting Miss Amelia Van Buren.-Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts:...
another Academy alumna in Philadelphia, and the following year she opened her own portrait studio. She quickly became known for her pictorialist
Pictorialism
Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...
style, and soon her studio was known as a gathering place for photographers who championed this aesthetic vision.
In 1897 she wrote to photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston was one of the earliest American female photographers and photojournalists.- Life :...
about her belief in women’s future in photography: “There will be a new era, and women will fly into photography.”
In 1898 six of her photographs were chosen to be exhibited at the first Philadelphia Photographic Salon, where she exhibited under the name Eva Lawrence Watson. It was through this exhibition that she became acquainted with Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
, who was one of the judges for the exhibit.
In 1899 she was elected as a member of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia. Photographer and critic Joseph Keiley
Joseph Keiley
Joseph Turner Keiley was an early 20th century photographer, writer and art critic. He was a close associate of photographer Alfred Stieglitz and was one of the founding members of the Photo-Secession...
praised the work she exhibited that year, saying she showed “delicate taste and artistic originality”.
The following year she was a member of the jury for the Philadelphia Photographic Salon. A sign of her stature as a photographer at that time may be seen by looking at the other members of the jury, who were Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
, Gertrude Kasebier
Gertrude Käsebier
Gertrude Käsebier was one of the most influential American photographers of the early 20th century. She was known for her evocative images of motherhood, her powerful portraits of Native Americans and her promotion of photography as a career for women.-Early life :Käsebier was born Gertrude...
, Frank Eugene
Frank Eugene
Frank Eugene was an American-born photographer who was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and one of the first university-level professors of photography in the world.-Life:...
and Clarence H. White
Clarence Hudson White
Clarence Hudson White was an American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. He grew up in small towns in Ohio, where his primary influences were his family and the social life of rural America. After visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in...
.
In 1900 Johnston asked her to submit work for a groundbreaking exhibition of American women photographers in Paris. Watson objected at first, saying “It has been one of my special hobbies – and one I have been very emphatic about, not to have my work represented as ‘women’s work’. I want [my work] judged by only one standard irrespective of sex.” Johnston persisted, however, and Watson had twelve prints – the largest number of any photographer – in the show that took place in 1901.
In 1901 she married Professor Martin Schütze, a German-born and -trained lawyer who had received his Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1899. He took a teaching position in Chicago, and soon after the couple moved to that city.
That same year she was elected a member of The Linked Ring
The Linked Ring
The Linked Ring was a photographic society created to propose and defend that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, motivated to propelling photography further into the fine art world...
. She found the ability to correspond with some of the most progressive photographers of the day very invigorating, and she began to look for similar connections in the U.S.
In 1902 she suggested the idea of forming an association of independent and like-minded photographers to Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
. They corresponded several times about this idea, and by the end of the year she joined Stieglitz as one of the founding members of the famous Photo-Secession
Photo-Secession
The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F...
.
About 1903 Watson-Schütze began to spend summers in Woodstock
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.The Town of Woodstock is in the northern part of the county...
at the Byrdcliffe Colony
Byrdcliffe Colony
The Byrdcliffe Colony, also called the Byrdliffe Arts Colony or Byrdcliffe Historic District, was founded in 1902 near Woodstock, New York by Jane and Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and colleagues, Bolton Brown and Hervey White...
in the Catskill Mountains
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
of New York. She and her husband later bought land nearby and built a home they called “Hohenwiesen” (High Meadows) where she would spend most of her summer and autumn months from about 1910 until about 1925.
In 1905 Joseph Keiley wrote a lengthy article about her in Camera Work
Camera Work
Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It is known for its many high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world and its editorial purpose to establish photography as a fine art...
saying she was “one of the staunchest and sincerest upholders of the pictorial movement in America.”
As she began to spend more time at Byrdcliffe her interests in painting were reawakened, and within a few years she was spending more time in front of a canvas than behind a camera. She became a student of William Emile Schumacher, an American painters who exhibited at the famous Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
of 1913. After 1910 she made fewer and fewer photographs, and by 1920 she had ceased photography except for family photos.
In 1929 Watson-Schütze became the director of The Renaissance Society
The Renaissance Society
The Renaissance Society is a non-collecting contemporary art museum in Chicago, Illinois. It is located on the campus of the University of Chicago, although it is a fully separate entity.-Overview:...
, a non-collecting museum founded in 1915 at the University of Chicago. Under Watson-Schütze's direction from 1929 to 1935, the society presented groundbreaking exhibitions of early modernists such as Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, and Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
. It was said of her tenure there, "In those six years she transformed the group from a largely amateurish, unfocused organization into an internationally recognized, truly vanguard institution advancing a rigorous modernist agenda."
Watson-Schütze died in Chicago in 1935. Later that year the Renaissance Society held a memorial exhibition of her work. It included 32 paintings and 2 drawings but none of her photographs.
Since Watson-Schütze's death there have been two retrospective exhibitions of her photographs: Eva Watson-Schütze, Chicago Photo-Secessionist, (ISBN 0-943056-06-3) at the University of Chicago Library in 1985, and Eva Watson-Schütze, Photographer, (ISBN13: 978-0-615-25832-4) at the Samuel Dorsky Museum Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz
State University of New York at New Paltz
The State University of New York at New Paltz, known as SUNY New Paltz for short, is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It was founded in 1828 as the School for teaching of classics. In 1885, the New Paltz Normal and Training School was established as a school to prepare teachers for the...
in 2009.