Mrs. Gertrude Käsebier has probably done more than any other American woman to lift pictorial photography to the high plane of a fine art. She is something more than an artist: she is the traditional genius with an infinite capacity for taking pains; an enthusiast with limitless patience, a trained hand and eye, keen intelligence, quick sympathy, and a passionate delight in beauty, not only of form and line, but also of color.

Gifted with this temperament, and with an inherent love of the beautiful, which has colored her whole life, Mrs. Käsebier’s success is in no sense accidental, but the logical result of ceaseless effort and patient training. When, after years as an art student, both in America and abroad, Mrs. Käsebier felt her powers maturing, she chose, with deep and careful purpose, photography, instead of the brush and pencil, as a medium of artistic expression. It is, therefore, not only its beauty of conception and execution, but also its dignity of purpose which makes her work at once the inspiration and despair of the growing army of pictorial photographers. While the wide range and versatility of her work are perhaps its most remarkable qualities, Mrs. Käsebier reaches her greatest height in her portrayals of the tender grace of Motherhood, which become imaginative creations full of deep and sincere feeling.