Adolf De Meyer

Baron Adolph de Meyer (1 September 1868 – 6 January 1946) was a photographer famed for his photographic portraits in the early 20th century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine ''Vogue'', appointed to that position in 1913.

Background

Reportedly born in Paris and educated in Dresden, Germany, Adolphus Meyer was the son of a German Jewish father and Scottish mother—Adolphus Louis Meyer and his wife, the former Adele Watson. In 1893, he joined the Royal Photographic Society and moved to London in 1895.

He used the surnames Meyer, von Meyer, de Meyer, de Meyer-Watson, and Meyer-Watson at various times in his life. From 1897, he was known as Baron Adolph Edward Sigismond de Meyer, though some contemporary sources list him as Baron Adolph von Meyer and Baron Adolph de Meyer-Watson.

In editions dating from 1898 until 1913, ''Whitaker's Peerage'' stated that de Meyer's title had been granted in 1897 by Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, and another source states "the photographer inherited it from his grandfather in the 1890s". Some sources state that no evidence of this nobiliary creation, however, has been found.

Marriage

On 25 July 1899, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, Cadogan Square in London, England, de Meyer married Donna Olga Caracciolo, an Italian noblewoman who had been divorced earlier that year from Marino Brancaccio; some said she was a goddaughter of Edward VII. The couple reportedly met in 1897, at the home of a member of the Sassoon banking family, and Olga would be the subject of many of her husband's photographs.

The de Meyers' marriage was one of convenience rather than romantic love because the groom was homosexual and the bride was bisexual or lesbian. As Baron de Meyer wrote in an unpublished autobiographical novel, before they wed, he explained to Olga "the real meaning of love shorn of any kind of sensuality". He continued by observing, "Marriage based too much on love and unrestrained passion has rarely a chance to be lasting, whilst perfect understanding and companionship, on the contrary, generally make the most durable union".

After the death of his wife in 1931, Baron de Meyer became romantically involved with a young German, Ernest Frohlich (born circa 1914), whom he hired as his chauffeur and later adopted as his son. The latter went by the name Baron Ernest Frohlich de Meyer.

Career

From 1898 to 1913, de Meyer lived in fashionable Cadogan Gardens, London. And from 1903 to 1907, his work was published in Alfred Stieglitz's quarterly ''Camera Work''. Cecil Beaton dubbed him "the Debussy of photography". In 1912, he photographed Nijinsky in Paris.

On the outbreak of World War I, the de Meyers, who in 1916 took the new names of Mahrah and Gayne, on the advice of an astrologer, moved to New York City, where he became a photographer for ''Vogue'' from 1913 to 1921, and for ''Vanity Fair''. In 1922, de Meyer accepted an offer to become the chief photographer and Parisian fashion correspondent for ''Harper's Bazaar'' in Paris, spending the next 12 years there.

During the World War I years, de Meyer brought to Vogue an Edwardian style featuring a rebellion against the rationality of the second industrial revolution and a fashion movement that was characterized as a queer counterculture.

On the eve of World War II in 1938, de Meyer returned to the United States. Today, few of his prints survive, most having been destroyed during World War II but some 52 photographs of Olga, packed by his adopted son Ernest, came to light in 1988 and were published in 1992.

He died in Los Angeles on the anniversary of his wife's death, 6 January 1946, he being registered as 'Gayne Adolphus Demeyer, writer (retired),Authorities cited in Anthony Camp, ''op.cit''., 358. and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale), Glendale, Los Angeles County, California.

Gallery

File:Gertrude Käsebier by Adolf de Meyer.jpg, Gertrude Käsebier, c. 1900
File:Vaslav Nijinsky, 1912.jpg, Vaslav Nijinsky, 1912
File:DeMeyer-Casati.jpg, Luisa Casati, 1912
File:Jeanne Eagels - Chéruit dress 1921.jpg, Jeanne Eagels wearing a cape over a dress in tulle with an ostrich ruff by Madeleine Chéruit, Paris fashion designer, 1921
File:Adolf de Meyer - Woman, half-length portrait, facing right, viewed from behind.jpg, Portrait of a woman, 1920-1930
File:Woman in black in Mosque Archway 1900s.jpg, Woman in black in Mosque Archway, 1900s
File:Une rue en Chine Camera Work 1912 N°40 octobre 1912 planche IX.jpg, A street in China, Camera Work, 1912
File:The Shadows on the Wall (Chrysanthemums) MET DP258345.jpg, The Shadows on the Wall (Chrysanthemums), c.1906
File:Still Life, Hydrangea 1907 by Adolf de Meyer.jpg, Hydrangea, 1907
File:Glass and shadows LCCN2003674954.jpg, Glass and Shadows,1912

Sources

''Royal Mistresses and Bastards'' (2007) page 358 re Blanche, Duchess of Carraciolo and Olga de Meyer

Baron Adolf de MeyerAdolf de Meyer

References

External links

''Paris Collections Seen By A Connoisseur'' by Adolph de Meyer: ''Harper's Bazaar'', November, 1922

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Adolphe De
American people of Scottish descent
1868 births
1946 deaths
Fashion photographers
American portrait photographers
Ballet photographers
Gay artists
LGBT artists from Germany
LGBT photographers from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT people from New York (state)
Artists from Paris
Vanity Fair (magazine) people
Vogue (magazine) people
Photographers from Saxony
20th-century American photographers
LGBT artists from the United Kingdom