Eva Watson-Schütze (1867–1935) was an American photographer who was one of the founding members of the

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. Holland Day in the early 20th century ...

Life

She was born as Eva Lawrence Watson in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. In 1883, when she was sixteen, she enrolled in the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

in Philadelphia, where she studied under well-known painter and photographer

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

. Her interests at that time were watercolor and oil painting, and it’s unknown if she took any interests in Eakins’ photography. Around the 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 Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...

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 (January 15, 1864 – May 16, 1952) was an early American photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various ...

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 (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...

, 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 Turner Keiley (26 July 1869 – 21 January 1914) 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. Over the ...

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

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Frank Eugene Frank Eugene (19 September 1865 – 16 December 1936) 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. Early life Eugene was born in ...

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 y workjudged 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 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, where the couple soon moved. That same year she was elected a member of

The Linked Ring The Linked Ring (also known as "The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring") was a British 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 t ...

. 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

. 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

. About 1903 Watson-Schütze began to spend summers in

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at the

Byrdcliffe Colony The Byrdcliffe Colony, also called the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony or Byrdcliffe Historic District, was founded in 1902 near Woodstock, New York by Jane Byrd McCall and Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and colleagues, Bolton Brown (artist) and Hervey Whit ...

in the

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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'' was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a ...

'' 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 painter who exhibited at the famous

Armory Show The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...

of 1913. After 1910 she made fewer and fewer photographs, and by 1920 she had ceased photography except for family photos. Eva Watson-Schütze

In 1929 Watson-Schütze became the director of

The Renaissance Society The Renaissance Society, founded in 1915, is a leading independent contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago, with a focus on the commissioning and production of new works by international artists. The kunsthalle- ...

, 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

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, and

Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century and a pioneer of modernism, ...

. 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,'' () at the University of Chicago Library in 1985, and ''Eva Watson-Schütze, Photographer,'' at the Samuel Dorsky Museum Art at the

State University of New York at New Paltz The State University of New York at New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz or New Paltz) is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It traces its origins to the New Paltz Classical School, a secondary institution founded in 1828 and reorganized as an ...

in 2009. Her works were also included in exhibits at the

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openi ...

in Washington, DC: * ''A History of Women Photographers'', 1997 * ''Women Photographers in Camera Work'', 1992

References

External links

University of Chicago Library: Guide to Eva Watson-Schutze Photographs 1902-1929

The Renaissance Society: A Selection of Works by Twentieth Century Artists, 1934. Edited by Eva Watson-Schutze
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson-Schutze, Eva 1867 births 1935 deaths Photographers from Illinois Artists from Chicago Artists from Jersey City, New Jersey 19th-century American photographers 20th-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers 19th-century American women photographers