Not only were women common subjects of pictorialist photographs, but female artists also participated in the style in large numbers. Käsebier was the most successful, buoyed by family wealth and support of her art career. In 1899 Alfred Stieglitz proclaimed her “beyond dispute the leading portrait photographer in this country,” and he later chose six of her photographs, including this one, to publish in the first issue of his new periodical Camera Work.

Although still a teenager, Evelyn Nesbit was a successful model and actress who was pursued by wealthy men. She became caught between two who had both assaulted her, railroad heir Harry Kendall Thaw and architect Stanford White; the former became her husband and then murdered the latter out of jealousy. Käsebier’s portrait presents Nesbit as both innocent and seductive, a gendered stereotype that permeated coverage of Thaw’s trial and that unintentionally exposes the divide between the photographer’s privileged life and Nesbit’s precarious one.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)