Flashback Friday: Stettheimer Sisters

This October, the Smithsonian Collections Blog is celebrating American Archives Month with a month-long blogathon! We will be posting new content almost every weekday with the theme Discover and Connect. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

I wrote a post for this blog in 2011 after cataloging images in the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection of art work by Carrie and Florine Stettheimer. In that post I introduced paintings by Florine, as well as the fabulous dollhouse created by Carrie. I also mentioned the private salons and artist parties that were frequently hosted by the two, along with a third sister, Ettie. The sisters were well known in Manhattan’s early 20th century artist circles and were themselves huge champions of the Modern Art movement. Some of their artist friends included Carl Van Vechten, Marcel Duchamp, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Florine Stettheimer, Carrie with Dollhouse, 1923

   

Florine Stettheimer, Cathedrals of Art, 1942

Thanks to a recent permissions request, we’ve ‘discovered’ more Stettheimer images in the Juley Collection -- photographs of the interiors of the Stettheimer’s home, and of the studio Florine later kept in Bryant Park. I was thrilled to find these as they really help the viewer’s imagination in bringing the salons out of the fantastical world of Florine’s paintings and placing them in a real time in history. It’s easy to picture the sisters and their friends hanging out in the Stettheimer home or in Florine’s studio. 

Florine was also interested in interior design, as evidenced by the colorful décor from her studio. The rooms there were adorned in lace, cellophane and floral patterns, echoing a similar aesthetic found in her paintings and theatrical design.

Interior of Stettheimer home, New York

These images were originally mislabeled as depicting an unknown location, but after a bit of searching we were able to locate the entire set and correctly catalog them in SIRIS. You can see the rest of the images, along with other works by the Stettheimer sisters here.

Rachel Brooks

Photograph Archives

Smithsonian American Art Museum