A Kentucky Belle

Portrait: Woman

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.0 cm | published December 19, 1890 | issue No. 483
Support Dimensions: 28.7 x 20.5 cm

Editorial comments on this plate:

OUR frontispiece, this week, is a portrait from life by Mr. Rudolph Eickemeyer, Jr., an amateur, of Yonkers, who has already contributed to these columns on two or three occasions.* The charm of the present picture, is due in great measure, of course, to the beauty of the subject, as well as to the skill and trained judgment of Mr. Eickemeyer. It is an excellent likeness, and as a portrait study is suggestive and instructive. The picture was awarded first prize in the portrait class at the exhibition of the Yonkers Camera Club, held last spring.

The “Kentucky Belle” is Mrs. Sidney Schiff, formerly Miss Marion Canine, of whom a writer in the Cosmopolitan Magazine for June of this year speaks as follows, in an article entitled “Side Glances at American Beauty:”

“Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, who judges authoritatively of things and faces American, has apotheosized the Blue-Grass girl as a peculiarly isolated variety, resulting from the limestone soil of Kentucky. Mrs. Sidney Schiff, formerly Miss Marion Canine, was born at Louisville, the outer edge of that charmed circle, and is truly representative; even as a child she was celebrated for her unusually winsome personality. She is the only daughter of Dr. J. Fulton Canine, of Louisville, a descendant of Robert Fulton of steamboat fame, who was English, as is well known. Her mother, Mrs. Canine, belongs to the noted French family of Aydelotte, the first of whom came to America as a naval officer with Marquis de Lafayette to assist in the struggle with the British. Miss Canine’s recent marriage with Mr. Sidney Schiff, an Englishman, and her removal to London as her future home, has the romantic aspect of a recompense of history. Mrs. Aydelotte, the grandmother of this lovely Louisvillian, was the last of a line of famous beauties, the mother resembling the English father, and to this descendant bequeathed her personal charms. Mrs. Schiff is a trifle over medium height, and rather slender. She has raven hair, hazel eyes, a clear, olive skin, with brilliant color. She has travelled extensively, and has been feted everywhere.”
Mr. Eickemeyer made the portrait in his own “Home-Made Studio,” which he has already described in these columns (March 14th issue), and it shows what an amateur can do with the simple apparatus and accessories he is generally confined to.
The reproduction is a phototype by Mr. Gutekunst’s inimitable process.



* See  “The Confidante,” a figure composition, in the March 14th issue; “In the Valley of the Beaverkill,” a landscape, in the June 27th issue; and “The Reapers,” a harvest scene, with figures, in the September 19th number.