This outdoor portrait study by the important Philadelphia pictorialist photographer Eva Lawrence Watson (married name from 1901: Eva Watson Schütze-1867-1935) shows the two young daughters of Herbert Edward Everett, (1.) (1863-1932) who later became the first Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1905. Catherine Arms Everett, b. 1898, is seen at lower right sitting while older sister Jane (Hamlin) Everett (1897-1990) stands. Lawrence most likely became friends with fellow student Herbert Everett when they both studied art under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1883.
print notes: cipher/monogram: signed in green ink-ELW toward upper right corner of print; signed in graphite at lower left mount: A Day of Sunbursts + Rain; (?) this work filed under married photographer name by this archive; c. 1900 estimated age of subject in portrait; signed in black ink to secondary mount verso: No. 26 mount-15 mat- 5; slight marginal losses to secondary mount
Provenance: Acquired 2016 from John McInnis Auctioneers via Newburyport Estate. (Lot 791)
1. Dr. Everett was born in Worcester, Mass., on February 16, 1863, and was educated at Harvard University. He then studied art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Julian Academy in Paris and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He taught most of his adult life at the University of Pennsylvania, but lectured for several years at Cornell and Smith College. He was a fellow in medieval archeology of the American School of Archeology at Rome and a member of the Philadelphia Water Color Club. He is survived by his wife, the former Catherine Arms Childs, of Boston, and two daughters, Mrs. Noyes and Mrs. Mortimer Graves, of Washington, D.C. (Herbert Edward Everett: excerpt, obituary: Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 11, 1932)