In My Studio
In my Studio was taken in 1901. The subject of this famous photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. is model and showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, (1884-1967) shown here “sleeping” on a Polar Bear rug when she was only sixteen years old, the same year she arrived in New York City along with her mother. Alternately titled Little Butterfly and Tired Butterfly, a more refined version Eickemeyer completed in 1902. In the 1986 exhibition catalogue by author Mary Panzer: In My Studio: Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. and the Art of the Camera 1885-1930, we learn some of the background details:
Stanford White arranged for his mistress Evelyn Nesbit to pose for Eickemeyer at the home of White’s client Henry Poor. Voted best picture of 1902 by members of The Camera Club of New York, this became the photographer’s best known work. (p. 40)
Nesbit was famous for her looks but certainly more infamous in the public eye after her entanglement in the 1906 murder of her ex-lover, famed architect Stanford White by her first husband Harry Thaw. Be it beauty, notoriety, or good business, the Alfred Campbell Company, whom the artist worked for when he took this photograph of Nesbit, would go on to publish many other views of the model along with the polar bear rug taken during the 1901 sitting.
