biografia di Eva Lawrence WATSON-SCHÜTZE (1867-1935)

Birth place: Jersey City, NJ

Addresses: Jersey City, NJ; Philadelphia, PA, 1882-1901; Chicago, IL/ Woodstock, NY

Profession: Painter, photographer

Studied: PAFA , 1882-88; Thomas Eakins; Thomas Anshutz

Exhibited: Phila. Salon, 1898; S. Indp. A., 1918-20, 1926-30; Salons of Am., 1928, 1929; PAFA Ann., 1929; AIC, 1930-31

Member: Photographic Soc. Phila., 1899; Photo-Secession; Woodstock AA

Comments: Her last name appears as Watson-Schütze and Schütze (or Schuetze). Greatly influenced by her early teacher Thomas Eakins (see entry), she took up photography as an art form, and opened her own studio in 1897. A split in the Photographic Soc. of Phila. led to the formation of the Photo-Secession with A. Stieglitz and other major art photographers of the time, including Watson-Schütze. In 1901 she married a professor of German at the Univ. of Chicago; and she and her husband became friends with a group of humanitarian idealists such as Jane Addams and John Dewey. In 1902 they built a house in Woodstock, NY, and she often spent six months out of the year there. A great majority of her photographic portraits are of people she liked and admired. Her few known paintings are much in the tradition of her teacher Eakins.

Sources: William I. Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession (Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1983); Woodstock's Art Heritage, 142-143; Falk, Exhibition Record Series