Joseph T. Keiley
[Portrait of Mercedes de Cordoba]

Public Domain

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Images(2)

Artist Joseph T. Keiley American, 1869–1914

CultureAmerican

Titles

[Portrait of Mercedes de Cordoba]

Date1905

MediumPlatinum print

DimensionsImage: 6 5/8 × 4 5/16 in. (16.8 × 10.9 cm)
Sheet: 6 5/8 × 4 5/16 in. (16.8 × 10.9 cm)
Mount: 8 1/16 × 5 1/2 in. (20.5 × 13.9 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Nena Marsh

Object number2017.354

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionJoseph T. Keiley was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and a frequent contributor to the seminal journals Camera Notes and Camera Work. His atmospheric portrait of the dancer Mercedes de Cordoba encapsulates the soft-focus, painterly aesthetic of the Photo-Secession, the turn-of-the-century movement that promoted photography as a fine art. The artistry of this image is evident in the print’s harmonious tones, intimate scale, and triple mounting on black with a red border—a popular framing strategy of the time. Keiley wrote, “If a picture be worth finishing, it should be finished in the most perfect way possible.”
Provenance[Alan Klotz Gallery, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2017.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

[no inscriptions]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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