George
Seeley was an active, if somewhat isolated, member of the Photo-Secession, the
circle of Pictorialist photographers around Alfred Stieglitz at the turn of the
20th century. He lived with his family in the Berkshires and sent softly
rendered photographs of willowy maidens in white to Stieglitz for exhibition
and for reproduction in the journal Camera
Work. A student of Greek and Roman history, Seeley cajoled his mother into
sewing vaguely classical costumes for his tableaux, posed friends and family,
and often christened his compositions with titles evocative of literary and
historical themes.

Characteristically,
he rendered the scene here in soft focus so as to meld his subjects with the
hazy landscape, conveying a bond of sympathy between man and nature and
demonstrating that photographs could be as expressive as drawing and painting,
not merely mechanical records of the visible world.