Rudolph Eickemeyer, Jr. was an
eminently successful portrait photographer, active early in this century, who
enjoyed the patronage of a great number of the social elite in and around New
York City. One of his sitters of note was the New York architect Stanford
White, whom he photographed in 1899. Another was Evelyn Nesbit, the woman in the red swing,
the chorus girl, the purported mistress of Stanford White, and the wife of Henry
V. Thaw, who in a fit
of jealous rage gunned down White in 1906. In 1901 Eickemeyer produced an immensely popular
suite of photographs featuring Nesbit that included this and other traditional
poses in addition to some controversial and risqué depictions. It was a
collection made even more famous by the scandal. Not only was Eickemeyer a
commercially successful portraitist, but he was also a respected and early
member of the linked Ring Brotherhood of Pictorialist photographers.