After some years as a successful
portrait painter in New York, Frank Eugene Smith dropped his family name,
immigrated to Germany, and became one of the leading Pictorialist practitioners
on the Continent while continuing to paint. He eventually rose to the rank of
Royal Professor of Pictorial Photography at the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts
in Leipzig. Because he was also a member of the Photo-Secession, a circle of Pictorialist
photographers with Alfred Stieglitz at its center, his pictures were likely
candidates for Camera
Work, a
quarterly art periodical published by Stieglitz between 1903 and 1917. The
finely crafted photogravures tipped into each issue were regarded as works of art
equal to other photographic techniques. In fact, some of those photogravures
are the only extant prints from negatives whose whereabouts are now unknown.

When Eugene arrived in Germany in
1906, Dr. Emanuel Lasker had been a champion chess player for twelve years and
was to remain unbeaten until 1921. Lasker is depicted with his brother in a
fairly informal and relaxed attitude, his ever-present chessboard close by.
Eugene had a reputation for altering his prints by hand to improve upon the photographed
composition. To add definition to Lasker's hair, he etched into the already
prepared plate before the print was made.