From Irene Caste archives

Irene Castle pictured here with one of her pups in a 1915 photo by Underwood & Underwood | Cornell fashion coll. on IG

Ballroom dancer. Silent film star. Fashion designer. Animal rights advocate. Irene Castle wore many hats – and donned countless dazzling costumes – as a celebrity during the early twentieth century.

Irene Castle as Patria Channing in the serial Patria (1917). Only episodes 1 to 4, & 10 survive at the MoMA

Irene Castle was known for playing strong and stylish female leads such as the title character in the serial “Patria,” a swashbuckling, gun-toting munitions factory heiress who helps thwart a foreign invasion. Off-screen, Castle was also a pioneering entrepreneur who designed many of her own costumes and skillfully cultivated her image to become a household brand […]

“She was a very astute businesswoman,” Green said. “She knew the value of her name as a brand and so she branded all of her fashion innovations.” In 1917, Castle collaborated with Corticelli Silk Mills to develop “Patria”-themed fabrics, and started her own clothing line, Irene Castle Corticelli Fashions, in 1923. She also applied her moniker to everything from her “Castle Bob” haircut in 1913 that sparked a trend in the ’20s to the “Castle Band” of jewelry around her forehead that later resurfaced in hippie fashions of the ’60s, according to Green. / quoted from Cornell news

Silent film actress, dancer, and fashion icon Irene Castle, from the Irene Castle Photographs and Papers Coll. | src Cornell news

Black cat autochrome by Steichen

**Edward Jean Steichen ~** Portrait of the Misses Sawyer, ca. 1914. Autochrome | src MoMA

Vintage nudes at Paris photo 2023

Photographe anonyme. Etude de Nu, France, vers 1865. Tirage albuminé. | src galerie lumiere des roses ~ Paris photo 2023

Photographe anonyme. Étude de nu, France, vers 1920. Tirage argentique. | src galerie lumiere des roses ~ Paris photo 2023

**Jean-Baptiste Igout** (1837-1881) ~ Étude de nu pour peintre, France, vers 1870. Tirage albuminé. | src lumiere des roses

**Mary Willumsen** (1884-1961) ~ Baigneuse à Helgoland, Danemark, vers 1920. Tirage argentique. | galerie lumiere des roses

**Jacques de Lalaing** (1858-1917) ~ Nu au chevalet, Belgique, vers 1910. Tirage argentique. | src galerie lumiere des roses ~ Paris photo 2023

Watkins: design and modernity

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Still Life – Bathtub, New York, 1919 | src The Revolutionary Gaze at The Guardian

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ ‘Phenix Cheese’, 1924 | src El País Cultura

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Lamp and Mirror, 1924 | src El País Cultura

Watkins was likely influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow, a Columbia University professor of fine arts who was closely associated with the White school. Dow wrote about the beauty of compositions that use curved and straight lines, and alternating light and dark masses. Dow also promoted the ideas of Ernest F. Fenollosa, who believed that music was the key to the other fine arts since its essence was “pure beauty.” Watkins herself used music as a metaphor for visual patterning in an essay about the emergence of advertising photography out of painting: “Weird and surprising things were put upon canvas; stark mechanical objects revealed an unguessed dignity; commonplace articles showed curves and angles which could be repeated with the varying pattern of a fugue.” / Quoted from: Margaret Watkins: Of Sight and Sound (National Gallery of Canada)

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Design – Curves, 1919 | src The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Margaret Watkins was a student at The Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York City. The school emphasized the principles of design that were common to all modes of artistic expression. This aesthetic, as seen here, resulted in works that merge realism and abstraction. Watkins received particular praise for her artistic transformation of the most common things: in this instance, the contents of her kitchen sink. / Quoted from The Nelson-Atkins Museum (x)

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Design – Angles, 1919 | src MutualArt

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Domestic Symphony, (1919), palladium print | src Of Sight and Sound at NGC

In 1919 Watkins made her first ground-breaking domestic still lifes, taking as her subject such mundane scenes as a kitchen sink and bathroom fixture. In Domestic Symphony, the graceful curve of the porcelain recalls the fern-like scroll of a violin. Again, the composition is striking: the lower three-quarters of the image is in darkness, anchoring the forms and volumes in the upper portion. / Quoted from: Margaret Watkins: Of Sight and Sound (National Gallery of Canada)

Watkins’ Domestic Symphonies

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ The Kitchen Sink, New York, 1919. | src Artland magazine

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Untitled (Milk bottle in sink), 1923. Platinum / palladium print | src Sotheby’s

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ The Kitchen Sink, 1919. From Domestic Symphonies (2014) at M(M)A

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Domestic Symphony, New York, 1919 | src The Guardian

In 1919 Watkins made her first ground-breaking domestic still lifes, taking as her subject such mundane scenes as a kitchen sink and bathroom fixture. In Domestic Symphony, the graceful curve of the porcelain recalls the fern-like scroll of a violin. Again, the composition is striking: the lower three-quarters of the image is in darkness, anchoring the forms and volumes in the upper portion. Still Life — Shower Hose (1919) shows a rubber hose rhythmically looped around a towel rack.

Quoted from: Margaret Watkins: Of Sight and Sound (National Gallery of Canada)

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Still Life – Shower Hose (1919); gelatin silver print. | src National Gallery of Canada

**Margaret Watkins** (1884-1969) ~ Pan Lids, 1919; gelatin silver print. | src National Gallery of Canada

Girl in Pierrette costume · ca 1915

**Arthur William Emmerton ~ ‘**Child posing in Pierrot costume’, probably ca. 1915. Glass negative. Inscriptions: “H17” on negative sleeve. | src National Library of Australia

Child posing in Pierrot costume (ca. 1915) by Arthur William Emmerton [Detail]

Desiree Lubovska · 1919

Press Photo. Ballet Dancer Désirée Lubovska Demonstrates a Dance (ca. 1919) | src eBay

Press Photo. Ballet Dancer Desiree Lubovska in a Dance, 1919. | src eBay

Rozentals · Princess and monkey

**Janis Rozentāls** (1866 – 1916) ~ The Princess and the Monkey, 1913, oil on canvas. Latvian National Museum of Art via Google Arts

In the last years of his life, Janis Rozentāls repeatedly returned to the composition with the figures of a princess and monkey. The first of the painting was exhibited in 1913 at the 3rd Baltic Artists Union exhibition and at the international art show in Munich where the Leipzig publisher Velhagen & Klasing acquired reproduction rights ensuring wide popularity for the work. The symbolic content of the decoratively resplendent Art Nouveau composition has been interpreted as an allegory of the relationship between artist and society reflecting the power of money over the artist; on other occasions, the princess is seen as “great, beautiful art” but the monkey as the artist bound by golden chains – its servant and plaything. [quoted from Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka (link)]