Ce site utilise des cookies d'analyse pour améliorer votre expérience. En savoir plus
1871-1925 · American
Clarence H. White (1871-1925) is the American pictorialist of intimate domestic light — Morning, The Ring Toss, The Kiss. Self-taught in Newark, Ohio, he became a Photo-Secession founder, co-founded the Pictorial Photographers of America with Gertrude Käsebier, and trained the next generation at the Clarence White School of Photography (1914-1925).
Public domain since 1996 · CPI L.123-1
Held at
Born in West Carlisle, Ohio, White worked as a bookkeeper in Newark while teaching himself photography at dawn and dusk — the soft, low-angled light that became his signature. His intimate scenes of his wife Jane and their children, of Letitia Felix and Ada Follett, of children at play (Ring Toss), were exhibited at the Camera Club of New York (1899) and selected by Stieglitz for the Photo-Secession (1902). He moved to New York in 1906 and joined Columbia Teachers College, then founded the Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1914 — through which passed Margaret Bourke-White, Paul Outerbridge, Doris Ulmann, Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, and Karl Struss. In 1916, with Käsebier, he co-founded the Pictorial Photographers of America after the dissolution of the Photo-Secession. He died of a heart attack in Mexico City while leading a student trip. Held at MET, Princeton, LoC, NGA. Public domain since 1996. His platinum and gum-platinum practice is a foundational reference for Maison Picturale.
Essential works
A curated selection of public-domain works by Clarence H. White, reinterpretable as contemporary prints by Maison Picturale's master printers. Each artwork page details the original process and its atelier equivalent.
Print after — systematic mention on the certificate of authenticity.
1906 · Platinum print (some versions gum bichromate over palladium)
White's iconic intimate scene of a woman at a window in soft morning light. A defining masterpiece of American pictorialism.
Original held at : Library of Congress · Metropolitan Museum of Art · Princeton University Art Museum
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1898 · Platinum print
An early canonical work from White's Newark, Ohio period: a young girl absorbed in blowing a soap bubble, the platinum tonal scale rendering domestic intimacy as quiet allegory. Conserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (267723), the Museum of Modern Art and Princeton (acc. 42479) — Wikipedia singles it out as one of White's most acclaimed works.
Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art (267723) · Museum of Modern Art · Princeton University Art Museum (42479)
Reference file source : MET Open Access (CC0)
1908 · Platinum print
Letitia Felix posed against a Venus de Milo statuette — one of White's major Newark-period portraits, exhibited in Camera Work and acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum (267711, sometimes catalogued as "Girl in Black with Statuette"). A palladium version is held at Davis/Wellesley. The composition stages domestic pictorialism against canonical sculpture, an allegory of the artist-model relationship.
Original held at : Philadelphia Museum of Art · Metropolitan Museum of Art (267711) · Davis Museum at Wellesley College (palladium version)
Reference file source : MET Open Access (CC0)
1902 · Platinum print
Young women in a sun-dappled orchard, one of White's signature outdoor figure compositions exemplifying his soft pictorialist atmospheres.
Original held at : Library of Congress · Princeton University Art Museum
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1898 · Platinum print
Triptych portrait of White's frequent model Letitia Felix, embodying the renaissance-inspired allegorical aesthetic of early American pictorialism.
Original held at : Library of Congress
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1897 · Platinum print
Two women absorbed in reading, lit by gentle window light - White's hallmark of contemplative interior pictorialism.
Original held at : Library of Congress
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1904 · Platinum print
Tender embrace between the Reynolds sisters (Jean and Marion), not a romantic couple — an emblematic image of American pictorialism that demonstrates White's painterly approach to intimate composition.
Original held at : Library of Congress
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1903 · Photogravure (published in Camera Work No. 23, 1908)
Atmospheric study of rain on a window pane in soft domestic light — not a nude figure scene as sometimes mis-catalogued. Published as photogravure in Camera Work, exemplifying the quiet pictorialist intimism of the Stieglitz circle.
Original held at : Library of Congress · Camera Work No. 23
Reference file source : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1899 · Platinum print
Three children playing the ring-toss game, lit by tall window light - a quintessential image of White's lyrical domestic genre.
Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · Princeton University Art Museum
Reference file source : Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
1898 · Photogravure (Camera Work No. 3, 1903)
Modernist landscape with telegraph poles cutting through pastoral fields - White's foray into industrial-pastoral juxtaposition, published in Camera Work No. 3.
Original held at : Camera Work No. 3 · Library of Congress
Reference file source : Camera Work / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
1903 · Photogravure (Camera Work No. 3, 1903)
Minimalist snow-covered scene published in Camera Work No. 3, demonstrating White's command of tonal restraint and high-key composition.
Original held at : Camera Work No. 3
Reference file source : Camera Work / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
1905 · Photogravure (Camera Work No. 27, 1909) / Platinum print
Pastoral-symbolist scene of White's own sons Maynard and Lewis White posed in the Maine woods — not a mythological nude as sometimes mis-described. Camera Work No. 27 photogravure, signature of White's family-pastoral mode.
Original held at : Camera Work No. 27 · Library of Congress
Reference file source : Camera Work / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
12 of 16 works
The documented corpus
The rest of Clarence H. White's public-domain corpus: plates kept in our editorial archives. Reproducible on request, without dedicated editorial study.
1 archived plates
1912
Palladium print (printed after 1917)
Maison Picturale produces on commission contemporary prints after works by Clarence H. White that have entered the public domain. Hand-printed by master printers Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour on 640 gsm cotton paper, signed and numbered in limited edition, with a certificate of authenticity explicitly mentioning the "after" nature of the reinterpretation.
Start a commission